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Other entries in Bangkok

Pirate treasure

My hotel room was completely dark. What time was it? I felt I could snooze on but decided to check my mobile phone. It said it was 8 in the morning - but that was London time. I counted seven hours on my fingers - which made it... 3 in the afternoon!

It took me over an hour to fully wake up and formulate a plan. Part of me toyed with the idea of leaving Bangkok on whatever flight south was next available and hitting a nice hot beach or doing some diving. The other part enjoyed the action, food, sights and big-city bustle of this big city.

I settled in for waking up at the hotel restaurant - a nice energy drink called '150' which boasts the slogan 'Courage. Devotion. Sacrifice.' and with it's subtle mix of caffeine, taurine and some meta-amphetamine which limits its use outside of Thailand, makes an excellent breakfast pick-me-up at 5pm in the afternoon.

Despite the immediate distinct improvement in mood and energy, I was too shattered to take an overnight bus or train. Sleep was precious and there would be little of that even on the plushest bus. A long-distance bus would cost me less than a taxi around the corner in London and still leave me change for a meal but flying was affordable too. Even booking a few hours in advance doesn't seem to change the price. This is obviously unheard of at home where booking the same day as your flight can make the airlines descend upon your wallet with such vigour as to make the nastiest vampire wince.

Ranong wasn't available, so I settled on the idea of a flight to Phuket. It might be overdeveloped, but I hadn't seen it yet and it was a stones throw from all sorts of interesting things, including Phang-nga, Krabi, Khao Lak, the Similan islands, Phi phi.... I could probably even move on within the same day.

But why hurry? It was already past five in the afternoon and the city was bathed in the warm glow of the sunshine that comes just before sunset and I decided to take a stroll and in search of something more solid for breakfast.

As usual, Bangkok was more than obliging, and the sheer variety of options left me teetering on a decision until hunger overcame me and I settled of a beautiful looking grilled fish with lemon sauce (B30 - or 40p). Most people opt for cornflakes but I wanted to enjoy my proximity to real thai food before the inevitable tourist-based selection of falang food on the islands in the south.

I sat down on a street corner and tore chunks of juicy crispened fish off with my hands and dipped them in the sauce. A woman who was packing up her stand offered me a chair and when I was finished dealing to the fish, she poured some drinking water over my hands to wash them. I felt indebted to her and offered her some money which she sternly refused. What a cynical swine I must be.

I jumped in a tuk-tuk to Pantip Plaza. It's a sort of department store filled with photographic stores, console games, software, music, computer and mobile parts and every DVD you can imagine. I wanted to get a second rechargable battery for my phone, and a few other things. On the way I got distracted and bought a couple of CDs for learning thai (B130 each) as well as an unlocker for mobile phones (B230). Unlocking your mobile means you can put SIM cards from other networks in your phone, which is useful if you're travelling because you don't need to pay to receive a call anymore.

You could honestly spend hours satisfying your consumer animal in this plaza, everything could be had for next to nothing and just when you were leaving you'd spot something tempting.

This turned out to be my downfall, as I spent nearly all my thai cash (about 18 pounds worth) very quickly. Then every ATM I tried with my visa told me there was a communications fault. Good thing I had travellers cheques too. I paid a túk-túk driver using a dollar note I had left over from a previous trip to the Carribean and found somewhere I could cash travellers cheques. Of course, I hadn't brought my passport, and the exchange office was closing in 10 minutes. I ended up making a trip to my hotel, and out to the airport and back (B200) to get the money I needed to at least pay the hotel the next morning at check-out.

After all the chasing around, I needed a nice bowl of noodle soup and an ice-cold Singha beer. I slurped and devoured the noodles with gusto and decided I would chill out need my hotel and get an early night.

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