Ahhh, Bangkok.

Famous for dodgy fake gear, drugs, sex shows and lady-boys. Quite the reputation to live up to but Bangkok always manages…. effortlessly. It’s hard to stumble more than a few yards without being offered finest quality Rolexes with maybe a free Louis Vuitton bag thrown in to carry your loot home in. All real, of course. The seedier offers don’t fall far behind either; I still recall visiting Bangkok as a teenager with my family. Wandering down Patpong market, the lovely ladies were trying to entice my poor father in to their establishments with offers of free drinks galore… plus some other stuff that I didn’t understand. Hoping to put them off a little, he pointed out that he was there with his wife and entire family – response: “No problem, they can come in too!”. Unbelievably, we didn’t take them up on their kind offer.

Of course the city also has a more pleasant side and a number of world class tourist attractions. The Emerald Buddha (really made of jade, which I think is cheating but he’s a cool little dude anyway so I guess fair’s fair. Though he really is little – can’t be more than 8 inches high) housed within his amazingly intricately decorative Palace. The Golden Buddha – better named this time, being very very big and very, very gold. And the famed floating market with thousands of hawkers all lined up in their canoes to sell their wares (usually bananas. There’s really a LOT of bananas in Bangkok. Let’s carefully avoid the obvious jokes here). It’s an amazing tourist destination and needs a fair few days just to take it all in.

Then there’s the clothes shops, and in particular the tailors – Bangkok is probably the finest place in Asia to get a little custom made something or other made up. It’s here that the famed “3 suits in 3 days” service started up, and they do stick to their word on this (although one should also note that the word doesn’t include anything about said suits needing to look good, or in fact to even fit….).

How to fit it all in?

Well, for us it was pretty easy. We did ASOLUTELY nothing. We lazed round the pool. We ate dinner in the hotel for heaven’s sake. The most activity we got up to was catching up with an old work friend for lunch (pretty exhausting stuff)…. at our hotel. All of which we’re excusing by the fact that I’d picked up a nasty coldy-fluey thing in Japan and basically slept for most of the time we were there.

Although to be really honest, it was just a really lovely hotel, and we were kind of excited to hang round the pool for a day or two.

Anyway, Bangkok is the city of vice. And if my vice happens to be sloth, who’s to argue?

The single solitary photograph we took in Bangkok. Ladies and gentlemen, half a cocktail!