BANGKOK, THAILAND, 2005

OUR FIRST VISIT TO THAILAND

Posters of King Bhumboil are seen everywhere, often above signs that say things like "The King would prefer if you don't spit in the streets."

From everything seen and I've heard, the king is a charming gentleman, very like Prince Charles in style and in his desire to do well by his subjects, and his love of recycling, the environment, country pursuits and gardening.

FIRST LETTER FROM THAILAND

I think I may have found my niche in life: Style-Guru for Lady-Boys. Walking around the city, I see all their eyes flick my way as they check out the "HK Bling-Bling Boho-Chick" thing I'm doing these days and I can see their faces register all those items they intend to copy. I'm guessing that a black wool beret with an amethyst dragonfly on the side will be the big fashion item in future Bangkok days.

But what is Bangkok like? Apart from having heaps of Lady-Boys, that is? Well, "One Night in Bangkok makes the hard men crumble" it definitely isn't, although they do play that song constantly, perhaps to convince themselves. On the contrary, Thais seem very sweet and gentle and I love the "palms together" greeting everyone gives you.

In fact, from what I could see, Bangkok is just like Tokyo but with more interesting architecture and a less efficient sanitation department.

(2008: Gosh, Thailand has some gorgeous architecture. They are so good at doing modern buildings in the venacular style. In an ideal world, all architects would be Thai. Mmm, and all chefs and artists and fashion/furniture/fabric designers ...)

Overall, a very go-go-go modern city, but it isn't quite there yet.

Like, something has to be done about the spaghetti-tangle of telephone and power lines. If anything stops Bangkok from being "a world city" it is these.

Also, you have to walk on the streets because the sidewalks are so narrow and covered in rubbish and packs of skinny, mangy stray dogs.

The nicer streets are also crowded with potplants, but I don't mind that so much.

Also sad is the number of stray animals around the place, scavenging for whatever food they can find.

The city itself is all high-rise but interesting with it, while the residential areas are like Macau in the upper storeys - all crumbling concrete, rusting iron-lace balconies and roof gardens - but fascinatingly different at ground level.

When we first arrived, I was disappointed Thailand had never been a European colony because there were none of those wonderful old crumbling inner-city European mansions, like those sublime ones in Saigon, but once my eye was in I became awe-struck by Thailand's own indigenous-style crumbling inner-city mansions.

They're called "campons" I think: walled compounds for extended families with, say, a half dozen wooden houses in each garden.

They're mostly unpainted weatherboard but made of beautiful rainforest timbers, most with

interesting verandas and sleigh-shaped roofs with carved corbels, based on those "death houses" in the Thai countryside, and all with wonderfully carved decorated details on doors and windows.

It's so sad they're all forlorn and rotting because some of these places are just sublime. I wanted to shout over the walls "Oil your house, you morons!". However, we noticed that all over the place they're rebuilding the rotting houses in the same style only in besser-brick, and those are nice too; just not sublime.

What else makes this place what it is? Ah, the potplants! Everywhere you look there are acres of potplants. Like, everywhere. And they leave these gorgeous healthy plants in to-die-for giant pots out on the streets day and night. I don't know how people resist driving around in a truck at night and taking them all home.

Guess they all already have too many of their own.

That's another distinctly-Bangkok thing: no matter how little space they have in front of their houses, they all have these courtyard front gardens; all lush plants in the most gorgeous

gigantic decorated pots, equally lovely pots holding goldfish and waterlilies, and these little gold, carved wooden houses stuck atop a pole where they do "puja" to their statue of Buddha. I just drool walking around the back streets.

(And if they can't afford expensive pots they improvise, like these guys have done here.)

One funny story: I was peeping over walls and snapping photos of the courtyard gardens I particularly loved, when, at one of them, the lady of the house caught me at it. She was shocked when she first saw me, but when she realised what I was doing she beamed in joy, and then pointed out different things she thought I should photograph. All of this was done without English, because very few people speak it here.

Lots and lots more I could tell you about this place, but we're in an internet cafe and our time is almost up. I will write more in a day or two.

And just for a cheap laugh, I'll include a shot of a sign we couldn't resist photographing