In the summer of 2002 I travelled with Annette and Sasha to the ISA XV World Congress of Sociology in Brisbane. It was an eventful trip – my first visit to Australia – and I have just discovered a diary I wrote at the time (one happy consequence of a small study replete to overflowing with books is the occasional unexpected find). So I thought I might re-live a journey that began in Epsom on Tuesday 2 July and took us to Brisbane via Hong Kong, on to Sydney, then home again via Bangkok on Sunday 21 July.
Sasha had taken on the responsibility of booking hotel accommodation at the Congress for her colleagues at St George’s Hospital Medical School, and to her chagrin there was some confusion about this even before we took our taxi to Heathrow. Too early at the airport by a couple of hours, we did what Scamblers do, found a café and read. Flight BA025 was due to depart at 6.50pm but was delayed, first by a fault on the vehicle to transport us to the runway, then by a fault with a de-icing valve. We boarded at 6.30pm and left at 9pm.
An hour of lost time was recovered during the flight and we landed at the state-of-the-art airport at Hong Kong ten hours after leaving Heathrow. Hong Kong is seven hours ‘ahead’, so we arrived at 2pm local time. The airport bus headed for Kowloon and the 438-room Marco Polo Hotel. Our room, 1529, was on the fifteenth floor; it was spacious and inviting, even with the addition of an extra bed. We showered and, following advice, made our way to Nathan Street, full, we were informed, of an abundant and diverse array of restaurants. In the event it proved something of a Mecca for tourists, so we departed at right angles and eventually hit upon a small, unassuming eating-place where we ate and drank our fill for 220 Hong Kong dollars. Fatigue set in and we returned to the hotel, sinking deep into chairs in the sixth-floor bar that overlooked the city’s ‘downtown’ or commercial sector.
Happily the full-English breakfast is widely acknowledged for what it unquestionably is, and mid-morning on 4 July I all but overdosed on crispy bacon. We took the Star Ferry, a handy hundred yards from the hotel, to make our way to Hong Kong Island. Life ‘on the other side’ was less frenetic than I had anticipated, quieter than Kowloon. Behind the concrete and glass shards we located the funicular railway. This Peak Tram service has been in operation since 1888. The ascent itself was enlivened by a dramatic storm, beginning with grey and heavy skies and evolving into thunder and lightening. We sheltered in a café at our destination and escaped all but a smattering of rain. Needless to say I managed to read a few pages (actually of Maguire and colleagues’ Sport Worlds). The views when the gloom lifted were tremendous.
Unfortunately Sasha checked her emails, only to find that her painstaking booking of rooms for us as well as the St George’s contingent in Brisbane had apparently failed. Back in the hotel she rang the hotel reception but found that it had closed fifteen minutes beforehand: nothing to be done until the next day. Flattened, none of us felt like another excursion, so we ate in the hotel. I stayed late in the sixth-floor bar, irrationally pleased at the evening’s offer of two Fosters for the price of one. I started Roy Porter’s Enlightenment. I have fond memories of Roy, sadly no longer with us, when I invited him to give a seminar to the Academic Department of Psychiatry based in what was then The Middlesex Hospital Medical School (the main hospital building no longer exists).
Our slightly depressed mood stayed with us through the morning of 5 July. We had a day to fill until our Brisbane flight at 9.20pm. We wandered disconcertedly round a shopping mall while Sasha intermittently tried to contact the West Central Hotel in Brisbane and to check her credit card account. She secured an update just before we boarded a taxi to the airport, our three cases dangling precariously from an open boot. The West Central promised to try and find both us and the group, accommodation elsewhere; Sasha’s credit card showed a deficit of several hundred pounds sterling.
At the airport we were offered an earlier flight, via Melbourne rather than Sydney, and took it. If anybody needs reminding the distances are immense. With two hours at Melbourne between flights, Sasha was on the phone again. A single room, rather than the two rooms she had booked, had been found for us at another hotel, Carlton Crest. On arrival we were informed that no second room was available for us, and also discovered that only two of the St George’s ensemble had been registered: Christina Victor and Ian Rees Jones. So no rooms for Paul Higgs or Chris Gilleard. By chance Sasha and I then overheard someone at hotel reception mention ‘other rooms’. Sasha jumped in and secured a second room for the Scamblers. She then rang Christina’s room and the four of us ventured out along Albert Street before chancing across an escalator up to ‘JoJo’s’, where we ate, drank and generally unwound. Paul, Chris and Ian turned up at the hotel late in the evening. Ian’s room was okay and Paul and Chris were found a single room for one night, an arrangement they hoped to extend in the morning (which they managed successfully to accomplish). Why had the West Central screwed up? And why do so many hotels mess with guests’ heads by last minute juggling and haggling, presumably for a bit extra here, a bit extra there? Annette and I have encountered it often. I bought a round of drinks in the bar before we all – in various states of mind – adjourned for the night.
We awoke around midday on what had magically become Sunday 7 July and made our way slowly to the Convention Centre adjacent to Griffiths University. Eschewing the bar we made for the bookshop, a necessary first port of call, and then attended an elaborate and tidily organised opening ceremony. An Aboriginal woman started proceedings off through song and dance; and this was followed by several short welcoming speeches, an engaging routine from a local (private) school of the performing arts, and, somewhat strangely, a procession of half a dozen girls done up like flower arrangements, apparently representing the principal influences comprising Australian culture (in this way British and American imperialism crept in). A private diary entry I made at the time noted that this welcome embrace of Aboriginal culture only works if it is a true reflection of a post-racist society; otherwise it’s a purely symbolic gesture. From what I know of contemporary Australian society there may be some way to go. Back to the ceremony: Alberto Martinelli gave the ISA presidential address on ‘Markets, Governments, Communities and Global Governance’. He seemed at times to be in a hurry, as if 45 minutes was insufficient; but it was an excellent talk. Off then to the barbie: an impressive event laid on for 3,000 delegates, with a surfeit of food and drink and an opportunity to meander and catch up with long-lost colleagues. Sara Arber told Annette and I that she had been very impressed by Sasha when interviewing her for a recent lecturing job at Surrey University that Sasha narrowly missed out on: ‘she’ll get a lectureship, no problem.’
Monday 8 July saw us attending papers. I was perhaps more diligent then than I’ve since become. I managed to miss Maggie Archer whom I’ve since come to know well (apparently she was excellent). But I did hear Smelser and Tourraine on our unravelling social order, the latter using up virtually all the time put aside for discussion. Predictably there was far more consensus on the prevailing dis-order than on either what to do or what might be round the corner. Tourraine, I thought, tried too hard to strike an original note, defending a post-postmodern concept of selfhood. After this I attended a session on the sociology of sport before slipping out for a coffee and read, my new text beingMud, Sweat and Beersedited by Gary Armstrong.
By prior agreement we met up at 5.15pm to trek back to Carlton Crest, with an hour or two to chill before a pre-planned gathering with the London contingent plus one or two add-ons. We recommended ‘JoJo’s’, and nine of us managed to cluster around a single wooden table. It again proved a good venue, although a number of us searched in vain afterwards for a bar, settling in the end for a further round or two back at the hotel.
Annette and Sasha slept in on the morning of Tuesday 9 July, doubtless wisely, while I set my alarm for 8am to attend a session at 9am in the Great Hall involving Goran Therborn; but I stopped for a coffee on the way and missed him. I did however hear a Chinese sociologist, Huang Ping, give an enlightening talk on growing inequality in China. Annette and I had sensed this in the summer of 2001 when we visited Beijing. China, Ping told us, is split between urban and rural (‘two Chinas’), with 400 million ‘privatised’ peasants living on less than $2 a day, and with heavy migration into cities, fuelling sex work and generating a new urban underclass. (It is a portrayal, incidentally, that is echoed in Eileen Yuk-ha Tsang’s ethnographic study entitledChina’s Commercial Sexscapes, which was published – adorned by my endorsement – in 2019.)
After a snack of lasagne and chips in South Park, the Scamblers dawdled a while before catching the ferry across the river to the ‘QUT’ buildings in which the research committee meetings were due to be held. There, between 3.30-5.15pm, we heard four papers on ageing, one of which was delivered by Christina Victor and another, on sleep (a topic I could not then and cannot now get excited by), by Sara Arber. All this quartet of talks were worthwhile.
After this, we met American sociologist (well, social psychologist actually) and friend, Karen Hegtvedt from Emory University in Atlanta. She, together with husband Patrick and offspring Ross and Marlis, had a luxurious apartment at Key West Hotel (Patrick was paid rather more as a successful US lawyer than are sociologists in the UK or the USA). They were all jet-lagged, though Karen had somehow struggled through her presentation earlier. We found a restaurant nearby and ate well and economically before Pat departed with the half-asleep kids and Karen joined the Scamblers for coffee and catch-up chatter at Starbucks. It was 9pm before we again split up, with Annette, Sasha and I adjourning to ‘Picasso’s’, a bar/restaurant close by the Carlton Crest. There was a dress code, but, having been scrutinised head to toe, we just passed muster. Alone, I had what was planned to be a final drink at the hotel bar. In the event however I was badgered into joining a group of conference delegates, which proved a tedious mistake. I escaped fairly quickly and made my way to the ‘Pig and Whistle’, an open-air, mid-street last resort for those pursuant of alcohol late evening in Brisbane. There I watched a few overs of an England v India one-day cricket international. Thence to bed, around 12.15am.
We had hired a car from Hertz shortly after arriving in Brisbane – a Ford Laser, white four-door hatchback – and the morning of Wednesday 10 July was the time to use it for a first excursion. A quick coffee, budget-check and preliminary glance at a road map for Brisbane/Sydney at ‘Picassos’s’, then we drove at least 400 yards before getting lost and finding ourselves unable to do a U-turn in an underground car park. The first planned stop was Caloundra, where we parked in the seafront, wandered on its renowned sandy beach, and Sasha treated us to lunch while our feet dipped into the cool, lapping waters. A group of fishermen chatted nearby.
Our intention was to visit a number of hamlets en route to the Glass House Mountains. In the event we reached the mountain range quite quickly, which my diary records as ‘mildly diverting’, then circled back a touch circuitously through beautiful rolling hills to a village called Maleny, where we halted for a break and to re-fuel. On our way back to Brisbane the sun descended rapidly behind the rolling hills and I was tired by the time we reached the city around 6pm. We devoured a snack and hung around in the hotel bar with the London crowd, joined also by Dick Wiggins; as academics do, we reflected on our respective lots and drew pictures of possible futures.
Annette had a poor night and slept her way into the beginnings of Thursday 11 July, while Sasha and I departed at 8.30am to hear George Ritzer (whom I’d met and briefly exchanged views with at an ASA conference in Atlanta). In the event he didn’t turn up, which is not unheard of in relation to notable speakers. Sasha and I resorted to caffeine, and thence, joined by Annette, to a second café/restaurant to eat. I then walked over the footbridge to make the health inequalities session, 1.30-3.15pm; Annette and Sasha waited for the ferry (and turned up late). The star for me was David Coburn, with whose work I was already familiar. Other contributions were, how best to put it, unambitious. I managed a quick chat with him afterwards, and also met Debbie Warr, whose Ph.D at La Trobe I had examined from my home base at UCL. We then bumped into Peter Conrad from Brandeis and nattered over yet more coffee. Peter and I then settled in the ‘Pig and Whistle’ to wine (him) and beer (me). He was delightful company and extremely helpful, with more than 20 suggestions for people I might approach in relation to our journal, ‘Social Theory and Health’. He told me he was the same age as Mike Bury (57), and went on to offer me a room in his home in Boston if I ever got to visit. Drank late in the hotel bar to bid farewell to a successful congress, retiring, if that is the appropriate word, to bed around 2am.
The intention on Friday 12 July had been to breakfast early and set off for Sydney, but the best laid plans … In the event we settled our bills a little later than anticipated, the valet collected our Ford Laser, and we headed, this time with commendable accuracy, in the general direction of Sydney. Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary was our initial target, and it was a lovely interlude wandering about amongst the koalas and kangaroos.
The driving was actually much like traversing the American south. The landscape remained rolling brown. In Aratula on highway 15 we stopped for refreshments, hitting to our astonishment on ‘Devonshire Cream Teas’. Where does imperialism start and finish? I drove on to Warwick but grew quite tired and Sasha took over while I kipped on the back seat. The light was beginning to fade as we approached a town called Glen Innes, and therein lies a story.
We spotted a Best Western, a familiar sign from the road trip Annette and I undertook from Atlanta to Los Angeles, and back, in 1998; but we drove on in search of a small hotel. The high street straggled along, a strip much like those in the States. There were lines of parked cars but no pedestrians. We pulled up outside the Grand Central Hotel. Peering through the windows we saw what looked like a decent restaurant and our spirits lifted. The inside told a different story. A handful of men and a single woman at the bar cast inquisitive glances at us – no, inspectedus; no greetings were exchanged. And it was cold. Nobody seemed to know if any rooms were available, or, if so, where they might be. We were eventually directed up a dark staircase of a kind that might have appealed to Hitchcock. The rooms were beyond austere and colder even than the bar, where the drinkers at least had an old stove to gather round; in fact, there was no heating at all. ‘Are there en suite bathrooms?’ Annette asked with fanciful optimism. Sasha was half way down the stairs by this point. In fairness our young guide seemed to appreciate our reticence and understood, and even seemed relieved, when we left the hotel at speed. So it was back to the Best Western.
This was a motel owned and managed by a former federal police officer who lived on the premises with his family. He had been running the motel for seven moths and was less than impressed by Best Western (an unethical outfit’). But Rooms 30 and 31 were excellent, as was the quality of the restaurant: we ate well. It afforded a decent recovery for a trio traumatised by the experience down the road. Wandering back to our rooms after the meal, it had turned shivering cold. Apparently NSW had been experiencing record low temperatures (-14 degree C in Glen Innes the previous night, and -5 degree C in Sydney), and we believed it. I curled up in bed and watched the Australian rugby league team thrash Great Britain 64:10.
We wanted to reach Sydney the next day, Saturday 13 July, and – 740 kilometres/460 miles later – we managed it. We set off initially for Armidale, which once again struck us as a US-style settlement, straggling either side of the highway. The landscape was bleached, robbed of its rightful hues of green and brown by the elements. We halted at a village called Uralla for coffee and found ourselves outside the local information office. Settled initially by gold-diggers, I discovered, it gradually became a permanent settlement and is now notable for the exploits of Captain Thunderbolt, a rogue horse thief who escaped imprisonment and remained on the run and free for several years. A statue of him on horseback has been erected in the village and it seems that for a small consideration it will speak to tourists.
There is one memory on this Brisbane to Sydney drive that sticks particularly in my mind. We drove, but couldn’t stop, by a sheet of bright, shining water that looked as if it had been illuminated from below. I learned only later what this phenomenon was, although Annette had heard of it. Apparently it is caused by bioluminescent algae: it was a dazzling, unforgettable sight.
From Uralla we branched off and made circuitously for the coast, the three of us sharing the driving. The colour returned to the surroundings. We passed numerous flocks of sheep, blending in with their pastures, plus several herds of cows. The hills and valleys rose and fell, creased by the dried remnants of creeks. Eventually we hit Forster, which lacked any obvious appeal so we ate (an all-day English breakfast in my case) and drove on. At Newcastle we reckoned on finding a hotel but again were disappointed and elected to drive on down the Pacific Highway to Sydney. We stopped briefly for refreshments and to book a further two days at the Harbour Rocks Hotel in Sydney, and just after 9pm we crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge and soon after registered at the hotel. Underground parking was available ($25 dollars for hotel guests). The rooms were excellent and we stretched and relaxed. Moreover the location was perfect: a matter of moments from the Opera House and from a variety of cafes and restaurants. In the event we chose a small Italian restaurant round the corner on George Street, Sasha and I washing our pasta down with beer, Annette with red wine.
Replete after our late, pre-paid breakfasts, we decided not immediately to make use of the hire car (Sunday 14 July was last day we had it). Instead we headed for Bondi Beach. It was smaller than we had anticipated, though the surfing looked impressive. The sand was golden and fine. There were surfers and there were posers, though the two categories were not mutually exclusive. Intriguingly, just behind the bay there were about a dozen specially constructed cubicles in which Eastern Europeans – settlers rather than sojourners I imagined – were playing board games in groups of four.
For our second port of call the car was required. We visited the 2000 Olympic Stadium out of town. The whole Olympic Village was impressive, although the stadium itself had been much modified. The capacity had been reduced from 120,000 to 80,000, and because there is too marginal a return on track-and-field, it has been redesigned for rugby and other sports. We took the 30-minute tour, which was informative; the Sydney Games have been presented as a successful public-private venture, which is probably fair enough. Somehow or other we managed to negotiate our way back to the hotel.
We settled for a beer in what looked like an authentic German Beer Hall (my father would have recognised the music), and decided to stay and eat. It was a good meal, served by men and women in traditional costumes. Either two British students on the adjacent table were talking very loudly or we were just tired. I made a mental note that Hertz were due to collect the hire car at 9am the following morning.
Despite Hertz having agreed to collect the car at 9am on Monday 15 July, nobody turned up, leaving me shivering in a metre-hungry parking slot. A representative eventually turned up around 1pm. To fill in the morning we strolled along George Street and found a café. It transpired that the café was owned and managed by David Campese, celebrated Aussie rugby union winger. We only noticed when I saw him serve Sasha. I persuaded him to sign caps for Miranda and myself and we talked a bit about rugby. He repeated his anthem on the boring English mode of playing, but I pointed out that people with his very individualistic talent only crop up every now and again. Remembering how he managed to wind up Woodward and his wards, I couldn’t help thinking that Brian Moore did exactly the same, as just as successfully, with the French. It’s all part of the game nowadays. Anyway, Campese was friendly and relaxed.
We walked around the railway station and ferry area to the Sydney Opera House, where we missed out on a jazz concert by Diane Kroll but managed to book opera tickets for Wednesday evening. More coffee with our books, then we bought tickets for an evening boat cruise. Sasha announced that she planned to traverse the Sydney Harbour Bridge the next day.
The cruise was distracting, the skyline at times breath-taking. But there was little sense of history (which I love), and the evenings certainly get colder. I tried a few photographs but didn’t expect much return on them. Around 9.30pm we tried a new restaurant. ‘Bring a bottle’ was a neophyte slogan for me, but the food was okay. Afterwards I wandered along George Street and found a pub called ‘Fortune of War’, apparently the oldest hostelry in Sydney. It was built by Terry Samuel in the 1820s, converted to pub use a decade later, and was apparently substantially rebuilt in the 1930s. A fight scene from the film ‘A Town Like Alice’ was shot there. I downed a couple of pints and read a chunk of Carey’s travelogue on Sydney.
Tuesday 16 July started with the unmissable feast of a ‘full English’ (sadly, in Sydney they tend to stop serving it at 10am, which means no ‘all-day English’). Sasha set off to ‘climb the bridge’ while Annette and I had coffee and inspected the shops before Annette (’I can do this in Oxford Street’) departed to walk to The Rocks and I was left to peruse a couple of ‘Dymocks’ bookstores. They were disappointing – too much on business, accounting, computing and self-help for my taste – though I went on to pick up a book on The Rocks from a smaller bookshop opposite Campese’s café. I had a quick beer to celebrate before the Scambler trio came together to hear Sasha’s account of her excursion. Not one to baulk at heights, she had thoroughly enjoyed it.
We circumnavigated the Opera House, read awhile in our hotel rooms, and following advice at reception made our way down to Circular Quay West to ‘Wolfies’ to eat (‘the best beef in the world’). It was indeed fine beef, and Annette’s fish was no less appetising. Great meal, relaxed conversation, and complemented by exquisite view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as a backcloth. Getting on for 10pm we walked back down George Street to Number 383 to visit the basement, ‘Soup Plus’, a well-known jazz venue: long wooden benches, a bar and a full set of young punters with only a handful of middle-aged, middle-class lefties. A young quintet called ‘2 Minutes Late’ was playing, contemporary but with more than an echo of traditional: piano, drums electric guitar, trumpet and saxophone. They were done by 11pm (Ronnie Scott would be turning in his grave). The mile back seemed shorter than the mile to the club. I finished Carey’s enjoyable impression of Sydney. Interestingly, he asked in his book why hotel rooms are not heated. Spot on! We had to borrow an electric fire to warm our air-conditioned room.
Sasha slept through breakfast and Annette and I ate less greedily than hitherto. On this, our last fill day in Sydney (Wednesday 17 July), we planned to catch the 11.30am ferry to Manly. I was not wildly enthusiastic and in the event it was a disappointing trip. Manly was nothing to shout about and the beach by the jetty was netted off against sharks (two had been spotted that summer); the other beach was fine and sandy but somehow uninspiring. We perused the sops and Annette bought a beige shirt and matching jacket. By mid-afternoon we were heading back to the more cosmopolitan and sophisticated streets of Sydney. Annette and Sasha set out to shop while I settled with more coffees and a book.
We came together at 5.30pm to give us time to snack. We went to the first restaurant we had sampled in Sydney and had a quick enjoyable Italian meal: the walls were decorated with signed photographs, including tennis stars Pat Cash, Martina Hingis, Steffi Graff and Ken Rosewell (Seb Coe was also represented). We returned to the Opera House for 7.30pm. We had opted for a programme unfamiliar to our adviser, Annette: Mascagni’s ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ and Leoncavallo’s ‘Pagliacci’. They were wonderfully set, the acoustics were excellent and we all appreciated the performances: for me, Dennis O’Neill was the pick of the singers. The prospect from the Opera House, especially taking in the Harbour Bridge and the ‘downtown’ to its left is exceptional. Sasha and I escorted Annette back to the Harbour Rocks Hotel and then returned to Fortune of War for a pint of Kilkenny. We were later back than planned, with the pub still serving at 12.30am.
It was a pleasant prompt start to Thursday 18 July. I wanted to pop into the Museum of Art, but it proved rather disappointing: a mix of international installations and bits and bobs. I bought a copy of philosopher Danto’s work to think a bit more about art. More coffee was consumed at Campese’s place before we caught the airport bus at 11.53am. The 45-minute journey seemed a touch roundabout but was nothing compared with our flight to Bangkok. All went well until we boarded the plane, after which life became more complicated. We were due to take off at 3pm, but in the event left at 6.30pm. First, some baggage was unidentified; and second, in opening a rear door to increase the flow of air, damage was done to an escape route. Volunteers were sought on safety grounds – we were down one escape route – to transfer to another flight (a night in a hotel plus £250 each). It was hot and tedious. I watched ‘Iris’ before we left, which I enjoyed more than many critics. Later, during the flight, I watched ‘The Shipping News’ which was also okay. We landed close to 1am instead of 9pm. Pity those who had connections! We hired a minibus to the Shangri-la Hotel and, despite the driver getting lost on the way, eventually made it. It was a great hotel; and we were upgraded, which gave Sasha in particular a much better deal. It was 2am when we faded into oblivion.
So Friday 19 July was our first day in Bangkok. It started with an exquisite buffet – which we set about at 10.30am. Not for the first time I risked overdosing on crispy bacon. Proceeding slowly we caught the ferry from the pier by the hotel and drifted down the Chao Phraya River to see the Grand Palace. The trip itself was fascinating: rivers often show you the underbellies of cities. When we arrived we were disappointed to find it apparently closed, or so we were told. Foolishly we trusted our informants and took a trip by tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled open-air taxi). The first part was okay, costing us pre-arranged 100 baht. We were taken at hair-raising speed to see the Golden Buddha. A second (50 baht) trip to see the Emerald Buddha started off okay, but it became quickly apparent that we were destined to visit numerous craft and jewellery markets en route. Our driver explained that he got his petrol free if he took customers by a market or three. We replied that enough was enough, that we only had two days! With poor grace he headed belatedly for Wat Po. After he had left however we discovered that we were at the Marble Palace, four kilometres from Wat Po. Our driver had taken his revenge. It was nearly worth the hassle: we had after all seen a lot of Bangkok (speed by). We summoned a relaxing air-conditioned taxi and returned to the hotel (for only 91 baht).
We swam and chilled in the hotel Jacuzzi. Unfortunately I entered the Jacuzzi with my watch on and with our money in one pocket of my shorts. We noticed when several baht notes drifted casually to the surface. With the help of one or two other holidaymakers we recovered about 35 baht. Dinner at this luxurious hotel gave us options of half a dozen international restaurants. We chose Thai cuisine at a scenic restaurant on the banks of the river. We prudently stuck to the menu but it was a delightful meal. Varied, spicy and hot, bright vivid items followed in quick succession. Our bemused delight pleased the Thai server, as did the fact that she had inadvertently given me a smaller wine glass than Annette or Sasha. In the background a troupe of four Thai women and one man performed traditional dances.
We failed to resist another large, fortifying breakfast on Saturday 20 July (if food is pre-paid and sitting there waiting, it’s hard to hold back). Then we were off on the ferry once more, again hoping to see the Grand Palace. We had been told at the hotel this time that the Palace was open and that we should not believe anyone who told us otherwise. The ferry was an ‘express boat’ and in no time we were standing listening to tuk-tuk drivers explaining that the Palace was closed but that they could take us on a Bangkok tour. It was irritating to be greeted by plain lies, yet we reserved judgement, not yet understating local culture, custom and circumstance. We made it to the Palace, which was superb. It was neither fussy nor messy, unlike for example Beijing’s Forbidden City. Its ornateness was contained by a wonderful sense of space and perspective. And here – all the time as it were, and despite tuk-tuk drivers’ rumours to the contrary – was the Emerald Buddha. Shoes reverently removed and feet pointing away, we gazed upwards at this celebrated icon. We spent a contented hour there before walking round the corner to Wat Po. Yes, it was that close! More expedient lying from those fraudsters on tuk-tuks. The reclining Buddha awaited us there, huge, gold and with a remarkable set of toes.
Next came a taxi to the marketplace at Chatuchak, one of Asia’s most expansive and colourful bazaars spreading out over more than thirty acres. I walked around the stores for a while before I was gratefully deposited with a beer or two in an air-conditioned restaurant while Annette and Sasha sought clothing. Both returned with bulging bags. My return from the shops was a few jazz CDs, notably Getz, Baker and Mulligan.
After a period of recovery at the hotel we took another taxi, this time to the infamous red light district of Patpong. I was studying and writing about the sex industry at this time, so was keen to see what it was like. Patpong comprised a lively market down the middle of the road with bars. Clubs and occasional shops lined each side. Young, scantily clad women jigged with neither rhythm nor enthusiasm on central platforms, presumably waiting to be selected, or not. The impression was of a real cattle market. Touts approached potential customers, either with re-assuring price lists for drinks or with menus of what the women were willing to do. It was in all truth dispiriting, which is not to condemn the women. Back in the hotel we collapsed and read.
After breakfast on the morning of Sunday 21 July we hung around the pool and bar awaiting a departure to the airport to catch our 12.15am flight to Heathrow.