Alex D M (Alankria) is in Thailand for a couple of weeks, staying at the hotel next to us. We wandered around Sukhumvit the day before yesterday looking at the blingy watches in which our local vendors specialise, then went to Cabbages & Condoms, a local restaurant with a large menu and a safe sex theme — mannequins dressed in costumes made entirely from prophylactics decorate the joint — and ate on the mezzanine, with a large banyan tree dangling its many aerial roots outside the open balcony, making a curtain through which we overlooked the ferns and fairy lights in the courtyard.

Yesterday Alex and I went on the underground to Klong Toei market. Alex liked the spotlessly clean, aggressively airconditioned Bangkok version of the tube — as do I. I think of the London Underground practically as a wonder of the ancient world and love the historic resonances of its stations, but travelling on the deep Northern Line in summer isn’t an experience that I’m keen to repeat.

Klong Toei market is an old-fashioned outdoor food market, distinctly no frills, and lots of meat, dead and alive. There were chickens in large round communal wicker cages under tables of chicken carcasses — I felt sorry for one rooster with lovely feathers, who really looked too handsome for the pot — and live fish in shallow tanks, out of which we saw two inmates jump out while we were there. Next to a pork butcher’s stall, dogs lay gnawing on scraps. The pigs’ heads were strange — boneless, detached from their skulls, the flaccid faces lay like folded clothing in a store, one behind the other in sloping lines; yellow, for some reason, empty eyes closed in mimicry of the peace of sleep. There were also vegetables, and a lot of chilli and garlic, including a basket full of large, succulent-looking garlic cloves that I think might lure me back to Klong Toei.

Wat Hua Lamphong, at the station where we had to leave the comfort of the underground and take to the streets, isn’t one of Bangkok’s famous temples, but its lavish, recently renovated interior, lit by chandeliers, was well worth climbing the stairs and taking our shoes off for. Although the wall paintings were done in the traditional style, in the corner where sinners and sybarites were depicted the artist had painted one man guzzling whisky from a realistically painted bottle.

Next on the itinerary was River City arts and antiques mall. As we walked down the road we came to a high wall in the process of being torn apart by a banyan tree. In a cleft of the tree was a discarded spirit house, quite a recent discard by the looks of it (as I might have mentioned before, you can’t just throw a spirit house out, it has to be deposited under one of these trees), and in the bricks of the wall, which were hollow, so that each one was like a little frame, were shelved spirit figurines and other, surprising things — a mirror, a stuffed snowman. One can imagine all sorts of stories behind their being there.

River City is more a place for browsing than buying, as it’s quite upmarket. Amongst all the Buddhas, garudas and carved wooden doors — presumably from houses no longer standing — were unexpected interlopers from abroad, such as — I think it was — the head section of an Egyptian sarcophagus cover, and bits and pieces that looked African, though I guess they might have been from Oceania.

After a detour to Asian specialty bookshop Orchid Books, and then a siesta, we went out to a gay bar called Classic that I’ve wanted to visit for some time. Since the street is full of boy bars we had to run the gauntlet of numerous touts to reach it. Seating was rather basic, in rows facing the stage, and drinks priced sky high at 200bt — even for beer. The bar fine, however, was 400bt, which is low. The show was less raunchy than the Tawan bar — no actual sex — and the dancers/escorts were much more svelte, ranging from medium build to extremely thin and petite. I enjoyed the show, which included an underwater segment performed in a tank at the back of the stage. Our companion for the night was Sen, of gamine looks, puckish smile and charming manners. There is something special about these people who can carry on small talk with poise while sitting next to you dressed only in briefs. I could imagine him in a 1920s or 30s setting, dressed in tails, as a taxi dancer in a swish ballroom. His English was very good. When I asked where he had learned, he said he had mostly taught himself with books and tapes. He had been a waiter and a stylist for beauty contests before becoming an exotic dancer. He was gay, but was happy to go out dancing with women, obviously with payment for his time. He said he didn’t really like doing the underwater show since water got in his ears, and if he wore earplugs he couldn’t hear the music. I tried to ask how much they had to rehearse for the show, but he didn’t know “rehearse” or “practise”, so if I go back I will have to be armed with a bit more vocabulary. We didn’t take him out, but we or I might another time, since he seemed like an interesting person and his ability in English made it possible to have a conversation.