From Suhumvit to the sickness and vomit pit

SEPTEMBER 26, 2008: We left the "Intercourt" apartments for the Khaosan hellhole . . . one last week there, for the sake of "timing our run" at a Chinese visa. Photos of Sukhumvit days

Our month at Intercourt was predictable. I liked the sounds that came from the tennis club - how do you describe the sound of tennis shots?? - and i liked watching the ladies on the ground floor below who did residents' washing by foot in large bowls. They had a lot of cats, which lazed all around them all day. The whole yard was concrete and so the ladies often swept up the cat shit with a broom made of tree branches.

Being month-by-month accommodation, the place was full of foreigners. There was the ponytailed Swiss-German looking ones (2 of them). The overweight Lebanese-looking one. The subcontinentals, a few dozen, at a guess, including the impossibly unreliable manager, Singh. The refined Korean and Japanese couples (several). The young, bald-and-pinkish fella who lowered his head when you passed in the corridor, and who was probably British (no Intercourse, not even social! - where's his public spirit?). The couple of unknown nationality who picked up the Britisher's (and our) slack by providing regular Intercourse soundtracks of 45-60 minutes to floors 4,5 and 6, both partners enthusiastically, blatantly faking multiple orgasms. Then there were the Aussies. Blond, leather-skinned Aussies in loose singlets looking like laid-off outback Queensland road workers released from flipping the lollipop sign from "stop" to "slow" and back again.

The one foreigner i spoke with was a large (though not supersized) black American teacher who sympathised with our visa predicament, he said, having been thrown out of Japan after his marriage to a Japanese woman broke down. He hadn't seen his 5-year-old son since. He didn't know when he would.

Yes, expat Thailland, unfortunately for the Thais, is a thick layer of detritus at the bottom of their muddy river of a country. It's like North Vegas as described by Hunter Thompson, "the place you go when you've fucked up one too many times on the strip." We, of course, fitted the role perfectly: expelled from the rectum of China, Yunnan province, we sank slowly down southeast Asia as if by gravity before settling on Bangkok. We contributing nothing to Thailand in our time in exile. I suppose the "Jusco" supermarket from which we bought countless 66c meals is that much more viable for our custom. But no, objectively, like everyone else, we're worthless scum!

In spite of this, i was several times invited to join drinking circles as i walked here or there in the evening. I politely declined them all, promising myself i was to work at home. But one old BBQ meat seller with a long, wispy beard who gave me the warmest smile every time i walked past, saying as i did, "sawatdee krap", without buying anything. He looked more Malaysian than Thai, but he probably wasn't given his regular companionship of a whisky bottle, which he once invited me to share as i walked home with dinner. I resolved to go back one night bearing a bottle of Scotch, and by our last night in Intercourt i still hadn't. So i bought a large bottle, nailed a few shots on an empty stomach, grabbed my dictionary and headed out to his smokey patch of roadside. He was, as expected, already drinking - it was a saturday night - along with several ladies from Issan and a motorcycle taxi rider. The jolly crowd seemed to be enjoying my company; the old man challenged me to several shot-draining contests, which i remember letting him win before my memory went blank. A mere 60 minutes after i left Intercourt i was back, staggering, draped in a greasy table cloth with a whisky glass in my hand, having been kindly shipped off home on the back of the motorbike taxi with these, my souvenirs of the only night anything happened there.

So back we came, the following day, leaving behind the strangely soothing sounds of the tennis club for what i can only call the unbearable discord of Khaosan. The only positive that could possibly come from a week on Khaosan Road was to interview Mr Yim, the famed - at least that's the implication on his signs and if it's not true now i intend to make it so - purveyor of vegetarian street cuisine and yoghurtmaster extraordinaire.

The morning i got up to interview Yim i was running a fever. Yim was obliging but when i got back to the hotel i couldnt stand the thought of transcribing the interview in the reception area downstairs. Our room at the Live Good Guest House didn't have a power point; none of them do. My laptop needs a power point. Perhaps it was just a convenient excuse not to get on with what i had to do, but i decided instead that to trek out to the train station and check out the prospects of getting to the airport cheaply would be more bearable. More manageable, i thought - sitting on a bus listening to music. I wasn't thinking straight. The stop for the Bangkok free bus was 20 minutes walk away through the epicentre of desperate hawkers, tuk-tuk drivers and pavement grease.

The bus was packed. I phased to the space i saw up front before i realised i was standing on the platform above the engine and had to bend my neck to fit. There were no vents and the heat from the engine and the bodies could rise no further than the stratum my aching head was occupying. After 10 bad minutes i managed to phase backwards off the platform, claiming the position right under the raised safety hatch. My head almost protruded out the top. When the bus moved the wind blowing across the top of my head cooled me.

But the free bus takes the most congested route possible to the train station. The air along the streets from the Reclining Buddha through Chinatown is tinged blue and the bus and everything else on the road stops and crawls, crawls and stops. The streets were lined with hundreds of posters for mayoral candidates. The comical angry-man, catfish moustache bristling; the smiley, soft-featured suit with the web address www.futurebangkok.net; the looker with a neatly trimmed moustache posing on a motorbike. I liked the bristling catfish man. Passing his posters made me laugh many times over. I had a splitting headache for the rest of the day.

Back at Live Good Guest House i fell asleep before 6 and was wide awake at 10. The rooms at Live Good Guest House are clean, cheap and extremely small. None have extractor fans or vents, so there's no way for accumulated heat at the top of the room to get out. The only way to extract the heat is to stand outside, opening and closing the door like some hotel doorman stuck in a time glitch. The ceiling fan was on high, blowing the hot air down on us, creating a 40C desert gale inside the room. It's cooler with the fan on low.

With great effort i dressed and went to the nearest shop and bought ice. Back in the room, after filling up my second glass, i decided to balance the ice bucket on my foot rather than on the ground and it overturned. It was nice, crushed ice, not big, hard-to-eat cubes. About half of it melted on impact, the rest within about 20 seconds. Despite my weakened, feverous state or perhaps because of it, i flew into a vessel-bursting rage and nearly gouged my own eyes out in substitution for screaming, which i had somehow remembered was not the done thing in a guest house. Shortly after, i scolded myself for being so unphilosophical. I am by nature a clumsy motherfucker. You're fighting against the irresistible course of nature, i thought. Too bad getting angry was also a force of nature, i thought.

I went back to reading Platform. Its self-loathing was entirely satisfying and i finished the brutal last third of the book in smart time. The forlorn final words rattled around in my head and prompted me to study Chinese to go to sleep. After an hour i was positively alert. So i turned the Silver Jews latest album and listened, wondering, without wanting to, what Michel would make of the opening track's earnest exhortation:

"When failure's got you in its grasp
And you're reaching for your very last
It's just beginning."

I remembered, without wanting to, the Silver Jew, David Berman's brave criticism of Radiohead for not attempting meaningful lyrics; on the heels of Platform, Radiohead's lyrics stand uncorrected.

I woke to the early morning squawks of Thai washing ladies in the alley below. My dreams had been continuations of Michel's hopeless closing monologue. I switched on David Berman. The bed was soft enough that if i tapped my foot slightly the motion would ripple through my whole body in time with the music. That was one thing i liked about Live Good Guest House.