ON THE ROAD/Rosita Boland: In a previous era, the exotic smells of the East as reported by adventurers such as Marco Polo were those of spices, sandalwood and incense.
For the contemporary visitor, all Asian cities still have a uniquely distinctive smell, although a tad less fragrant. Bangkok smells of dust and frying, of thick foliage and sewers and exhaust fumes, of heat and dirt and possibilities. I could smell it the instant I stepped out of the airport and loved it, unromantic as its components sound.
Right now, Bangkok is full of tourists of all ages, and it's a fair bet that most, if not all, will end up on the infamous Khao San Road at some stage, whether to stay, eat, shop or people-watch. The Khao San Road is the backpacker's boulevard of South East Asia, like Par Ganj in Delhi and Thamel in Kathmandu, stuffed with guesthouses, restaurants, bars, cafes, shops and stalls, all catering for Westeners. It was the obvious place for Richard, the character in Alex Garland's best-selling novel, The Beach, to pitch camp in on arrival in Bangkok.
On the Khao San Road you can buy fake press cards and student cards, fake international driving licences, bootleg CDs and DVDs, fake designer bags and clothes, fake jade and a million other fakes. You can buy tickets for full moon parties in Phuket or Ko Pha-Ngan; visas for Vietnam and Laos; trips to Siem Reap in Cambodia (where Anghor Wat is); and airline tickets to Burma. You can buy T-shirts that depict Osama bin Laden in the lotus position with the words "Peace and Retirement" underneath - although trade seems slow in that particular line of clothing. You can buy Thai massages, hair-wraps, second-hand books, silk clothes, the ubitiquous banana pancakes and lots of things not on display, but easily available, such as whatever drugs you want and underage sex.
On the Khao San Road, it's easy for a Westerner to feel rich and irresponsible. One of the distinctly unexotic things about Thailand is its sex industry: I've seen lots of overweight older and decidedly unattractive Western men openly walking round hand in hand with very beautiful and very young Thai girls. It's hard to know what's more disturbing - the fact it happens at all, or the fact that nobody takes a shred of notice of it.
The really great thing about the Khao San Road though is that you never know who you'll meet there. The Englishman I shared a table with in a crowded cafe turned out to be an amazingly entertaining ethymologist living in southern Thailand for a year, researching the diet of Hat Yai's cave-dwelling bats. "But I'm really more interested in frogs," he confided, after a few beers.
One of the happy mysteries about travelling is how effortlessly the days fill up. Technically, you have nothing to do, and yet, you are always busy. Getting your bearings, finding a hotel you like (that isn't full), sussing out places to eat, how to get around and sightseeing itself takes as much time as you want to invest.
Aside from all that, talking to the people you meet can sometimes literally take all day, in between marathon chess sessions and diversions for meals. Reading. Diary-writing. Planning where to go next and working out the logistics of getting there. And responding to the sometimes bizarre and unexpected challenges that being on the road throws at you - such as the one I faced three days ago: what to wear to the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Thailand's Christmas party in one of Bangkok's poshest hotels, the Marriott.
The colonial-sounding FCC was listed in my Lonely Planet Thailand and I put my curious head round the door for the craic, half-hoping for over-the-top scenes of brandies and sodas, gout, large armchairs and stories of What I Did In The Vietnam War.
The FCC is on the penthouse floor of a modern office block and has a membership of some 600. Half are journalists working for western medial outlets and the rest are embassy staff and from non government organisations. Thailand has the freest press in South East Asia and Bangkok is thus the main base for the foreign media. I learned all this over a beer, as well as the fact that their Christmas party was the following night and did I want to buy a ticket? You can't say no to opportunities like that. My rucksack wasn't quite up to it in the sartorial stakes - I can report that I was definitely the only person at the party wearing Birkenstock sandals, it was either that or hiking boots.
Fashion horrors or not, the evening turned out to be one of those marvellous experiences on the road you could never plan for and which you'll never forget. Sadly, nobody seemed to be afflicted with gout at the riverside party, but I did have a man pointed out to me who was described in properly over-the-top terms as "the most famous cameraman of the Vietnam War".
"So where are you going to be for Christmas?" someone asked when I was leaving. Despite the fact I was at a Christmas party, it was the first time I'd thought about Christmas. Yesterday I bought a ticket with Bangkok Air for Ko Samui, an island on the tourist trail in the Gulf of Thailand. So it looks like Christmas will be there, but mercifully minus Santa and all his little helpers.