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Crossing the bridges of Bangkok I had looked down and seen narrow high powered ferries rearing at speed through the narrow canals, young hotheads at the outboard motors. Wanting a go l slip down into the canalside market and after a deliciously fragrant bowl of noodles found myself standing on a little jetty together with a Betty Boop-like cutie clutching a large transparent bag of fresh flower petals. She has only a little English as we start talking. She is going to scatter the petals on her grandfather's grave. Jumping into the boat (since it merely slows down at each stop,) we lurch through the city atop the filthy canal, the peaks of skyscrapers flashing intermittently like blades above the ragged roofs of the canalside houses.

As in Indonesia there is the illusion of an inexhaustible number of beautiful women; this is a bit of a poser, particularly to the anglo-saxon mind; for surely beauty, must (must it not?) be rare. And yet one finds oneself in Bangkok on day one in the street thinking "Oh, wow, ther's a beautiful woman...and hey there's another and hang on, here come another twenty" until at last you realise that if you are going to operate at all in this city you must be a little more measured. Gradually you realise that you are not always looking at beauty; it is simply that that there is a dramatic recurrence of features, of striking juxtapositions (dark hair, honey-coloured skin, dark eyes etc. all, in the anglo-saxon canon, features of a certain syntax of beauty; but actually you are, most of the time in the presence of mere prettiness; but at first,yes, there appears to be an improbable, intolerable abundance of pulchritude.

The same feeling too of infinite abundance in the markets in Bangkok: the extraordinary profusion of objects and choice: one shop is devoted to hairgrips: not just fifty types of hairgrip but, at a guess, 1000 types; another outlet deals in pearl buttons, several hundred types; beadshops glittering in profusion, laptops stacked up randomly with the same insouciance with which we now treat the humble cellphone. The glitter and plenitude of every shop, the stacks and stacks of CD players gleaming in shrink wrap, a lustrous overall dazzle under the strip lighting.

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