The first time I went to Thailand, I was 18 and had just read The Beach by Alex Garland. Back then, everyone had just read The Beach by Alex Garland, about a backpacker who searches for an idyllic island paradise off the coast of Thailand, and so I was by no means the only teenage Brit making the journey to Bangkok in 1998.
I had never been further than Spain, and my mum packed me off with some traveller’s cheques, a packet of Dioralyte, and a warning not to smuggle drugs. This was the kind of small-minded thing you said back then. Anyway, arriving in Bangkok, I couldn’t believe it. The whole world opened up to me in the time it took to get a tuk-tuk to Patpong and open the first of many Singha beers.
I saw things I didn’t know were possible, and I don’t just mean in the infamous bars of the strip. I gawped at Wat Arun Temple, and got an overnight train to Chiang Mai. I…
