Steamie

The sound of the three tenors came drifting through the suite into the bathroom. There, in the surroundings of the marble interior, I soaked in a luxurious bath. Every little plastic bottle of smelly, colourful stuff had been emptied into the water to produce foaming mountains of bubbles.

There I lay, relaxing, humming along to some Puccini opera, sharing the tub with a week's worth of dirty boxer shorts, socks and t-shirts.

It's hard to find a cheap laundry this end of town.

In southern Thailand, I could get my clothes cleaned for about 80p a kilo – and I don't have many kilos of clothes. But in my hotel, you pay per item! £1 a sock! £3 for a pair of jeans! I mean, come off it. So I reacquainted myself with the childhood joy of having a bath with one's socks on.


It was, admittedly, a strange scene. A fly on the wall would have puzzled over the sight of a naked man in the bath giving each newly washed article the scientific sniff-test (much used by the male gender for quality control purposes; not so much the females).

Bloomin' hard work as well: scrubbing, rinsing, ringing. It's the first bath I've got out of so hot and sweaty that I had to have a shower.

So the clothes are now hung up on my 23rd floor balcony. I look forward to breakfast tomorrow with the locals wearing my clothes if the wind gets up tonight.

To celebrate my new clean wardrobe and self, I put on the only two things that had escaped my impromptu steamie and set off to a local food stall. I'd walked past it today and was determined to have some of the grub there. Problem was, my Thai isn't quite fluent yet and they'd not a word of Scottish. I hovered around the cooking area until they could ignore me no longer and bravely pointed out a few bits and pieces that were stewing, frying or roasting.

“Chicken?”, I said, pointing at some ambiguous looking meat.
“aaaahhh”, she replied, nodding.
Unsure if I'd been understood I tested with, “Pork?”.
“aaaahhh”, she replied, nodding. I'd pointed at the same thing. Mmm.
“Irn Bru?”, I said. “aaaahhh”, she replied, nodding.

But I gamely sat down and watched with interest and genuine surprise as each dish was placed in front of me. It was a cracking feast, and enough chili to power a nuclear sub. Best meal of the week.

And all for less than the price of one laundered sock.