I was in the lobby by five to seven for my trip, and at 7:45, remembering what happened yesterday, I asked the reception desk to phone the travel company and find out what had happened to the guide. Turned out he’s already been and gone, so obviously he hadn’t looked for me very hard. I decided to abandon governments of Thailand past and go look at the current administration while I waited for the travel agent to open. A very moody taxi driver takes me there after I insist that he switches on his meter instead of charging a flat 100 baht. Saved 40 baht in the process.

The current Thai parliament is located in the middle of Duisit park, an administrative area of the city north of Banglampu, where my hotel was. It seems that it’s not a popular attraction, because the police were out in force and none spoke english, though they were fairly friendly about insisting that I would NOT be entering the parliament building today. I would have argued the principles of parlimentary democracy if I’d thought it would help, but clearly it wouldn’t, so I made do with a circuit of the building and some photos.

Plan B (or was I on C by this point?) was a visit to Jim Thomson’s house. An extremely jolly taxi driver took me there, while playing “Money can’t buy me love” at full volume and talking non stop about the Beatles, none of which I understood, so I nodded and watched the road. Seemed that one of us should.

Jim Thomson was an American soldier who settled in Thailand after the Vietnam war. By all accounts a pretty decent chap. He built himself a big house (which he later opened to the public in aid of a local charity), brought a large number of Thai artworks back to Thailand from the states, and almost single handedly started the Thai silk industry (now world famous), before disappearing mysteriously while walking in the hills. If he is still alive, which some of the guides seem to believe, he’s almost a hundred years old now.

The house was an impressive structure built in a very traditional style. There was nothing to suggest an American might have lived there, though it was expensively decorated. English speaking guided tours of the house were made every ten minutes, with other european languages available at less frequent intervals.

I had lunch at Jim Thomson’s house, where a restaurant and bar in the same style had been built for the tourists, and then decided to head for Chinatown to see the new year celebrations. One strangely efficient tuktuk later I was strolling along the main street, which had been lined with stalls and decorated with hanging lanterns and banners. There was an official street radio broadcast for the occasion which was playing from every lamppost, but it was drowned out in many places where stalls competed for your attention with ever bigger sound systems. They played anything and everything from traditional Chinese to Britney Spears, which made for quite a mix as I walked along.

After another tuktuk ride I was back at the hotel where I spent the rest of the day lazing by the pool, after shouting at the travel agent and rebooking the Ayuthaya tour for tomorrow.