Today I was prepared for the poor organisation skills of the tour operators. I stuck a note to my door saying “I’m in the lobby, wearing a black T-shirt and dark green trousers”. I notified reception that I was sitting in the lobby – yes in that seat over there – and if someone asks for me don’t call my room. I waited in the lobby again, and this time the tour guide arrived and told me to follow him. He led me to a bus on Khao San Road, which I boarded for the drive to Ayuthaya. As I expected, there were a number of unpublished stops along the way, but not for cash-grabbing as on my last tour.

The first such stop was at Bang Pa-in palace, a beautifully maintained place that reminded me of Hampton Court Palace in London. Then there was a short boat trip and a couple of Wat-stops, before we got to Ayuthaya. I wandered around the ruins of this ancient capital, which were in fact quite remarkably well constructed for their age. There were Buddha figures everywhere, many without heads where the Burmese had decapitated them. It was a stroke of genius to relocate the capital to Bangkok when this place was destroyed – allowing Ayuthaya to remain a monument to the ancient culture and history of Thailand.

I got back to the hotel at 1800, and was immediately accosted by Noy, the masseuse. She was there every day, relentlessly pouncing on tourists as they walked past the hotel. “Diamond Geezea”, she would call me, in a strange sort of accent which seemed to be part American, part British but mostly, for some reason, Jamacian.

The room in the hotel where the massuses worked had a raised, padded area down one side and chairs along the other wall. I’d signed up for the one hour full body massage (it was very reasonably priced), so I was instructed to lie down. During the course of the next hour Noy seemed to manage to wrench and stretch every muscle and bone in my body, all the while being observed by a bemused Canadian couple I’d seen in the pool the day before, who were having a much more civilised foot massage.

Noy was far too busy to chat so I struck up conversation with the Canadians. In between extolling the sporting triumphs of their son, they daringly suggested that I should go out with Noy for the evening. It was a silly suggestion really, and they knew it – she barely spoke English, though it was significantly better than my Thai, but I had no other plans and it sounded like a plan to me.

I put the suggestion to Noy, who seemed pleased with the idea, and said “OK, my place over there”. I suggested we should go to her favourite bar, but she just interrupted, “yar yar but my place first for fresh ok?”. I was unconvinced, but curious, and followed into the building on the opposite side of the road. On the way up the stairs I learned that it was owned by the hotel, and this was where all the staff lived. On the fourth floor we stopped outside an absurdly small door, and Noy retrieved a key from her pocket.

It was a one-room affair, with a bed the main feature, uniformly untidy, but crucially, not unoccupied – there was another girl of about the same age as Noy and myself lying on the bed. Noy and new girl exchanged plesantries, and I assumed her to be Noy’s neighbour. After some questioning she turned out to be her roommate, which seemed insane given the size of the room and evidence of only one relatively small bed. “We share”, she said pre-emptively, as if the question has been raised many times before and I should not even bother to ask.

So, to recap, I was now in a room no more than 10 feet square occupied by two Thai masseuses who sleep together in a bed the three of us were now sitting on. The conversation was less than sparkling, beginning with apologies for the mess and the fact that I was quite tall (something they seemed to regard as a disability), but soon enough moved on to massage, of which both girls were practicioners. Demonstrations followed. I was still fairly bemused by it all, God only knows why, but when Noy started pulling playfully at my clothing the alarm bells belatedly went off. “Let’s go to a bar” I said, trying to sound firm despite being pinned to the mattress by their joint demonstration of some technique that I was sure they had made up on the spot.

So we went to a bar. They talked, I tried to talk, they ignored me. Never has the phrase “let’s go to a bar” derailed an evening quite so effectively.