I have discovered the secret of life – or at least a long and happy one. It’s in a country where you are surrounded by cheerful smiling people, where music is played everywhere you go, where the equivalent of ‘national service’ is to spend time as a Buddhist monk, and where the king plays jazz on the saxophone. The country is Thailand, and I’m getting to feel really at home here.

We are in Bangkok for the Food Ingredients Asia exhibition. It’s my first visit to the country, and there is no doubt that we are in a completely different world here. A teenage elephant is hanging around outside our hotel, the three-wheeled open-sided ‘tuk tuk’ taxis clog the streets, and the temples are full of local workers making their offerings of food, flowers, and incense. But then I cross the busy road, negotiate through the many offers of taxi rides and other, more unusual services, cast my eye over the shops on the other side, and I am brought back to reality. Straight in front of me is a Tesco Express store – just what I was trying to escape from. I feel I am destined to be plagued forever by thoughts of product specifications and XML files no matter where I go in the world!

We have some free time before the exhibition, so we take an express long-tail ferry boat from the famous Shangri-La hotel up the fast-flowing Chao Phraya river to the Grand Palace. The ferry boat reminds me of the vaporetti waterbuses of Venice. The same reluctance to refuse anyone passage even when the boat is already overflowing with people, and the same haste to depart from the jetty just before the last few passengers are completely on board. Tomorrow’s headlines flash before my eyes: “Hundreds feared dead in Bangkok ferry tragedy. Authorities deny boat was overloaded.” and below: “Hamilton Grant stand remains empty throughout Food Ingredients Exhibition” But despite all the odds, we arrive safely, and spend a fantastic two hours touring the palace.

We wonder how we are going to follow this. What can we see next in Bangkok that can possibly compare to this amazing site? Then a page in our guidebook catches our attention. It’s headed “Jim Thompson’s House” and claims to be a ‘must see’ in Bangkok. We find that it is a haven of peace and calm in the turmoil that is this city, and a charming place to visit.

Jim Thompson was the CIA agent in Thailand after the second world war. He grew to love the country and it’s people, and stayed on. He brought a number of Thai village houses from the countryside to the city, re-assembled them into a beautiful mansion, and filled them with a unique collection of oriental objets d’art. He worked with the struggling silk-weavers across the canal from his home to build a successful international business for Thai silk, and became what in those days was known as an ‘adventurer’ – a local character and a ‘must have’ on every Bangkok society host’s guest list. In the dining room is a black and white photograph taken of him, looking like a Noel Coward, or someone from a Somerset Maugham novel.

Then one day he went out for a walk, and disappeared off the face of the earth. And it is this disappearance that has made him truly famous, and the reason why his house is now a star on the tourist map of Bangkok. He has even now become a brand name for an international chain of Thai restaurants. A visit to his house is an unexpected pleasure of this city, and the wealth of cloak and dagger speculations about his mysterious disappearance make many interesting stories.

I just hope that if I ever become famous, it won’t be because of my disappearance.

Margaret has been searching for about a year for some unusual cutlery to go with the new décor in the Pickles’ dining room. We priced a set on a recent visit to Selfridges, and it was frightening. Almost equivalent to a single user licence of our Complaints Management software! Now a friend of ours in Reading has a set of brass cutlery in a bamboo design that she bought in Thailand. Much more unusual than anything you can buy in the UK, and about one tenth the price. So this becomes our project on the final day of our visit, filling in the time between the hotel breakfast and our BA flight at midnight.

We have heard about the Chatuchak Weekend market, a short distance from central Bangkok on the Skytrain. If this market isn’t the biggest one in the world, then I’d like to see the one that is. There are six thousand stalls here, and you are advised to buy a map of the market before you come. It is divided into colour-coded sections. Yellow is “Food”; Blue is “Clothing and Food”; Red is “Garden plants and Food”; Green is “Household and Food”, and so it goes on. After a week in Thailand we are quite used to the idea that food has a high priority in the Thai way of life. There are eating opportunities wherever you go, and the burning question is, how do all the Thais stay so thin?

We find the cutlery section and within minutes we have homed in on the set that we want. The price is good and the stallholder tells us she has the full quantity we want ‘in the back’. It all seems straightforward, but the problem is this is the far east, and this is a market, so we mustn’t pay the asking price. Now you will understand that this situation is very awkward for an Englishman. We just want the seller to take the cost price, add a reasonable profit to come up with a fair price and mark this on the label. We don’t want all the embarrassment of having to haggle. But it’s something we have to do.

We look down our noses and frown at this beautiful cutlery that we know is perfect and can’t get anywhere else in the world. We shake our heads at the incredibly reasonable price the stallholder is asking and move on to the next few stalls (and look at the food). We saunter nonchalantly back and poke critically at the cutlery again. This time we make a derisory offer and the stallholder shakes her head. We walk away but she taps me on the shoulder and calls us back, and the negotiations get serious. I pull out my wallet and show her that I really don’t have any more cash than the amount I am offering. But she has heard this one before and tells me she takes Visa. I am getting into the spirit of this now and I joke about the BMW across the road presumably belonging to her. She tells me no, hers is the Mercedes. This is going well, I am smiling, she is laughing, everyone around the stall is enjoying it, and we finally agree on a price.

She goes out the back to get the full set for us. Then comes back and tells us she is sorry, but she doesn’t have the full set after all. It seems to be all in a day’s work for her to spend half an hour negotiating the price of cutlery she didn’t even have. She still has her cheerful Thai smile, and even seems to have somehow profited from the exercise – although I am sure she didn’t need the practice. But we are really depressed. Not only depressed but exhausted by our strategic planning, manoeuvrings and amateurish attempts to take part in this complex theatre.

We buy some food and head for home.