Rude Travel by Vir Sanghvi: City of angels

I think I fell in love with Bangkok the very first time I visited the city as a schoolboy with my mother. The big hotel in town was the Siam Intercontinental which had acres and acres of gardens, a running brook and a collection of exotic birds which roamed the grounds. In those days, at least from what I recall, Bangkok was a relatively sleepy city (we had been to the more bustling Hong Kong and Singapore on the same trip) without the energy of, say, Bombay (as it was then ) but with a great deal of character. My mother went on and on about how graceful and elegant the Thai people were but I may have been too young to notice.