Suzanne Harrington: Bangkok is banging hot spot, so I need my nana naps
Suzanne Harrington: "Forget Istanbul fakes — the best fakes in the world are in Bangkok."
If you add a 57-year-old woman to 37-degree heat, 74% humidity, 12m people, 18,000 steps a day, the world’s fourth-worst levels of air pollution, and two bouncy Gen Z travel companions, what do you get? Knackered. Knackered is what you get. Wiped out.
Needing nana naps by three in the afternoon, laughed at by your youthful companions who suggest hiring you a mobility scooter. Horizontal by 9pm, while the Gen Zs, fully reloaded after a shower and an ice-cold Chang, head out into the suffocating night for more adventure, leaving you watching Muay Thai on the telly with the aircon turned up to 11.
But even with air pollution bathing the city’s sky-scraper skyline in a thick yellow smog you could squeeze into bricks with your bare hands, Bangkok is banging.
You can be a millionaire here, accessing fabulous five-star luxe from the city’s 3,487 hotels listed on Tripadvisor for — quite literally — less than the price of a Travelodge in Rathmines. It’s fun pretending to be rich without the headfuckery of actually being rich. Rooftop pools and 30th-floor suites cost less than B&Bs back home.
Which is just as well — you’ll need your comfort after a hard day’s Bangkoking. Also, travelling with young people involves compromise. They like malls, you like temples. You can see why. Malls are air-conditioned, temples aren’t.
Yes, they acknowledge, the Reclining Buddha is impressive, the sleepy golden statue the size of a plane, chanting
orange-robed monks in attendance, and, yes, Wat Arun is very nice with all its mosaics and glittery bits but they want to go to the giant MBK mall — eight floors, 2,000 outlets, freezing aircon — to get fake trainers.
A suggestion of carrying on to the Temple of the Emerald Buddha is met with a hard no, despite Mr Emerald being 500m away on Google Maps; trainers, here we come.
Forget Istanbul fakes — the best fakes in the world are in Bangkok. Adidas Yeezys for the price of a pair of Irish flip-flops, all profits going not to the anti-Semitic Mr West but to some random fake trainer maker; from Prada to Ray-Ban to Nike, everything is perfectly copied and going for a song.
Next day, we head to Chatuchak Market, which the Gen Zs tell me is the biggest weekend market in the world, with 15,000 stalls spread in glorious higgle-piggle over 35 acres, shaded only by corrugated roofing and bits of tarpaulin.
It’s the hottest time of year. Our phones overheat and stop working; we turn them off, and press on. Shop till you drop becomes a literal possibility but I refuse to be age-shamed.
I will not insist on calling it a day, collapsing into a Grab taxi, being ferried through the insane gridlock back to the icy peace of my posh hotel.
Instead, I down another bucket of full-fat Coke and carry on. You can hydrate all day long but you’ll sweat it out before it ever reaches your kidneys. Like being at a rave. My body remembers, even as my brain melts.
When the earthquake hits the next day, a towerblock collapses close to Chatuchak.
By then the Gen Zs are north in Chiangmai, arriving bleary-eyed off a sleeper train, just 450km from the quake’s epicentre.
They take it all in their stride.
“Our taxi wobbled,” texts my child, adding with considerable sangfroid, “my first earthquake!”.
1,330km south in Bangkok, waterfalls 30 floors from rooftop infinity pools – the ones in which we had dreamily been floating all week.
