Bangkok

A city unfairly stereotyped by the seedy Patpong red-light district and the tacky Kao San Road, Bangkok is finally finding recognition as a destination worth exploring.

While central Bangkok is pleasant on foot, it's much more fun in a tuk-tuk. These customised taxi-buggies just need a glittering ball before they can be called a disco on wheels. Thai pop blaring, coloured lights flashing, an evening out isn't complete without seeing Bangkok-by-night from an open sided tuk-tuk.

A more serene way to visit the city is via the commuter ferry along the Chao Phraya river. It is a wonderfully refreshing way to see Bangkok's waterside pagodas and temples and provides release from the humid inner city.

The ferry takes you to the Grand Palace, a wacky sweetie-shop of temples and monuments painted in garish primary colours. The highlight of the complex is the stupendous reclining Gold Buddha - a posture you'll probably want to adopt in the heavy afternoon heat.

Aficionados of southeast Asian cuisine consider Bangkok to be the regional food capital. It is certainly the place to sample the extravagant range of flavours and textures that characterise authentic Thai cooking (and reveals the exported red, green and yellow curries to be the frauds that they are).

A staggering assortment of fish and seafood is dragged daily from the South China Sea to the capital. Take a walk around Chinatown or the Pahurat market, and you'll see creatures from another world flipping and gasping in buckets of brine.

The real taste of Bangkok can be found in the canalside restaurants off the Sri Ayutthaya where waiters will bring you the freshest most delicious morsels of octopus, prawns and squid for sampling.

Covering several hectares, the weekend market is rightly celebrated as the place where tourists are most likely to get lost. There is some feeling of order amongst the aisles of retro clothing, kitsch gee-gaws, and hi-tech knick-knackery, and the variety of plants and flowers is wonderfully bewildering, but animal lovers should avoid the section devoted to 'pets'.