My first visit to Bangkok was 1974 - I remember meeting David Frost on the flight from Singapore - and my abiding memory was of the overwhelming presence of young US servicemen on R&R from Vietnam.
I was back again for a few days in 1978 - getting a visa to work in Brazil - but except for touching down at Don Muang Airport a few times on flights to Oz, I didn't return to the city until the 90's when I was here regularly on business and you couldn't move for the construction works for the MRT and the Skytrain and the new superhighways.
Linda's memories are of hockey trips from Hong Kong and Singapore and some of those stories will probably remain untold - 'what goes on tour.....'!
Landing at Suvarnabhumi airport this week it seems that the city has reached adulthood and taken its rightful place as another suburb of that sprawling Pacific city whch already includes Tokyo, Shanghai, Hongkong, Singapore, Sydney,Santiago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
Unfortunately, the city seems to have lost many of those features which seemed uniquely Thai and ended up like most of the others in the region - a fellow traveller described it as Blade Runner without the rain! Until you get to Sukhumvit or Patpong, of course, where you encounter hordes of attractive young women selling their services to the legions of fairly unattractive Farang.
Maybe my memories are rose-tinted, or perhaps I am becoming more cynical (is that possible?) butI am glad to be leaving the city behind as we head south for the coast and Pak Nam Pran.
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