Here are the available villas for rental in Bangkok.

Platform three for the Golden Triangle

From the Daily Mail

There we were, champagne flutes in hand, the breeze ruffling our hair, in the open observation car at the back of the luxury night train which runs from Malaya via Bangkok to Chiang Mai, Thailand's laidback second city.
It is way up-country, just below the lawless, drug-producing Golden triangle where Burma, Laos and Thailand come together.
It was dusk, warm and just a touch humid. As we watched the endless jungle fall away, we looked out at swirling rivers, paddy fields, lotus ponds and buffaloes.
We passed isolated wooden houses perched on stilts, and tiny but exquisitely-maintained railway stations.
The injunction from Eastern and Oriental Express was to dress for dinner 'with the style and glamour of a bygone age'.
That allowed me to preen myself in a sleeveless cream silk Nehru jacket, made for me in India some years ago.
But I was beaten in the glamour stakes by elegant ladies of varying races in national dress, and by patrician planter-types in those old-fashioned dinner jackets I remember from my youth.
After a while, we moved to the bar for a pre-prandial cocktail, past a glamorous Chinese woman who had taken over the library car (yes, this was the sort of train which had a library) and would, for a fee, tell your fortune.
In the bar, an elegant gent played Noel Coward numbers on a grand piano. By then I felt I was playing a bit part in my favourite Marlene Dietrich film Shanghai Express, made back in 1932.
Alas, there were no mysterious occurrences during dinner, so, after more champers, I prepared to snuggle down for the night in my private compartment.
It came complete with walk-in dressing room, shower and 24-hour service from my steward, Cham, who came running at the touch of a button, bearing a late-night whisky-soda or two. ... more

I beat Leonardo to The Beach

From the Mail on Sunday

Recently it was Captain Corelli and the Greek islands. In the late Eighties Peter Mayle did it with Year In Provence, while Jack Kerouac's On The Road inspired a generation to seek nirvana along the highways of the USA.
Books have always inspired travel. The Beach, Alex Garland's debut novel, described as Lonely Planet meets Lord Of The Flies, has done the business for Thailand. Cult reading among the children of the Year In Provence generation, it has lured tens of thousands via the cheapest flights to Bangkok.
The Beach explores hip young haunts: Bangkok's seedy Khao San Road and the cheap beach huts of the south provinces. It captures perfectly both the edginess of Thailand and the spirit of young independent travel - that quest for the secret beach unknown to 'adults' and the real world.
Of course it all goes wrong for the backpacking hero in a tiresome murderous manner, but by then every twentysomething reader is convinced that if they could only get to Thailand, they wouldn't make those mistakes.
The beach itself is Maya Bay, on an uninhabited island called Phi Phi Lei, accessible only by boat. My other half, Spencer, and I, persuaded the last speedboat in Phuket to make a detour. It's a particularly long sea crossing if you find speedboats terrifyingly small and the ocean really rather large: the Thai speedboat crew appeared to be aged 12 and found siphoning petrol easier with a lighted cigarette dangling from their lips. What may have been two weeks or 90 minutes later, the speedboat ducked between two huge James Bond rocks at the entrance to Maya Bay.
It was breathtaking. Stylised by setbuilders, Maya was a perfect cartoon of a beach: a white crescent of sand framed by palm trees. The natural gateway of the rock formations meant outsiders couldn't see in. As in the book, you wouldn't find it unless you had inside information.
The Thailand adventure begins in Bangkok, a city where you can rent cut-price penthouses like the Fortune Hotel, with a view to make you feel like a Jedi Knight, or £1.50 downtown bolt-holes with clanking ceiling fans and suspicious stains.
We headed for the Khao San Road, vividly described in The Beach as the mainland HQ of all backpackers. At midnight it was raucous with the youth slang of ten languages and the rooms were as insalubrious as we'd hoped. Stalls sold fried Pad Thai noodles off hissing hotplates for 20p and bootleg Ralph Lauren shirts for a couple of quid, while a seamstress sewed fake Levi labels into jeans - the consumer gods of Nike, Reebok and Rolex are defiled on a nightly basis here.
It's not hard to see why Thailand appeals to young travellers. The architecture is alien, all pointy onion shapes and sweeping curves; the colours are alien, taxis coming in neon pink sliced with sage green and yellow; the language is an alien font, allowing you no Latin-derived clues.
We sat down in a corner cafe to wild boar in whisky (like beef in black bean sauce), oyster omelettes (gravel in batter) and fluorescent pink hardboiled eggs (either from the rare Fluorescent Pink Hen, or created with the cunning use of cochineal). ... more

How much is that moggy in the temple?

From the Mail on Sunday

Two years ago I road-tripped across America with my Burmese cat Claudius. He was old and we stayed there until he died to avoid quarantine.
Eventually I decided to have another pet but, being prone to itchy feet, realised I'd need another travelling cat like Claudius. Burmese or Siamese could be the only possible breeds for me.
I rather fancied the classic Siamese, the chunky, squinty-eyed version which could still be found in Thailand. They can be shipped out by anyone willing to make the effort.
I flew to Bangkok in October and met up with a resident Siamese cat expert, Martin Clutterbuck, who wrote The Legend Of Siamese Cats.
His book tells how cats were traditionally kept in temples (or wats) to guard ancient texts from mice. Nowadays unwanted kittens are left at temples.
I took the express boat up the Chao Phraya, Bangkok's central river, to one at Thewet.
At Wat Naranat a woman was feeding a group of moggies. But she had no Siamese to show me.
So I headed further up the Chao Phraya to Wat Phai Lorm but this turned out to be a bird sanctuary.
However, it was not far from Ayutthaya. This ancient former capital was sacked by the Burmese in 1767 but is today littered with impressive temple ruins. Still no cats, though.
So I took the overnight train to Chiang Mai, Thailand's second city. ... more

Thai-dived days and henna tattoos

From the Mail on Sunday

The trigger fish trails well behind Godzilla or Jaws in the world rankings of Scariest Monsters of the Deep. But it made Joe's holiday when a pair attacked him during our scuba diving course. Invade its territory and the trigger fish will charge at you like an angry football, threatening a vicious head-butt or even a bite out of your scalp. We surfaced unscathed but with a great tale for Joe's classmates back home.
We had travelled to Koh Tao, once a Thai penal colony, now a palm-clad paradise that can plausibly claim the world's best start to diving. Joe, 12, sometimes gets bored on holiday now he's outgrown the buckets and spades, so we planned an activity centrepiece to our Thailand trip.
A few clicks on the Internet found the Crystal Dive Resort, which offers the British Sub Aqua Club's training courses as well as accreditation from PADI (America-based Professional Association of Diving Instructors). Children under ten cannot do a full scuba course, but there are snorkelling classes and a 'Bubblers' course that lets them don an air tank and go under water.
We were lucky to be instructed by Matt, a dry-witted Liverpudlian with an astonishing ability to make us do absurd things like taking our masks off underwater, or removing our mouthpieces and trying to suck air from a stream of bubbles - all mandatory skills to complete the course.
Matt has a unique tutorial system he calls the Carlsberg Method. Commit an offence like calling your fins 'flippers', mishandling a weight belt or threatening to inflate your buoyancy control device underwater and he'll chalk up a 'Carlsberg Fine' - payable later in one of the island's palm-thatched bars. With prices at around 60p a bottle, however, it's reasonably painless.
You spend the first few sessions of the four-day Ocean Diver course learning to assemble your equipment, how to avoid the bends, divers' hand signals and how not to hold your breath on the ascent - which would cause your lungs to explode. Then there are a couple of shallow water immersions for the 'skills' before boarding the school's rusting dive boat - which I'm sure I'd last seen with Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen - for a proper dive.
It's everything you hoped for. Brilliant, blue-ringed angel fish drift up and peer into your mask. Small cleaner wrasse will helpfully nibble and tidy any small cuts you expose. Rays hover majestically under coral overhangs.
Sharks in these waters are allegedly friendly, despite the gory pictures in Joe's copy of The Beach, and the diver's biggest thrill is an encounter with one of the resident whale sharks - monstrous but docile plankton-eaters. The older ones amongst us did feel occasional moments of fear - as when descending a rope into apparently bottomless depths. But Joe had no qualms. When the trigger fish charged and Matt rapidly shoved him out of harm's way, he found it exhilarating. ... more

You'll bring loads back

One of the safest locations in the world! Remarkably clean with fantastic food - especially in Chinatown.
You will never eat Chinese food in the UK once you been to the Far East. Thai food is also fantastic.
Bangkok is cheap and the locals really are friendly.
Go with absolutely the minimum of luggage. It's hot and you have to haul your huge suitcase around with you!! But more importantly you will want to bring loads back. ENJOY!!!