Meuang Boran or "Ancient City" sits on the outskirts of Bangkok. Over 100 replicas of monuments, temples and other buildings are spread over a 320 acre site. Some are 1:3 scale, some are lifesize, and some don't even exist outside the park - having been built from historical and archaeological evidence. I've been to other places that seek to do this kind of thing and they are usually pretty good but the buildings are just shells. Here you can actually go inside almost every building, even some of the monuments and stupas.

The outsides of some of the buildings - particularly the palaces and temples - are stunning: white walls, rich red tiled roofs and intricate gold ornamentation. But the insides are something else. Some have walls and ceiling covered in huge patterned mosaics made of tiny tiles, some are covered in mirrors, some in bright, complex murals. The attention to detail is astonishing. Wandering alone, in barefoot silence on the polished wooden floors gave me more of a sense of what it must have been like to live and work there than any of the redbrick ruins of Ayuthaya or crowded Wat of Bangkok.

The whole site was built by a Bangkok millionaire in an attempt to preserve some of Thailand's cultural heritage. I think he has succeeded. In some places this idea would have sprouted doughnut stalls and fairground rides - but miraculously this has been avoided. At the top of a small artificial mountain sits a model of a temple that lies on the Thai-Cambodian border. From this point, in a cool breeze, you can see the golden palaces and temples rising above the treetops.

I returned to Bangkok from Meuang Boran by bus: a two hour journey for 25 pence. It's only 33km, but as you get closer to the centre of Bangkok, the traffic becomes a virtual gridlock. The conductors of the buses are all very efficient; there is no way the driver could dole out tickets - they have to keep their eye on the road at all times for gaps or openings in the jam. The conductors carry a long metal cylinder that opens lengthways. This contains tickets and change. When you buy a ticket the conductor opens and closes the lid three times with a rapid clack-clack-clack to tear off a ticket from the roll, tear off its corner and make a small tear in one side. I've no idea why they do this - but they do it with mechanical precision every time.

To avoid some of the gridlock I decided to try the new skytrain. Unlike many capital cities, Bangkok does not have a subway network - a fact that undoubtedly contributes substantially to the above ground congestion. One is under construction, but the first section won't be completed until 2003. Meanwhile an interim solution is the skytrain, which weaves its way between skyscrapers on huge white concrete viaducts above the fuming congestion below. Open at the end of last year it adds a top stratum to the city's multilayer transport system. I had always thought that windows on the underground were under-utilised - most of the time you look out onto black tunnel darkness. The view from the skytrain window is one of towering chrome and glass skyscrapers that stretch off into the distance, glinting in the hot noonday sun. As you glide along, cool and silent, the shuffling congestion below you seems a world away.

Today is my last day in Bangkok for a while. Tonight I head north to Chiang Mai, and hopefully cooler climes!