I took an aircon bus to the centre of Bangkok, my skin already clammy from the heat and humidity. Billboards, high-rises and temples slid past as we sped along the white concrete flyover. Bombay was clean, but Bangkok is cleaner, brighter and warmer. Sunlight glints off white buildings, glass and gilded temples. The traffic is congested but quiet compared to Bombay - horns are used judiciously and briefly here. And, despite the traffic, pollution isn't so bad.

The strangest things are the huge tourist ghettos. They have the impression of huge luxurious university campuses, teeming with students, bars and western music. My impression of Khao San Road from "The Beach" was of a wide dusty, sandy track, lined with cramped guesthouses, that led down to a glittering ocean. In reality it is 400m of roadway lined with glitzy guesthouses and restaurants and huge open-fronted bars that pump music out into air already laden with the smells of frying food from the curbside stalls.

Gaudy signs hang from every available vertical surface indicating another hotel, guesthouse, phone booth, e-mail room, laundrette, moneychanger or restaurant. The pavements are packed with stalls selling books, bangles, hair wraps, tapes, jewellery, wood carvings, drums, beads, shoes, clothes, incense, electric gadgets, sunglasses, unidentifiable trinkets and food. In and out of these weave tourists, scooters, taxis and tuktuks - the Thai version of the autorickshaw.

I couldn't stomach Khao San Road so I decided to stay somewhere nearby. It's just as noisy - dance music plays in the bar downstairs until early in the morning, the rooms are tiny (mine is 6'x8'), and ventilation is limited to a small fan - but at least you don't get hassled to buy things every time you step outside your door.

Not all of Bangkok is engaged in this frenetic pursuit of economic goals: the temples, or wats, are, though full of tourists, comparatively quiet places - as if calm and serenity have been soaked up by the stone over the centuries. Red and green tiled roofs with gilded patterns glitter in the sunlight. Most stunning of all is the reclining Buddha in Wat Pho. It is 15m high, 46m long, and covered in gold leaf. It lies in the cool dusk of a purpose-built temple that is also part of a complex housing Thailand's first medical university. Bangkok is a startling city - hot and bothered - yet its people somehow manage to be cool and cheerful. The irony is that the tourists (myself included) have had such an impact on the place that whatever visitors came here for originally is slowly being replaced with what they left back home.