Yaowarat, Chinatown

Yaowarat has been Bangkok's Chinatown since 1782, when Rama I asked the Chinese merchants settled on the site of the future Grand Palace to move south-east. They settled here and never left.

The main street runs a kilometre and a half and looks like nowhere else in the city: vertical neon signs four storeys high, gold shops at street level — gold is sold here by weight, at a price posted in the window — and, once night falls, kitchens setting up on the pavement.

You do not come for a particular restaurant but to walk and stop: duck noodles, fried oysters, bird's nest soup, cut fruit. The best places are the ones with a queue of locals outside, and they change from year to year.