The most popular backpacker area is undoubtedly the Khao San Rd in Banglampoo, but one area that also gets a mention in certain guide-books, including an extensive review in the good old Lonely Planet is an area called Soi Ngam Duphli off the busy Rama 4 Rd. Quite frankly you would be insane to want to spend any amount of time here. I’m ashamed to say that in the days when I was as green as grass, I actually lived here for a couple of years, because I thought it might be nice to be among some fellow Europeans and to have the opportunity to eat at restaurants with something other than rice on the menu. But I would say it was one of the happiest days of my life when I said goodbye to this place for the last time. I swore that I would never go back and I’ve been true to my word ( although I’ve driven through it a couple of times in the past 6 years).

It is an area rife with low-class, disease-ridden whores, the most desperate down on their luck foreigners, and the most unscrupulous foreigners and scam artists. It’s also home to some of the cheapest, most run-down guest houses in the city. And in the middle of all this Sodom and Gomorrah is the Malaysia Hotel, a hotel which has the nerve to call itself a 3-star hotel. You take a walk into the coffee shop at midnight, look around at the dregs of humanity perched on its battered, moth-eaten bar-stools and decide how many stars you’d give it.