We had an lovely trip by coach from Bangkok to Chaing Rai seeing wonderful sites and tasty yummy local food.

There is a lustrous quality to Thailand, one that gleams in both the eye and in the mind’s eye. A faintly golden hue seems to shine from the landscapes, whether the central plains, the bronzed beaches of the coast, the slow, sliding rivers or the morning and evening skies. There is, too, an inner sense of light, a tranquillity of spirit, the reflective glow of the contemplative traditions of Buddhism that pervade so many aspects of cultural life in the country.

We chose to visit in February when the humidity and the temperatures are lower (the cool season runs from November to early March), although you can still happily expect to see the thermometer reach the high 20s under the polished, cloudless blue of the sky.

Our arrival point, as for most visitors, was Bangkok, a cacophonous, teeming monster of a city where modernity – the howl of traffic in seemingly perpetual motion and the glass of shopping centres sparkling in the sun – mingles effortlessly with the memories of far older times.

Our two days in Bangkok, with its swirl of activity and cheek-by-jowl contradictions, joyously banished any Western wish for ordered balance and cohesion. It takes just a step or two down a concrete boulevard, alive with the hustle and bustle of consumerism and commerce, to find yourself marvelling at the sudden calm of the towering architecture of religious devotion, enclaves of serenity in a sea of human energy. The city is an intoxicating mix of the urban and the countryside too. For all its seething, fluid might, Bangkok is a patchwork of pockets, too, of Siamese village life, chicken spitting and hissing on street barbecues, baskets of vegetables balanced on trestle tables, the shouts and cries of the vendors mixing with the whine of the vehicle-choked roads. You can take the Skytrain to the glamorous shopping malls to sate your desire for any number of luxury brands or you can swerve from the main concourses of 21st century Bangkok life to sample the laden pleasures of the open-air markets. You can luxuriate in the modish interior design of a chics restaurant or you can stand for a moment beside a simple street shrine in contemplation of its gentle otherworldiness. During our stay in Bangkok we paid our respects to the monumentalism of Thai royalty and spirituality, the Grand Palace. Built in the late eighteenthcentury, it is an astonishing complex of ceremonial grandeur – towers, columns and courts – and of the soothing mysteries of the spirit. Within the vastness of the Phra Kaew temple sits the small, elegantly carved and revered Emerald Buddha, seemingly eternal in the enduring stillness of its precious stone.

We bid farewell to Bangkok and embarked on a long-tail boat ride to the floating market of Damnoen Saduak, the most famous of Thailand’s many river-born food markets. The canal was a congestion of canoes, each weighed to the gunnels with every conceivable Thai vegetable and fruit, variously dug and plucked from the surrounding and abundantly fertile fields and orchards, and each a barter waiting to happen. From there – we travelled all the way by air-conditioned coach – we made our way upcountry to Nakorn Pathom and the glories of the spectacular Phra Pathom Chedi, a temple that is surmounted by the largest pagoda in Thailand, its 127-metre cone angled into the blue sky above, its marble steps conducting you into an interior where a colossal Buddha stands shining within a sumptuous arch.

The next day’s trip was, for British visitors, particularly affecting. Amidst the peaceful, quiet green of the fields, where you could not imagine horror, flows the River Kwai and across it spans the bridge that carries its name and, with it, so very many terrible memories. Its infamy set in celluloid permanence by David Lean’s film, the bridge marked the point at which the death railway, built by the Japanese, employing the enforced labour of Allied prisoners of war and enslaved Thais, in World War II as a means of moving supplies and ordinance between Thailand and Burma without running the risks of sea transport, meets the Kwai river. It is estimated that in the deliberately accelerated construction process – the track was laid through jungle and steep valleys and solid rock in just one year when three years would have been speedy – over a quarter of a million men perished, victims of disease, malnutrition and brutality. Today, trains still run on its narrow-gauge, curved steel girders, ferrying passengers to Nam Tok and Bangkok.

Nearby lies the Don Rak war cemetery, its manicured lawns and lovingly attended gardens lined with the graves of some 7,000 prisoners of war, British, Australian and Dutch. The headstones are silently eloquent: names, ages (few were older than 25), and regiments are recorded in mute testimony to unimaginable suffering. Where the identity of the man buried there is unknown, the inscription simply records the last resting place of “a soldier who died for his country”. At the Jeath War Museum, an Allied camp has been reconstructed, its claustrophobically intense huts cramped with bamboo bunks. The lost are honoured by the presiding presence of the Buddhist monks who curate the museum.

Next came a drive further north to the market town of Uthai Thani and, from there, a two-night stop-over in Ayutthaya. The basin plains of the region are surrounded by the coursing Chao Phraya and Sakaekrang rivers, the mountain ranges to the west and the lush, verdant jungles that border Kanchanaburi province. Ayutthaya was once the capital of Siam (old Thailand) and in 1700 was one of the most populous cities in the world, with a million inhabitants. After exploring the ancient temples, the foot of their walls populated by crossed-legged stone Buddhas, some in a haunting state of ruin, others renovated and decorated with white stone crystal and glazed tiles and door panels of inlaid motherof-pearl, we took a boat ride along the Chao Phraya river to the summer palace of Bang Pa In.

Following a scenic train journey to Lopburi, we arrived at Sukhothai, the Saimese capital in the thirteenth century, which translates as ‘the dawn of happiness’. A walk through the ancient city explains why. A world heritage site, the ruins of the temples, dappled with lily ponds, are gazed upon by the eyeless stares of sentinel sitting Buddha statuary, their heads topped by curlicues of speckled stone in seeming imitation of pagodas, their bodies kissed orange by the rising morning sun. Feeling peckish after our tour, we snacked on sticky rice accompanied by deep fried rice and spicy pork salad wrapped in banana leaves.

Another stunning drive through breathtaking mountain scenery saw us at Chiang Rai, in the far north of the country, the golden triangle at which the borders of Thailand, Laos and Burma (Myanmar) converge at the confluence of the Mekong and Kok rivers, with its vine-snaked limestone cliffs, waterfalls and hot springs, for a refreshing two nights at the Phowadol resort and spa. In between fresh, flavoursome meals, we were guided through an array of local temples adorned with glittering silver mirrors, with gables writhing with carved dragons, with white stucco friezes and guarded by ornamental elephants. On our second day at Chiang Rai, we ascended into the soaring mountains to a Burmese border market. Here you can buy finely cut sapphires and rubies (so inexpensive that you are tempted to doubt their authenticity until you gaze into the diffracted blue and red light of the gems). At the Long Neck tribal village, the people, exiles from their native Burma, wore bracing copper rings that extended the growth of their necks.

On our penultimate day we journeyed a few kilometres southwards to Chiang Mai, moated and walled and hedged by mountains and legends, and yet happy to marry the ancient with the modern, a city that felt like the roof of Thailand. Chiang Mai is rich and populous with temples; while there are 121 alone within the municipal limits, we stepped aboard the cable car that bore us up to the hilltop Phrathat Doi Suthep temple where we were as astounded at the site, chosen by the founding monks as a place of veneration by virtue of setting a relic of the Lord Buddha on the back of an elephant and allowing the animal to roam until it trumpeted, as by the vistas rolling out across the valleys. Tempting though the Chiang Mai handcraft markets were, and the fabulous aromas wafting from the restaurants, we had a final date: with a nearby elephant camp at Mae Ping and the chance to ride down by the banks of the river aloft one of nature’s most magnificent creatures.

Our trip ended with six days of beach-bound relaxation at Phuket, time in which to absorb the exhilaration of the previous ten. My abiding memory of the trip, once I had returned home and gathered my thoughts, was not just the meeting of worlds, not just the dizzying landscapes, not just the sensuous of the food, not just the easy, uncomplicated mixing of the religious and the secular. It was a smile. The smile with which every Thai greeted us: to their culture, their country, their lives.

A universal, golden smile.