Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons: a night of love, a stay in a luxury hotel, or simply to disappear for a while. Lawrence Osborne comes for the cheap dentistry, and then stays when he finds he can live off just a few dollars a day. Osborne's Bangkok is a vibrant, instinctual city full of contradictions. He wanders the streets, dining on insects, trawling through forgotten neighbourhoods, decayed temples and sleazy bars. Far more than a travel book, Bangkok Days explores both the little-known, extraordinary city and the lives of a handful of doomed ex-patriates living there, 'as vivid a set of liars and losers as was ever invented by Graham Greene' (New York Times).

Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons - a sex change operation, a night with two prostitutes dressed as nuns, and a stay in a luxury hotel. Lawrence Osborne comes for the cheap dentistry. Broke - but no longer in pain - he finds that he can live in Bangkok on a few dollars a day. Osborne's is a visceral experience of Bangkok, whether he's wandering the canals that fill the old city; dining at the No Hands Restaurant, where his waitress feeds him like a baby; or launching his own notably unsuccessful career as a gigolo. A guide without inhibitions, Osborne takes us to a feverish place where a strange blend of ancient Buddhist practice and new sexual mores has created a version of modernity only superficially indebted to the West. "Bangkok Days" is a love letter to the city that revived Osborne's faith in adventure and the world. 'Thailand inspires such enthralled romanticism that it also invites great cynicism and it is a feat to acknowledge all its complexities and graces, as Osborne does, without ever quite surrendering to them' - Pico Iyer, "Los Angeles Times".