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meet back in the lobby for the trip along the khlongs at 2 p.m.
    ' Sightseeing Tours: A Sociological Approach, Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 23, pp. 213-27 (1998) The window in my room looked directly out onto the motorway. It was six-thirty. The traffic was very heavy, but the double glazing let in only a faint rumble. The street lights were off, the sun hadn't yet begun to reflect on the steel and glass; at this time of the day, the city was grey. I ordered a double espresso from room service, which I knocked back with a couple of Efferalgan, a Doliprane and a double dose of Oscillococcinium; then I lay down and tried to close my eyes.
    Shapes moved slowly in a confined space; they made a low buzzing sound - like machines on a building site, or giant insects. In the background, a man armed with a small scimitar carefully checked the sharpness of the blade; he was wearing a turban and baggy white trousers. Suddenly, the air became red and muggy, almost liquid; from the drops of condensation forming before my eyes I became conscious that a pane of glass separated me from the scene. The man was on the ground now, immobilised by some invisible force. The machines from the building site had surrounded him; there were a couple of JCBs and a small bulldozer with caterpillar tracks. The JCBs lifted their hydraulic arms and brought their buckets down together on the man, immediately slicing his body into seven or eight pieces; his head, however, still seemed animated by a demonic life-force, an evil smile continued to crease his bearded face. The-bulldozer in its turn advanced on the man, his head exploded like an egg; a spurt of brain and ground bone was splashed against the glass, a few inches from my face.
     
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Chapter 5
    Essentially, tourism, as a search for meaning, with the lucid sociability it favours, the images it generates, is a graduated encoded and untraumatising apprehension system of the external, of otherness.
    Rachid Amirou
    I woke up at about noon, the air-conditioning was making a low buzzing sound; my headache was a little better. Lying across the king-size bed, I was aware of the mechanics of the tour, the issues at stake. The group, as yet amorphous, would transform itself into a vibrant community; as of this afternoon I would have to start positioning myself, for now I had to choose a pair of shorts for the trip along the khlongs. I opted for a longish pair in blue denim, not too tight, which I complemented with a Radiohead tee-shirt; then I stuffed some odds and ends into a knapsack. In the bathroom mirror, I contemplated myself disgustedly; my anxious bureaucratic face clashed horribly with what I was wearing; I looked exactly like what I was: a forty-something civil servant on holiday, trying to pretend he's young; it was pretty demoralising. I walked over to the window, opened the curtains wide. From the twenty-seventh floor, the view was extraordinary. The imposing mass of the Marriott Hotel rose up on the left like a chalk cliff, striated by horizontal black lines: rows of windows half-hidden behind balconies. The sun, at its zenith, harshly emphasised planes and ridges. Directly ahead, reflections multiplied themselves into infinity on a complex structure of cones and pyramids of bluish glass. On the horizon, the colossal concrete cubes of the Grand Plaza President were stacked on top of one another like the levels of a step pyramid. On the right, above the green, shimmering space of Lumphini Park, you could make out, like an ochre citadel, the angular towers of the Dusit Thani. The sky was a pure blue. Slowly I drank a Singha Gold while meditating on the notion of irreparability.
    Downstairs, the guide was doing a sort of roll-call, so she could hand out breakfast vouchers. That's how I discovered the two bimbos were called Babette and Lea. Babette had curly blond hair - well, not naturally curly, it had probably been waved; she had beautiful breasts, the slut, clearly visible under her