Your guide meets you at Suvarnabhumi and takes you into the city, an hour on a good day. The rest of the day is free. If you have the energy, the river ferry at sunset costs almost nothing and shows you the shape of the place.

An early start for the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew, home of the Emerald Buddha, before the heat and the crowds arrive. Wat Pho follows, with its forty-six-metre reclining Buddha and the massage school that has taught there since the eighteenth century. In the afternoon a longtail boat runs you through the Thonburi canals to Wat Arun. Dinner is yours.

Morning at Chatuchak if it is a weekend, or Or Tor Kor and the flower market at Pak Khlong Talat if not. The afternoon is deliberately unscheduled: Jim Thompson's teak house, the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, or the shade of Lumphini Park all sit within a short ride. We eat together tonight, somewhere with plastic stools and a queue.

North to Ayutthaya, which ruled Siam from 1351 until 1767 and was, at its height, among the largest cities on earth. Wat Mahathat holds the Buddha head grown into a fig root; Wat Chaiwatthanaram stands in Khmer style beside the river. We return downriver by boat in the late afternoon, then transfer to Hua Lamphong's replacement at Krung Thep Aphiwat for the northbound sleeper.

The train pulls in mid-morning. Check in, sleep off the night if you need to, and take the afternoon at your own pace inside the old walled square, where more than thirty temples sit within a kilometre of each other. Wat Chedi Luang, half-collapsed since an earthquake in 1545, is the one to see first.

Up the mountain to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, 306 steps beside a naga staircase, with the whole valley below. Back down for lunch, then to a market with a local cook to buy what the afternoon's lesson needs: khao soi, a curry noodle dish the north makes and nowhere else does properly.

A morning at a sanctuary in the hills outside town where the elephants are neither ridden nor made to perform. You watch, you help prepare food, and you keep your distance when they want it. Back in Chiang Mai the evening is free; the Sunday walking street, if the day falls right, is the best market in the country. Farewell dinner together.

A transfer to Chiang Mai airport when your flight requires it. Onward connections through Bangkok are frequent, and we are happy to extend the trip to the islands or across to Luang Prabang if you would rather not stop here.