Day 65, in which we take a massage to avoid the military coup

We woke up this morning in Bangkok (or, as the locals officially – and somewhat surprisingly – call it, Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit) and wandered 47 floors down to Café Mozu for our complimentary buffet breakfast.

When I think of a 'buffet breakfast' I think of sad scrambled eggs drying out under heat lamps, ranks of leathery toast and vats of congealing baked beans. Thankfully the Lebua Hotel does things in a bit more style, with four separate zones offering everything you could want first thing in the morning and plenty more you might not: steamed chicken & pork dumplings; fresh nigiri-sushi and maki rolls; poached eggs benedict; a mountain of smoked salmon and snapper; potato curry with soft rolls; salmon teriyaki and noodles; two long trestle tables of breads, pastries, muffins, waffles and pancakes; a wide range of cereals, juices and fresh fruits (some of which we didn't recognise and had to name ourselves, with one particularly faecal-smelling fruit now known lovingly as 'poofruit'); and a vat of baked beans. We sampled a little bit of everything and rolled out of the restaurant an hour later ready for a snooze.

We'd long been planning to spend today just relaxing in our hotel and this has proved a convenient decision as the Foreign Office emailed us a couple of days ago to warn that “The political situation in Thailand is tense and uncertain”, adding that it is probable mass-protests will erupt in Bangkok today – and could possibly turn violent – following a court ruling regarding the former Prime Minister's involvement in a highly controversial corruption scandal. Reading up on the case, we discovered that political commentators seem to think the ruling might even serve as a flashpoint for a military coup. What better way to stay out of trouble, we thought, than booking in for a 90 minute Thai massage on the fifteenth floor?

My mum had warned me that Thai massage is not like western massage, with the focus less on relaxing the muscles and more on pummelling the life out of them, I suppose with the aim of making you grateful when you finally get out alive. I somehow forgot this advice and signed up anway. I was led excitedly into a dimly lit room where I was told to dress in loose pyjamas and lie on the bed. The masseur asked whether I would like Light, Medium or Hard massage. Figuring there was no point paying $30 for Light when I could maximise my gain with Hard for the same price, I opted for the severest form of massage and I think this was possibly a poor decision.

The masseur was a tiny lady, but still she was not frightened to climb on top of me and dig her hard, bony fingers into my thigh muscles, rummaging around in there like she'd lost her car keys, clambering further up my body and wrapping her legs around mine in order to exert an impossible level of strength, stretching muscles I didn't know I had and popping each joint in turn. For a while she followed the Pleasure-Pain Method, with bouts of tearing muscle and snapping bones sandwiched between brief moments of quite pleasant massage. Things went really awry when she moved onto the spine, however, and the concept of pleasure went out of the window entirely, replaced with the sharp, bony point of her elbow being driven deep through my spine and out the other side. All of this exercise was conducted through the pyjamas with my body covered in a giant towel, the masseur only unveiling each limb as she came to work on them in turn, like a giant version of a child's memory game.

I suppose I felt more mobile and energised afterwards, although I also felt a dark and throbbing pain in my upper spine. It was in this mood that we took lunch at the Mozu Café again, where a vast Asian-themed buffet was presented for our almost exclusive pleasure. The range this time was stunning, but after breakfast we learned to push past the cheap, high-carb filler presented at the front of the buffet and push through to the richer and more expensive proteins at the back. This was a terrific strategy as we stocked up on huge amounts of sushi, smoked salmon, green-lipped muscles, octopus and king prawns.

The Mozu Café sits on the shore of the swimming pool, brilliantly positioned in the shadow of the 54 storeys stretched above it so you never get caught in the impossibly hot sun, and superbly placed ten floors above ground level so that – even though you're in a hot and dirty city – while dining you can only see two or three other buildings on the skyline and you think you might almost be somwhere nicer. After lunch we had a go in the gym and then a swim in the pool, and then already it was time for dinner.

We'd hoped to have dinner at the roof-stop Sirocco restaurant, but the maitre d' intercepted us and dragged us to the rather bland Distil bar on the other side of the building instead. Although Distil is also an open-air bar on the 65th floor and also has stunning views across the city, we were not content and had a quick beer while waiting until the maitre d' was distracted and then snuck out of Distil and round the reception into Sirocco's far more stunning Sky Bar. Although the bar is only five or six metres in diameter, it is suspended on a platform above the city with fabulous 360 degree views. We took some photos, but then vertigo got the better of me and we decided to continue our refreshments back in our room (where sadly we only have fabulous 180 degree views of the city).

Back in our room we discovered that the room service is disgusting and Terminator Salvation is even worse. The script was awful and Christian Bale delivered all of his lines in a gruff voice which left one wondering why his character's goal in the film was to bring down Skynet rather than, say, hunting for a stash of strepsils which had survived the robot holocaust.


Update: Thankfully there was not a military coup. The court came up with a compromise ruling that – although it pleases neither camp – thankfully hasn't enraged anyone enough to lead them to riot either. Phew!