In this city I feel like I've landed on a different planet. When in Calcutta, I could still imagine camouflaging myself and getting lost in the crowd, but here it would be unthinkable: I'm completely different from the natives, in my build as well as my features. This is also a different universe of sound: as with Chinese, Thai words are not merely defined by vowels and consonants but also by tone, which may be long or short, rising or falling. I am told that "kai-kai-kai-kai-kai" means "I sold the egg which the hen laid to the merchant," as long as the right intonation is placed on each "kai". My problem is that I can't even distinguish between these intonations and, as a result, my interlocutors always understand something other than what I think I'm saying. It gives rise to endless misunderstandings with taxi drivers, even over the name of my hotel, which is simply called "Princess".

Bangkok is an obligatory port of call for all planes to Australia as well as for those bound for Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia. This allows travellers to break for a few days in a fairy-tale, and there are many who grab the opportunity. The dream comes with air-conditioning, television set in every hotel room, guided tour to the royal palace, excursion to the floating market, visit to the temple of the Great Sleeping Buddha and performances of Thai dance laid on by Kodak Inc., complete with technical advice about choice of film and exposure. In the evening you can do the rounds of the night-clubs and "massage salons". You are accompanied on all these visits by young Thai men and women who are always impeccably dressed and who make up for their lack of English vocabulary with smiles which are always alert and never servile. The buses leave from the hotels and return at the times indicated in the brochures, prices are calculated in dollars and pegged to those of Honolulu and Miami.

All this perfection makes me want to see what lies on the other side. But it's my first visit to Bangkok, I don't know anyone in the city, don't understand a word of Thai and I can't even read a single letter of the local alphabet. So I have no choice but to follow the tourist itinerary, and plan to break away at the earliest opportunity.

The motor boat awaits us at six in the morning. It takes 30 minutes to cross the Menam river which is more than half a mile wide, and reach the canals of Thanduri beyond the opposite bank. It is this district (rather than the centre of the city) which earns Bangkok the title of "Venice of Asia". On our way, our guide presents a general overview: "Our country was never colonised because we had good kings who avoided conflicts and ceded small amounts of territory to the imperialists whenever their demands became too pressing. During the last war, we let ourselves be occupied by the Japanese; we didn't oppose them when they came and we let them leave just as peaceably. After the war the Americans became our friends. Our country has a surplus of rice and our standard of living is the highest in Asia."

As our boat enters into the canals of Thanduri, everything seems to confirm the impression of a fairy-tale: children perched on their doorsteps and monks on their sampans (long flat-bottomed punts) greet us with smiles and gestures of welcome. A boat loaded with fruit draws alongside and a little old woman proffers a bunch of bananas which the guide then distributes among us. At last we reach the famous floating market, which can be seen on so many postcards. Here, from boat to boat, wholesalers sell their produce to retailers. At the end of the morning, each retailer's sampan will be a complete grocery, decked with all sorts of fruits and vegetables, rice, fish and chilli-peppers. And, come the afternoon, these floating groceries ply the waterways to deliver their merchandise to individual homes.

I tell the guide that I wish to hire a sampan so as to continue the tour by myself. He sees nothing wrong in the idea and hails a slender young girl sitting at her stall. He tells me she owns a sampan and will certainly agree to accompany me. I am made to climb onto a plank set three feet above the canal and invited to lower myself into the punt that has been manoeuvred into position just below.

But nobody tells me that I have to position my foot with special care right in the middle of the small boat. The sampan is not designed for a clumsy Westerner loaded with photographic equipment: it lists to one side, fills with water and starts to sink, leaving me just enough time to grab hold of the plank with my arms. I am up to my thighs in the yellowish water though my feet don't touch the bottom of the canal. Fortunately the Nikon and the bag hanging around my neck are still a few inches from the surface. Tourists and locals burst into giggles.

I cannot raise myself with my own efforts from the position I'm in. Some well-disposed people try and hoist me by my arms, but I'm too heavy for them (and the plank is too rotten). After a few moments of general perplexity the young girl has an idea: she summons a second sampan, which is made to glide to the spot just beneath my buttocks. All I have to do is lower myself in whilst of course taking care to remain perfectly centred.

The boat is so lightweight and I'm so nervous about it tipping that I hardly dare turn my head. But other sampans come and surround us and people hold onto the boat so that, little by little, I am able to slide my dripping body towards the prow whilst remaining cross-legged, with my still miraculously dry equipment between my knees. I still don't dare turn about, but I'm aware that we are heading towards the middle of the canal and I can imagine the Thai girl paddling in the back.

The locals seems to view my accidental immersion as a baptism. Behind me I hear applause which gets fainter as our sampan moves noiselessly and seemingly effortlessly away from the landing-stage. I point in the direction I would like to take and my invisible oarswoman follows my wishes with the necessary manoeuvres of her paddle. I admire how sensitively she understands-and even sometimes anticipates-my intentions: she propels us towards the boats I want to photograph, circles round them if she thinks I want a different angle, slows down when I find what interests me. As if we were one sole entity-her, me and the sampan-an acquatic centaur of some new species guided by the cyclopean eye of the Nikon.

Despite this diversion, I don't lose sight of my plan to uncover the reverse side of the fairy-tale. But today what I seek does not show itself. As we move away from the floating market and enter a network of smaller canals, the klongs, we encounter a flotilla of sampans, each loaded with two little girls in blue and white smocks, with their satchels on their backs, a bit like Dutch children going to school on their bikes. A floating tavern approaches us and the owner suggests we have a hot drink-which turns out to be ovaltine. I make signs to my oarswoman that I wish to visit yet smaller and more remote klongs. We make our way in, but this forces the waterside dwellers out of their homes so they can raise the gangways obstructing our passage. They all do it smilingly, even offering me fruit. I see some children and young women bathing in the canal, and men sitting on their little balconies in front of a television. I ask myself if these people can live off what grows on the trees almost spontaneously and just within reach, maybe varying their menu from time to time by bartering a few bunches of bananas against whatever the floating grocer brings… In one of the houses the radio plays "La vie en rose". As we glide along the klong, Edith Piaf fades away-but we find her again 50 yards further, on another radio at the junction with another canal.

Over the next few days, I returned to Thanduri several times to walk about on foot-but the reverse of the fairy-tale kept eluding me. In this dream country, where none of the people I meet seems to speak English, smiles are the only means of communication. In any case, I never come up against prohibitions. At the doors of a monastery, the Buddhist monks invite me in and offer me tea. In a school set amongst banana trees, where classes are held on open verandas (there's no need of walls or windows in this climate), I wander from class to class with the smiling agreement of the teachers. But I am a little embarrassed because, each time I enter a "classroom", all the children get up to bid me welcome…

Of course I take some photos-but with no great conviction because I'm sure they will look like tourist propaganda shots.

If Australia is a continent of men, Thailand is surely a country of women. It is women who, from their thresholds, invite me to enter (here in Thanduri it is a gesture of pure courtesy, without the slightest hint of seduction). Equally it is women who transact business in the market-place, and women that one sees in the centre of town behind the wheel of their small Japanese cars. The female receptionist at "Princess" looks me straight in the eye and tries out her 20 words of English. What joy to meet these looks, so different from the lowered or averted eyes of the women of Egypt or India! Their freedom doesn't stop Thai women behaving modestly, but their modesty is their own affair, not that of their husbands, fathers or brothers. When they speak enough English to communicate with a foreigner, their favourite game is to make him guess their age. For they seem to have found the secret of eternal youth: those whom I take to be 20 declare with peals of laughter that they are 35 or 40. A pretty princess, known for breeding Siamese cats, and with whom I have started flirting in a small way, tells me she's 59 and already has 12 grandchildren.

This is not to say that there is no reverse side. I was told that the population of Thanduri was particularly well-off, that the rest of the Bangkok sprawl has serious urbanisation problems, that many rural areas remain under-developed. The country is governed by a military dictatorship, relatively liberal but certainly not above criticism. And it seems that on the border with Laos the army is fighting communist rebels.

Yet during my stay I never saw a beggar, nor a brawl nor an armed policeman. Everything is sorted out with a smile. Smiling, the taxi driver wants me to believe that his brand new meter is out of order and, still smiling, he asks me three times the fare for the ride. From my side, I smile as I hand him what I think is the right amount and, smiling once more, he puts it in his pocket. At the end, I have no choice but to give him a generous tip, accompanied by yet more smiles on both sides.

But, as the days pass, I feel a slight misgiving, more against myself than against the Thais. I am unable to establish real contact with them. The corners of my lips stiffen from the effort of responding to their smiles and, at the same time, I begin to understand that these labial grimaces are not so much open doors as barriers behind which they take refuge.

A group of old men plays chess under a porch. They have handsome faces, like all the old people in this country. (If the happiness of a country were to be judged by the beauty of its elderly, Thailand would come first and the United States certainly last.) I approach them. For want of words in common, chess seems a good point of contact. Some of their rules are different from ours: pawns take ahead instead of diagonally, the queen can only move one square at a time. I lose my game before understanding this despite the fact that my opponent is charitably disposed. But when I raise my eyes from the chessboard, I see that all the others have left: this stranger who interrupted their game did not interest them in the least.

It took me a few days to realise that the same is true about their reaction to my camera. Here, they don't stop me from taking photographs as they did in Egypt or India, they don't turn their backs on me as in Israel. Courteously, they let themselves be portrayed, then move off with a smile and an air of unconcern as if convinced that I don't have much to offer, that there's not much they can expect from me. They make the most of our dollars, our tourists and our technology and all the while make us feel that they could just as easily do without us. This may be why they can afford the luxury of liking Americans. Thailand is the only country where I heard this sentiment expressed!

I left Bangkok regretting that I hadn't been able to push my exploration any further than the air-conditioned fairy-tale. To get to know these people better, I would have to understand their language and, above all, soak up the spirit of their religion. Yet, upon reflection, I tell myself that if I really did understand Buddhism, I'd no longer feel the need to explore: I'd squat down beside them under a banana tree-or just anywhere.