Neilson Hays Library

Back in Bangkok. Gary and Pat are visiting and this morning, while Liz takes N to ballet, I take them + A and her friend Marika to Neilson Hays Library in nearby Silom. It’s a wonderful place, built in 1922. Inside and out is pure colonial: old wooden cabinets, mostly with glass doors (which do their best to forestay humidity-induced decay or 'foxing' as Pat expertly says... 'Foxing'...), are packed with interesting English-language titles; fans whir high up in the ceiling; another cabinet houses an old-fashioned card-index system; a small rotunda-shaped gallery displays ceramics by a local artist.

A and Marika read books to each other in the well-stocked children’s section while Gary, Pat and I look at the travel section. Gary half-jokingly suggests I check for books on Siberia. There are two: Dervla Murphy’s Silverland and George Kennan’s Tent Life in Siberia, the latter first published in 1870, republished 1986. I take this out.

But best of all is a book by the French female explorer Alexandra David-Neel, My Journey to Lhasa, written in the twenties and published in 1927, the first edition of which sits here. Amazingly Gary has read it (!), though in a later edition. She sounds an extraordinary character: an anarchist & free-thinker in her teens, lived in a cave in Sikkim for two years, was the first western woman to visit Lhasa, and reached the ripe old age of 100. I love the page stuck in the front with the return-by dates - see pic. It was first borrowed on 30 August 1954 and then another 32 times since. I have to have this too!