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After our disastrous and sweltering bike ride around Ayutthaya, you would be forgiven for being sceptical of our decision to hire bikes again in Chiang Mai. But Penny’s knowledge of the city from having lived there combined with clear and reliable maps, a fresher climate and my own impeccable sense of direction, this time we were onto a winner.

Chiang Mai is a pleasure to cycle around. We made a plan to hire bikes for two days: firstly exploring the wats in the old town, and then venturing along the busy road out of town to a couple of further flung temples (see Terrifying Lucky Fish).

Of course, each wat has its own community of monks, supported entirely by the generosity of local people. You’d think it wouldn’t be possible to maintain several glittering, gilded wats and their monks per city block using charity alone, but the fact they all exist is a clear sign of how revered they are.

Visitors are very welcome in way they just arent in churches, where they’re either locked or you pay a tenner to get in. In Thailand the gates are always open, all you need to do is remember that it’s a holy place that must be respected (also in a way churches aren’t: here the statues and buildings themselves are holy). Wear long trousers, cover shoulders and chests, take off your shoes. Oh, and don’t point your feet at Buddha, or in any way disrespect the statues – and that means YOU, the Americans who insist on posing in amusing Buddha poses in front of shrines.

It’s neither rocket science nor a great imposition, though surprising and disappointing how many visitors didn’t bother.

By being respectful, quiet and trying to be unobtrusive, I found myself starting to get a sense of the tranquility and solace of the wats. I was also rewarded with smiles and nods from the occassional monk.

I reckon monks are pretty cool. They’re always smiling, for a start. And some of them do amazing social and health education. In short, I’d love to chat to a monk.

Luckily some of the temples have Monk Chat. It’s a chance for visitors to talk to the monks, and equally a chance for monks to practice English. Sadly, it tends to take place late afternoon and isn’t every day. I wanted to go back, but we had lots of other stuff to do.

I don’t think Penny could quite understand why I’d be excited to make weather-related small talk in stilted English, with a man in a saffron robe. Suffice to say, I would have been.

I did exchange some pleasantries with a monk who claimed to know me. He said he’d seen me before and that I was a teacher. I explained that I’d only arrived the night before and so he must be thinking of someone else.

He smiled the patient smile of a man who knows he is right, and explained that it must have been in a dream.

This is a little known but highly sought award that traditionally makes celebrities very competitive.

It was first awarded in 1985, in recognition of Bono’s crassly insensitive Band Aid line, “Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you”.

Bono has done his best to maintain his status since, with several notable wins including his “spend a fortune on designer goods, while tossing a few pennies at an AIDS charity”, Project(RED). He went on to get a lifetime acheivement award by criticising Ireland for not using enough tax income for aid, whilst doing his best to not pay tax.

This year, however, there’s a late entry which could cause upset among the ranks, with Simon Cowell making an unexpected debut at the ceremony.

He is expected to easily walk away with the title by raising money for a destroyed country and a traumatised, devastated people with his Helping Haiti record. The song’s message, that “we all have bad days, so cheer up!” has been hailed as a landmark of inappropriate goodwill.

Insiders have also confirmed that Cowell is hoping the record will raise a mere fraction of his own personal fortune, thought to be a key criteria of the award rules.

The ceremony and dinner takes place at the end of February, in a glittering award ceremony in the picturesque Burmese mountains.

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