Handcarved from bamboo, umbrella frames create an abstract pattern of light and shade in Bo Sang, near Chiang Mai, Thailand.

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So you wouldn’t necessarily expect him to have created his own – hem! – innovative variations on the standard divers’ sign language.

Now, as you’d expect in a branch of the teaching profession so rarefied that students quite often attempt to kill not only themselves but their tutors, diving instructors already have quite a few obscene variations on this theme.

Such as: “You! Look. At me! Your FACE. Makes me SICK!” Or: “You! Look. At me! YOU are f

ed. You are TOTALLY f

ed.”

As you may also imagine, this is the sort of expressive language which sticks in the mind of a nine-year-old boy.

So when Z and I piled onto a dive boat, populated predominantly by big lads fresh back from Afghan (there are a LOT of Brits on Koh Tao), and his instructor yelled out, “Mind your language! There’s a child on board the boat!” my first thought was, “Aw, BLESS!”

My second? “That poor man is not going to know what hits him.”

Actually, Z’s instructor did an amazing job. For someone “without a parental bone in my body” and “absolutely no knowledge of children”, he genuinely really enjoyed teaching Z.

Which makes the sign language episode, well, a little sad, really.

It’s a funny thing, swearing.

I once worked as a temp on a building site for an office fit-out company. (Temp controller: “It’s a LOVELY firm! An interior design company, based in St. James’s.” 22-year-old me: “Do you think they can do £11.50 per hour rather than £11, then?”)

So I would sit in the Portakabin. Doing temp-like things such as audio-typing letters (from a tape machine worked with a treadle, like a sewing machine) and photocopying “subbies’ lists”.

Also untemp-like things such as correcting I/me/myself or comma/full-stop confusions and removing grocer’s apostrophes when I typed up the letters. (The boss would then firmly put them back in in biro.)

And the blokes on site, the identical, self-same blokes who would have been hooting, whistling and yelling creative pleasantries had I walked past their scaffolding in mufti, would come into the Portakabin.

They would look, in horror, at this delicate flower in their midst. And say, very solemnly, “Mind your language! Ladies present.”

And they meant it! It would have been the very height of bad manners to treat me as anything other than a lady. A person in front of whom one does not swear.

Anywise. Eventually the inevitable happened. I dropped something. I swore.

You could have heard a pin drop…

The older chaps could hardly have been more horrified had I undone my overcoat, whipped up my skirt, pulled down both pairs of tights (it was pretty damn chilly in that Portakabin) and photocopied my arse instead of the snag lists.

And so, back to Z, and divers’ sign language. We were relaxing over breakfast with Z’s instructor, Z filling out his logbook by writing down names of fish he had seen from a spotter’s guide. Looking, I think, almost as angelic as he and Solène do here.

Z has, by now, been a panicking diver for the large chaps doing the rescue diver course, dived off the back of the big boat with the big boys and towed his instructor 25 metres, so feels very much like one of the lads.

Relaxed, at ease, and one of the gang, he decides that now is a good time to demonstrate his innovative additions to the canon of divers’ sign language.

His first two — “You! Look. At me! You. Are screwed!” “You! Look. At me! You. Are TOTALLY screwed!” — go down, well, not exactly OK, but marginally better than a cup of cold sick. (It helps that he mimes opening a bottle with a corkscrew rather than something more, erm, etymologically and anatomically à point.)

Then Z pulls out his pièce de résistance. It involves a lighter. Some below waist pointing. And signs for You, I and Not.

His poor instructor is turning pale. “Can you guess what it means?” Z asks.

The chap shakes his head in silent horror.

“It means,” my little boy says, proudly. “I. Wouldn’t. Piss on. You. If you were on Fire.”

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Outside the nearby Royal Palace, however, the sign warns, succinctly and sweetly, “Beware of wily strangers.”

And wily, to be honest, is the perfect word. For ten lines that only wily strangers will use — with handy translation — read on.

1: The place you are visiting is closed today. I know a great place…
Which we will visit by way of a thousand pressure selling joints. Some of them, quite possibly, offering gemstones at a knockdown price that will make one or the other of us very, very rich. Guess who?!

2: Do you have a reservation for that guesthouse?
You don’t? No worries! I will talk rapidly to the receptionist in Thai, explain to you in English that the guesthouse is full, then escort you to an overpriced outlet which pays commission, charging you triple the fare we agreed for the privilege.

3: Today is a very special holiday. Buddha Day.
Now, this is a VERY special holiday. It occurs just once a year in the Thai Buddhist calendar, but for a handful of bewildered new arrivals and their kindly local guides, every day is Buddha Day!

4: You come from [city]? I was in [city] some years ago, studying law.
A trustworthy profession. And I am a trustworthy chap. Having funded seven years study overseas, my super-rich parents like nothing better than to pop down and see me chatting up tourists at the canal boat station.

5: [Insert colour] of tuk-tuk/taxi is a very special tuk-tuk. A government tuk-tuk/taxi…
Yep! Forget the subway, the Skytrain and the bus system. Bangkok Mass Transit is now investing in non-branded three- and four-wheelers. Oooh! Would you believe it? There’s one right next to us, and he’ll take you to wherever you want to go…

6: All you need to do is visit the factory/workshop/tailors/travel agency. Spend ten minutes. No need to buy.
I will dump you in a shop that pays me commission. Expect a minute or two of brutal interrogation as to when, precisely, you intend to hand over the cash, then a physical escort to the door. Mai pen rai (never mind)!

7: I am a student of English. Collecting for charity/looking for conversation practice.
And, as they say in all the best English conversation classes, charity begins at home. Or possibly in the restaurant we end up in. Your choice!

8: What price? It’s for good luck!
Good luck is, indeed, a priceless asset. But, once you have released the lucky birds, fed the lucky fish or nurtured the lucky pigeons, good luck will suddenly come quite expensive.

9: I am a teacher. On my way home to meet my wife.
But I have stopped to talk to you in the street during school hours all the same. We don’t get many tourists in Bangkok, and I do like to help you falang out. Now, would you like a tuk-tuk tour?

10: There is a temple near here, the most beautiful temple in Thailand/with a very big Buddha, which is open only one day of the year. Today!
Every day is an open day for this particular temple. And, best of all, it is only a hundred yards away from a store which pays me a very large commission!

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Well…

Scuba diving opens up an entire new world. There’s the fluid, graceful movement in three dimensions, moving up or down (quite literally) on a breath, turning any way you wish like a gymnast in zero gravity, powered only by your legs and fins.

There’s the chance to explore the complex ecosystems of coral reef: a surrealist, ancient, technicolour landscape, populated by a myriad creatures who, unlike their land equivalents, have yet to learn to fear human beings.

There’s that warm, buzzed glow of discovery you get when you surface. And that edge of anticipation as you take the giant stride off the side of the boat…

Which is exactly what Z is doing, in the picture above. (The ginormous wetsuit is, in fact, an extra small.) It’s his first giant stride as a qualified Junior Open Water diver, off Koh Tao, Thailand.

He’s passed the same theory exam as adults do. He can assemble his kit, safety check a buddy and take it all apart and clean it once he’s done. He’s mastered the same 21 skills and emergency procedures as any adult.

Including, to much hilarity from the sceptical ex-Marines on our dive boat, towing a substantial adult diver, in full kit, 25 metres on the surface. (Memo to self: must stop calling him “cherub” in public.)

He understands lung over-expansion injuries, decompression sickness and nitrogen narcosis. And that a friend of his instructor’s got it so badly that he thought he was a dolphin and removed all his diving kit, 50 metres under the sea.

In fact, over the last two days he’s been having a blast. He’s doubled as a drowning diver for the large chaps doing the rescue diver course.

He’s decided I’m “no fun” for refusing to allow him to swan dive off the top deck with the big lads (it was the lower deck which bothered me, not the height).

All the same, it was a slightly eerie feeling watching him descend the guideline into the murky blue and disappear. First a blur. Then a stream of bubbles. Then… well, nothing.

It wasn’t, honestly, that I was worried, or counting the minutes until he returned. He had mastered his skills. He was one on one with an instructor. The bottom was no more than 12 metres deep.

And he’s a sensible child. Not one to go heading off into the wide blue open sans instructor, or panic, take a lungful of air and head for the surface…

More, I suppose, a sharp realisation of his ever-growing independence. And a very visual realisation, too, as he disappeared from view.

From birth, parenting’s about enabling your children to go out into the world independently, do their own thing, manage their own risk.

It is, and I’m aware how paradoxical this sounds given we spend so much time together now, a constant process of letting go. And watching your little boy disappear into the depths feels a very firm reminder of how much more letting go there is to come.

How did our first joint dive go?

Well, thank you.

But I guess I focused less onn the teeming marine life and the tragically bleached coral than his legs, still so little and so skinny, propelling him through the water, as he forged ahead of me.

Did he look back?

Once in a while. To check I was OK…

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But there’s something surreally magical about stepping out of 35 degrees of sweaty, humid heat and coming face to face with these little fellas.

Nestled below the designer mecca of Siam Paragon, Siam Ocean World is the largest aquarium in South-East Asia.

It takes the aquarium concept and stretches it to its very limits. From penguins to beavers, from Amazonian predators to fossil fish, right through to a jacuzzi of pedicuring fish.

Regular feeding shows run throughout the day. Divers hand-feed sharks, penguins flump after fish, and otters retrieve whole pawfuls of rubber balls in exchange for squidbits.

In a different sort of feeding time, these tiny cleaner fish nibble patients at the dead skin cells on your feet, delivering a — perhaps too — natural pedicure.

We loved the dramatic tunnel which led through a galaxy of sharks — and the glass-bottomed boat tour which took us on top of the water, behind the scenes, for a view of an aquarium one rarely gets.

The giant spider crabs, moray eels, faux coral, coelacanths and rainforest zone were incredible. But the household appliances stocked with fish are pretty unique too.

Sir’s favourite part? The 4D environmental movie, where cartoon turtles take you on a rocking, jolting and occasionally damp ride through the damage humans wreak on our environment.

Though, if it weren’t for the fact that on Koh Tao, where we are now, he’d be diving on a real live reef, the chance to enter the tunnel tank and dive with 4-metre sharks would have been almost irresistible.

You honestly never know what you’ll find in a South-East Asian mall. We’ve seen climbing walls, Maseratis, painted hermit crabs and inflatable spiders.

But to find an absolutely world class aquarium a couple of floors down from D&G? That’s magic.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow at Delicious Baby for hosting Photo Fridays.

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And I honestly can’t think of a better way to spend our last evening in one of Asia’s most dynamic cities than this.

The neon-blue night ahead of us, expressways surging into the distance, pyramids of skyscrapers far below, and the winding Chao Phraya river forming a patch of slinky darkness amid the buzz and hubbub of the city.

Now, the nine-year-old and I have been living out of backpacks for over five months now. So, even when we make an effort, which we did, our wardrobe is hardly, well, five-star.

On arrival we are greeted, simultaneously, by charming, smiling staff, making the wai bow of respectful welcome, and a short sign regarding dress code, which we breach in no fewer than three specifics.

“Mum!” hissed the nine-year-old. “The sign says no…”

“I know,” I hiss back, mentally itemising our wardrobe errors (sandals, rucksack and ripped jeans, though I have invested in some platform flip-flops for this and similar occasions). “Don’t draw attention to it. I think they’re letting us off.”

And, honestly, faced by a nine-year-old boy so proud and smart in the blue silk shirt he had tailored to his specifications in Hoi An, Vietnam, you would need a heart of stone to enforce a dress code.

An ear-popping, 600-foot elevator ascent, two flights of internal stairs, and one open-air staircase later, we are admitted to, well, pretty close to paradise.

An elegant, architecturally stylish bar and restaurant, which hovers over Bangkok like the prow of a ship, Vertigo has, justifiably won a bunch of awards.

And the beautiful waitresses welcome us with a genuine warmth.

“I think they like my silk shirt,” says the nine-year-old, when we are safely ensconced.

I can only agree.

Like all the best hotel bars, drinks come with nibbles in silver salvers. Wasabi peanuts, with a time-delay burn. Slightly sweet-roast cashews. Chewy banana chips.

Z dives into them with zero inhibition, while I am torn between wonder at the view and my own, all too genuine, vertigo, which waist-height glazed walls and counters with merely a six-inch backing strip twixt one and the void intrinsically produces.

It’s an odd feeling, vertigo. Simultaneous repulsion and attraction. The drop feels like a magnet. Sir can’t reach for a peanut without me visualising the drop pulling him over the edge and down to street-level, six hundred feet below.

And, yes, I know there’s a grating on the other side. And one would have to be an athlete to overleap the walls. It makes no difference. It’s a drop.

Even the air, which circulates from a gap twixt floor and counter, provokes a nervy, sweaty reflex. It’s the same air as two hundred yards below. THE SAME AIR, I think. It’s come all the way up. Will go all the way down…

The cocktails on the menu, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, tend to the sweet and tropical. So sir’s first virgin Mojito will have to wait.

We opt for a ginger ale for him, served with panache in a hurricane glass, and a Negroni for me, which they make flawlessly, off-menu, without a query.

“Do you think they have mosquitoes at this altitude?” junior asks.

“No,” I say. “There’d be no point them being up here. Plus, I think Bangkok’s malaria-free. Which I guess means no mosquitoes.”

We do the photo thing. Vertigo isn’t solely a tourist destination, like many sky-high bars. But there are sufficient obvious tourists, at least early in the evening, to make one feel at home being, well, a tourist.

We chatter, admire the view, spot landmarks we have known and loved, talk about how much we like Bangkok and how sad we will be to leave.

A Thai girl pulls in Z for a photo, the curls and blue silk shirt proving their magnetism yet again.

After our regulation one drink (which costs almost double the price of our hotel), we descend and walk towards the Skytrain.

The magic of the shirt is growing, exponentially, in sir’s memory. He looks very sweet, I think. Handsome, he thinks.

“I think everybody liked my shirt,” he says. “I mean, who wouldn’t want a photo of a boy in a blue silk shirt in their bar?”

“Who indeed?” I say.

Thanks to Beth Whitman at Wanderlust for hosting Wanderfood Wednesdays.

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One of the huge benefits of the general nervousness right now is the instant availability of fun of all kinds. With close to zero queues.

Over the last couple of weeks, junior and I have enjoyed a championship minigolf course all to ourselves. We’ve had back-to-back goes on rollercoasters at a nearly deserted theme park. And sir has continued his adventures in extreme sports.

Such as zorbing (or xorbing) — pictured above — an activity which has now taken the place of zipwiring in sir’s ever-changingl canon of “most fun ever“.

But what is zorbing?

Wayull…

A zorb ball is a giant, inflatable, hollow ball. Folk roll it to the top of a ramp… Strap you inside it…

The nerves disappeared the second he was rolling...

Push you off. Whereupon you roll, squealing merrily, if you are nine, or thereabouts, “I LOOOOVE zorbing”, down a hill, and into a lake, where the ball bobs merrily on the surface.

There, if you are nine, you instantly free yourself from your bonds and fall into the water.

Only to be prised away by the promise of paintball target shooting… (Bungy jumping, which the X-Centre also offers, will have to wait.)

Buddhist principles perhaps not yet fully absorbed...

Championship minigolf?

Yes, there is such a thing. With teams, a governing body, and almost all the regulations of a proper sport.

Now, a championship minigolf course might not have the kitsch factor of those wondrously tacky crazy golf courses which illuminate British seaside resorts from Skegness to Bournemouth.

But, my lord. It is fiendish.

They have bunkers. Greens…

The seventh hole. On a MINIgolf course.

Tricky inclines. Eighteen holes. Putting stretches that erupt like pimples.

Tricker than it might seem.

And, for a theme park that works for all the family and is not too far outside Bangkok, Dreamworld takes some beating.

Sky Coaster, Dreamworld, Bangkok.

Set out near the airport, it’s an absolutely lovely little theme park. Complete with rollercoasters, a flume, rapids, go-karts, bumper cars, bumper boats, cable cars, twisters, every variety of fairground ride, wonders of the world, baby rides — and, bizarrely, an indoor snow zone.

There is little that is obviously Thai about Dreamworld. Apart, perhaps, from this:

Yep. Definitely in Asia...

Sir’s favourite? The Sky Coaster, a top-loaded rollercoaster, which rattles at quite terrifying speeds round a tight-looped course 40 metres or so above the park. (Space Mountain, a smaller version of the Disney favourite, is also worth a look.)

Mine? Well, probably the Giant’s House, a scaled-up model of a giant’s cottage, with which children can interact at will. It has a sepia lyricism, an eerie beauty, which comes close to the waltzing spectres in the ghostly ballroom at Disneyland Paris.

In the giant's kitchen...

And I was really pleased to see my little adrenalin junkie is still enough of a child to appreciate it to the full.

X-Centre, near Chiang Mai, offers zorbing, paintballing, bungy jumping, dirtbiking and more.

Dreamworld is on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Die hard minigolfers can play atMinigolf Garden Resort, not far from Bo Sang, near Chiang Mai.

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And my mother asked me over the phone, “How is Bangkok right now?”

A reasonable enough question. Last time we were here, the red shirts were still in residence but the protests had yet to turn bloody.

One day a chunk of the city centre was shut down for marches, with shiny new black pick-ups heading into the financial district across traffic, their red-shirted occupants waving amiably, scarlet banners and bandanas waving in the breeze.

A few weeks later, and only a month or so ago, great chunks of the city were in flames. Not long ago a remarkably well-timed bomb was discovered inside a cart of pineapples outside the offices of the ruling coalition.

This time?

The majority of the red-shirts, paid campaigners for Thaksin Shinawatra’s right to power, their 500-baht a day wage funded from the fifty or so missing billion the current government is pursuing, have returned to the countryside whence they came.

A reconciliation committee is working to track down those missing. There are elections coming up. And a hope that the state of emergency will be lifted and the media can report.

But in the city? Life seems normal enough.

The NY-style cupcake stall at Siam Skytrain station is doing a roaring trade; vendors of T-shirts and jewellery clog the walkways; folk flood the low-priced food court at MBK.

There are 90% off signs in the windows of Siam Paragon, the luxury mall, with D&G, Marc Jacobs et al, but only a solitary bag-check on the door.

The raised expressways that run out even past the grand canal and the airport are choked with traffic. Call centre girls in white shirts and tight black skirts wait patiently for buses. Hawkers and taxis surge around Victory Monument.

I guess the tourist villages of Khao San (for backpackers: comedy T-shirts, snake whisky, club fliers and hippie trews) and Patpong (for sex tourists: pingpong shows, bargirls, ladyboys and over-priced drinks) are a little quieter, these days.

The heaviest security we’ve seen? Ironically enough, at the Imagine Peace exhibition, in the stunning Bangkok Centre for Art & Culture, a minimalist white spiral shell whose interior more than lives up to the skyscrapers.

Not on the lower floors. There the city’s architects of the future are displaying, and sometimes selling, more or less valid conceptual art pieces ahead of graduation.

But on the ninth floor, four storeys above the rails where brightly coloured Skytrains arc across the sky, and a colourful dove announces the theme, Imagine Peace.

There are armed, uniformed security guards in every room, at every entrance. Besides the golden clasped hands which Louise Bourgeois created for the Krabi memorial. Standing guard over doves and Buddhas, red and yellow Buddhas transformational demons, the merging red and yellow orchids, the Benettonesque chicks in red and yellow T-shirts, the artworks crafted from children’s toys…

Almost as oddly as the elderly monk we saw in Pantip Plaza, the buzzing, scuzzy, electronics mall, ploughing his way through six heaving floors of discount electronica in search of a place to repair his vintage mobile phone.

Still, outside, the city is calm.

Not as sedate as where we’ve come from in the north. There streets, offices and bus stations stop and stand still, twice a day, at 8am and 6pm for the national anthem and the king.

The national anthem blares out twice a day from speakers, even here, but with money to be made there’s less attention paid.

The calm doesn’t, to be honest, come as a great surprise. I was at school in London during the IRA’s mainland campaigns. The bomb threats which routinely closed the trains and tubes were a routine annoyance.

The announcement would come out, over the tannoy. Folk would sigh, audibly. Pick up their things. Exit the station with a resigned expression and make their way to the bus to continue one’s daily business above ground.

Around 7/7, when a number 30 bus and its top-deck passengers (inter alia) was wiped out by a chap who got on just a few stops short of where we caught that bus to the cinema and West End, you felt the shock for a day or so. But the city carried on.

Cities, it has to be said, particularly tiger cities like Bangkok, do tend to.

Although… As I replied to the nine-year-old, “It should be fine. Until the king dies…”

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