Welcome back, dear reader, to your weekly travel blog and wordsearch. Somewhere in the paragraphs ahead I have buried two words from my daily calendar: gadarene and pseudonym. Find them if you can. No prize except the quiet satisfaction of a sharp eye.

If you are an avid subscriber, you will be expecting tales of high seas and big problems. Storm clouds on the horizon. Engines failing at the worst possible moment. A rigging that snaps like a brittle tooth. Well, this blog is a little unusual. Last week I described how I fooled Pookie into thinking she was going to Gibraltar, the stress and subterfuge required to pull off the great birthday heist. The ruse is over. We are now in chill mode. Bangkok time.

All we had to do each day was drive an hour and a half out of the city for a three hour acupuncture prodding from one of Thailand's most mysterious and discerning healers. The little Chinese lady with no name. I have started calling her by a pseudonym in my own mind, something respectful and slightly reverent, but the truth is I do not know what she calls herself. Her clinic sits on a quiet soi where the mango trees droop low and the neighbour's rooster has abandoned all sense of time. She does not need a name. Her needles speak for her.

This six hour daily ritual was about all we could manage. Ciguatera does not care for sightseeing. It does not care for long walks or crowded markets or the joyful chaos of Bangkok traffic. But slowly, very slowly, we started to venture further from home. We started to remember what it felt like to be human beings rather than walking collections of neurotoxins.

We normally spend two or three months in Bangkok each year anyway, but this City of Angels is forever changing. New restaurants sprout overnight. Old temples paint their gates fresh gold. The sky train extends another stop into the suburbs. You could live here a lifetime and still turn a corner to find something you have never seen before.

This time was no different. We found ourselves at an open air food show outside the Paragon shopping mall, a sprawling festival of steam and spice and celebrity chefs. Pookie lit up like a lantern. There were over 100 chefs there but we were there to see friends. There was Chef Ian from Iron Chef fame, a man whose knife skills could make a grown cook weep. The last time Pookie had seen him he was describing in detail to her how he made a particular dessert.. whilst I sat there and ate it. There was Chef Art, another Iron Chef competitor we have visited many times before, always generous with his time and his recipes. There was Chef Martin Blunos, who last time we were in Bangkok took us out for a meal with his lovely wife, a night so good I still yearn to do it all again. Chef Gino was there of course, dressed as extravagantly as ever, his shirts loud enough to require their own flight attendant. We had last seen him at a restaurant where we were constantly interrupted by fans asking for photos… And Chef Pom's stall was so busy she barely had time to say more than a quick hello.

Fun fact: The Iron Chef television franchise began in Japan in 1993, but Thailand's version has produced some of the most creative and fiery competitors in the series' history. Chef Ian is a legend there, the kind of man who can look at a durian and already know eleven ways to make it sing.

As with all times we visit, we went shopping at MBK, that glorious eight storey labyrinth of knockoff handbags and phone cases and everything else humanity has ever produced. We had a lovely Chinese meal on one of the upper floors, the kind of steaming, fragrant feast that makes you grateful for chopsticks. Pookie got dressed up in their free costumes whilst I clicked away with the camera. And we had a far less lovely meal at Pizza Hut. Now I know companies are downsizing their offerings, but a medium pizza here was smaller than my hand. My actual hand. I held it up for comparison and felt a profound sense of betrayal.

We met up with P'Tod and Colin from Norfolk, whom we had not seen in years, and yet there they were in Bangkok as if summoned by a mutual craving for decent British banter and a cold beer. We took every opportunity to visit family of course. Pookie's uncle had not been very well, so we made a special effort to see him in the nursing home where he now lives. His face when he saw us. His eyes, clouded by dementia, suddenly clearing for a moment like mist lifting off a river. He remembered me. He called me by name. He smiled. That is the kind of thing you carry with you.

We had a weekend away in Cha‑am, a quaint little seaside town on the Gulf of Thailand, about three hours south of Bangkok. This is not the glossy Phuket of postcards. This is the real Thailand. Fishing boats bobbing in the dawn light. Old women selling grilled squid from carts older than their grandchildren. The water is not Caribbean blue, but it is warm and forgiving, and the pace of life slows to a gentle shuffle.

Cha‑am has a history as a royal retreat. King Rama VII built a palace here in the 1920s, and the town has never quite shaken its sleepy, aristocratic charm. But what drew us this time was not history. It was a cowboy ranch.

Yes. A cowboy ranch. In coastal Thailand. Complete with wooden saloon doors, a mechanical bull that nobody dared ride, and a sign advertising something called the Monster Eating Challenge.

Fun fact: Eating challenges are surprisingly popular in Thailand, often held at western‑themed restaurants. The national record for spicy noodle consumption stands at over four kilograms in thirty minutes. I mention this only to put our own failure into context.

Tor, Pookie's brother, and I looked at each other across an eighty centimetre wooden plank. On that plank sat everything the restaurant served. Two huge double cheeseburgers with bacon. Two massive Weiss Wurst sausages. A half rack of pork ribs, the bones glistening. Two sweetcorn’s on the cob, butter dripping. A pile of lettuce and pickles, presumably for decoration. Two halves of chicken in deep fried batter, golden and treacherous. Two deep fried fish, staring at us with crispy accusing eyes. And a tub of chips.

Thirty minutes. Eat it all. Win eternal glory, a free meal and a photograph on the wall of fame.

The Challenge was set. The counter started. We dived in.

I attacked the first cheeseburger with the desperation of a man who has forgotten what shame feels like. Tor went straight for the fish. Chewing. Swallowing. No time for appreciation. This was not dining. This was demolition. By the halfway stage, it looked promising. The plank was visibly emptier. Tor and I made a tactical agreement. I would eat the whole chicken if he would eat the fish, because I still had ciguatera and the last thing I needed was a second toxin party in my nervous system.

But then the pace slowed. The chicken fought back. Its batter clung to my teeth like wet cement. The sausages, which had seemed so manageable at first, now sat in my stomach like anchors. Five minutes left. Tor was munching on his sweetcorn with the grim determination of a man staring into the abyss. One minute left. I was stuffing chips into my mouth like a Hungry Hippo on performance enhancing drugs. Thirty seconds left. Just a few florets of broccoli and cauliflower remained on the plank. I could see the finish line. I could smell the hall of fame.

And then I looked at Tor's plate.

A quarter of his burger remained. Mashed. Broken. But still there. Still defiant. Still refusing to be eaten.

The game was up. We had tried so hard. We had eaten the greasy stuff first, the burgers and the ribs, hoping to bash through the volume before fatigue set in. But we had failed. We waddled like stuffed geese back to the entrance and gazed longingly at the hall of fame photographs. Two slim young men had completed the challenge in five minutes, twenty‑one point six seven seconds. That time felt like a cruel joke. How? How had they done it? Were they even human?

We drove back to Cha‑am in silence, our stomachs making noises that did not sound like a person who should ever be offered food again.

A gadarene rush, that is what it was. A headlong stampede toward a ridiculous goal, like pigs racing off a cliff without checking what was at the bottom. We had seen the plank. We had known it was madness. And still we charged. That is the strange thing about eating challenges. They turn sensible adults into competitive animals. And then they leave you groaning in the back of a car while your father‑in‑law laughs at you.

We visited the beach of course, letting the warm grey sand squish between our toes. We called into the Hua Hin Sailing Club, where the rigging sang in the breeze and I felt a pang of longing for our own Sawasdeekat waiting for us in Trinidad. We visited the temples and laid out gifts for the Buddha gods, small offerings of lotus buds and incense sticks. The air inside those golden spires is thick with devotion and jasmine. Even a sceptical monkey like me feels something shift in his chest when the monks begin to chant.

We ate out a lot. One of the best meals was at a vegan restaurant I would happily fly back to Thailand just to visit again. I cannot remember the name, which is a shame, but I remember the food (as I type this Pookie has just reminded me it's called Mahanakorn) Crispy mushroom rolls that tasted better than any pork I have ever had. A green curry so fragrant it made my eyes water with joy. The Thais have a word for this kind of cooking “aroi mak”, which simply means very delicious. It does not need more poetry than that.

Before the end of our trip, we had spent seven weeks in Bangkok. Seven weeks of needles and swamp juice and family visits and failed eating challenges. Seven weeks of slowly, painfully, clawing our way back from the edge of ciguatera madness. I even made a bad hair decision in the final days. A fleeting impulse involving what Tor described as "Black with a hint of red." I should have known better. I should have been wiser. The fifty pence per sachet price tag from Seven Eleven should have given it away. And yet I succumbed. Black with a hint of red it was not. My dignified grey hair turned pink. Not a cool, intentional pink. Not a rockstar pink. A cheap, chemical, I-bought-this-at-a-convenience-store for 50p pink. Pookie laughed so hard she nearly choked on her mango sticky rice. Tor took a photograph. I have asked him to keep it for my funeral

That bad hair decision would come back to haunt me sooner than I expected.

Because it was time to return to the United Kingdom. Not for a quick passport application and a dash back to Trinidad. For something much larger. My daughter's wedding. My grandchildren waiting for hugs. My mum and dad wanting a long catch up over tea. And Pookie, my beloved Tripitaka, had been asked to return to MasterChef UK as a guest judge for the next series.

So we packed our bags. We flew west instead of east. And we arrived in a grey British autumn that felt like a different planet after seven weeks of Bangkok humidity.

Next time, dear reader, I will tell you about the hair transformation. About the wedding speeches and the MasterChef green room. About trying to explain ciguatera to a six year old who just wants you to push the swing higher. And eventually, eventually, about our return to Sawasdeekat, waiting for us in Trinidad like a patient old friend.

Until then, keep searching for those hidden words. And remember. Pink hair seems like a good idea until you need a passport.

Ps.. I had to look up what Gadarene actually was - Gadarene comes from the Bible, specifically the Gospel story of the Gadarene Swine. So, Gadarene means a headlong, reckless, self‑destructive rush toward disaster. It describes a stampede, a panic, a collective madness where everyone runs off a cliff without thinking… Perfect for a spur of the moment eating challenge. Cool eh!?