If you've ever traveled in London and taken the tube from Leicester Square to Covent Garden, you'll know from bitter experience that you should have walked because of all the locals that will tell you that you should have walked because it's only one stop and it's actually quicker to walk, actually and YOU SHOULD HAVE WALKED YOU KNOW-NOTHING CRETIN. In short: you should have walked. Well, the next time anyone tells you that they got the tube from Mansion House to Canon Street, you can tell them with no small amount of smugness: "Oh, you should have sprinted with such lung-busting effort that you got to the station marginally slower than the tube but with just enough time to collapse through the doors in an exhausted heap YOU REALLY SHOULD HAVE SPRINTED." That said, this is still pretty cool.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and my friend meets me at the Ratchatewi Sky Train stop. She wants to take me to this novelty café she’d heard about – “It’s meant to be super cute!” she tells me.

I’m not someone who is regularly swayed by public displays of wanton cuteness, but I was going to keep an open mind. As we got to the café, there were some clues as to what lay inside – plastic, manga-style cat models, walls full of child-like doodles and excited squeals coming from inside.

I peeked through the window, and even my jaded, seen-it-all, post-modern, end of times western eyes found it hard not to be completely charmed. Inside the café were these enchanting little creatures, running around, eating from bowls, preening themselves and generally being as adorable as you can imagine. I watched them play and eat and show off their multi-coloured coats and revel in their little toys and accessories. I couldn’t wait to get inside and among them, and a minute later, we were called in to be seated.

As we walked through the dining room, they shifted and stirred, some of them curling their legs up, squirming around, making way for us to sit down. Some of them were close up to our table, some in far corners...basically everywhere you looked, there was yet another and another, each more outlandishly adorable than the last. It was hard to know where to look. They made the sweetest little noises as their food came out, and I just wanted to take them all home with me, pinch their cute little ears, have them nibble on my fingers, and watch them as they ate their kibble with heartbreaking delicacy.

It’s no wonder they’re so universally loved, with their endearingly aloof air, their loveably quirky behaviour and unknowable ways – awwww, wook at you, sidling up to the table….what’s that you’re trying to say to me? Awwwwww…I don’t know what you want, I REALLY DON’T, but you look as cute as hell trying to tell me. What is it you want, you adorable little creature, you? What is it? Whadda ya waaaaaant? Is it this toy? Is it? Do you want to play? Do you? What’s that? Oh, you want to take my order? Fair enough.

Yes, there really should be more cafes full of Asian people. I could stay all day just watching them interact and play with cats. Oh yeah, there are cats in this café. I forgot to mention that. They were pretty cool too. Not sure how hygienic that can be, but they served decent coffee, I guess.

Shandy Pockets just arrived in Bangkok and rolled up to stay at their perennial base of operations, Aloft Hotel, which is on colourful Soi 11 in Sukhumvit. As well as being a solid Bangkok hotel, it always had the added bonus of looking over the weird space egg that was one of our favourite eating spots, Bed Supper Club. If Apple made restaurants, they would look like this, a none-more-white pod that somehow plopped down in the middle of Bangkok and started serving food and drink in between its avant-garde performance art shows.

Sadly, there's a giant iPod-shaped hole where BSC used to be, it having been demolished in our absence. This makes us sad as we were very much looking forward to eating squid-ink pasta and drinking bellinis while children in shark costumes danced their interpretation of Romeo and Juliet or whatever their next intra-meal show was going to be.

We've been here a number of times, and it's never been the same. For starters, it's all white exterior pervades the inside, too. Two white floors of dining space surround the central 'stage'. The dining spaces are large beds, and you recline to receive your food, so it kind of feels like brunch on the space shuttle. I can't remember there ever being a menu. Things just kind of arrived, delivered by models in utilitarian overalls like they've been forced to work in a space quarry for being too good looking.

As you reclined and ate and spilled almost everything that came along, situationist art happenings began to take place. Artists zip-lined from the ceiling, or silent dancers moved to an unheard beat or costumes were handed out to illustrate various ages of peace. On one occasion, my friend Ariel and I were handed lab coats and headphones as we entered, and we had to sit in absolute silence for about an hour, only being allowed to communicate via pen and paper or making patterns in the dry rice they'd put out. I know, I know, it sounds hipster-level pretentious, but it always felt like there was  a self-regarding humour to it and it was never annoying. If anything, it was worth watching the actual models who would turn up and be baffled by everything happening around them.

It was one of the first places I wrote about as a travel journalist, and never seemed to lose its creativity in the decade I went there. RIP, Bed Supper Club. I'm going to tell myself you just fired up your engines and took off.

Ever wonder JUST WHY some hotels leave chocolates on your pillow? US NEITHER, but glambot surrealist Eddie Izzard offers one theory as he wades his way through the US and stops at St Louis:

As we build up to our New Orleans special next week, we were thrilled to come across this example of perhaps the most defensive guest policy ever written.

The Historic Creole Lodge in the Marigny is relentlessly specific about what it is, and it doesn't want you as a guest. I mean, it wants you if you're not interested in 'luxuries' such as breakfast.

Their home page, which unfolds in increasingly hysterical language, makes this unmistakably clear (we'll use their bolding, underlining, excessive exclamation marks, etc): "Our area is NOT for modern enthusiasts and we ask you to not book here if you think we are a modern day bed and breakfast because we are NOT!!!!"

Erm, OK.

It seems that the establishment has had a continuous conveyorbelt of guests all expecting modern conveniences. Well, excuse us for turning up but The Creole Lodge has had it with you people and has decided to get mad about it. We'll allow them to state their case with their own brand of Southern charm:

"We welcome all people to our home but beware that you should read before you book a local stay because it may not be what you expect if you are status quo or have an obsessive compulsive disorder and we DO NOT WANT THOSE THOSE UNEDUCATED TRAVELERS STAYING HERE!   Here are 2 recent stories that we want to share with you about uneducated travelers:

1.  We had a teacher to stay here recently who was uneducated about the type of Inn we are and she was distraught because she had high class expectations.  So please read before you book! 

2.  We just had another person stay here who goes by Edward S. who was rude and arrogant and then preceded to degrade us on a travel site.  He "thought" he was staying at a "Bed and Breakfast" but arrived to "no breakfast"!  Needless to say his expectations were not properly aligned.   Being an educated and informed reader and just reading this site would have saved him from being so disappointed that he wasn't going to get breakfast in bed.......lol  One really has to ask themselves "can anyone get a Bed and Breakfast for $49 a nite especially in New Orleans?"  If you answered yes to this question then do us and yourself a favor and don't even think about booking a stay here!  The owners of this establishment are military field grade officers and Ivy League graduates and we state clearly what type of place the Creole Inn is and the majority of our guests clearly state that also!  All we ask Edward S. is to educate yourself before you tell the public how disappointed you were.  We are here for guests who are nice and want a clean cheaper place to stay and not for arrogant people who have no respect for others."

Yes, 'teacher' (implication: free thinking Communist) and 'Edward S' (occupation unknown but certainly not a military field grade officer), with your unaligned, high class expectations, with your non-Ivy League "thoughts" and access to hotel review websites. FEEL THE WRATH OF THE CREOLE LODGE. We spell NITE however we want.

We especially like: 

The inference of "goes by", like Edward S is the criminal pseudonym of some gentleman con artist who travels the country undermining the hospitality industry.

The tab on the home page that is marked 'Buy Self Help Book' - the link goes nowhere so perhaps it's just a reminder that the owners wrote to themselves.

This glorious message: "If you require the stay of an aristocrat we ask that you kindly stay somewhere else and not with us." Yeah, you aristocrats. With your breakfasts.

The image at the bottom, which simply says: Love and Laughter Welcome Here.

Well, quite.

See it in its full glory.