Directly opposite the Landmark Hotel is a narrow alley that you have probably walked past. Many times if you've stayed in the Nana area, hundreds of times if that part of town is your playground. At the end of the alley is the Check Inn 99, not a hotel as its name suggests but a bar and restaurant with a house band, a proper dance floor, tables and wicker chairs with space around them and hostesses. The bar, and the whole package is very much a throwback to the Bangkok of old.

The venue's staff is one big family, with the chef having clocked up 47 years on the property and the "new" waiter still serving his apprenticeship with just 27 years of service. But to many the face of the venue and the star of the show is Mama Noi, the venue's mamasan who has been working in Bangkok's nightlife since before I was born.

I met with Mama Noi as she is known and spent an enjoyable couple of hours hearing her story and looking through her photo albums the old-fashioned way, browsing photos that had become a deep shade of sepia without a hint of Photoshop and not an IPad to be seen. Mama Noi took her time warming to the whipper snapper with lots of questions who was furiously making notes, so I have filled in a few gaps with anecdotes from the Mama Noi story.

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