One Night In Bangkok (Original Single Version / From “Chess”)

Bangkok, Oriental setting

And the city don't know that the city is getting

The creme de la creme of the chess world in a

Show with everything but Yul Brynner

Time flies doesn't seem a minute

Since the Tirolean spa had the chess boys in it

All change don't you know that when you

Play at this level there's no ordinary venue

It's Iceland or the Philippines or Hastings or

or this place!

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster

The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free

You'll find a god in every golden cloister

And if you're lucky then the god's a she

I can feel an angel sliding up to me

One town's very like another

When your head's down over your pieces, brother

It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity

To be looking at the board, not looking at the city

Whaddya mean? Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town

Tea, girls, warm, sweet

Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite

Get Thai'd! You're talking to a tourist

Whose every move's among the purest

I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble

Not much between despair and ecstasy

One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble

Can't be too careful with your company

I can feel the devil walking next to me

Siam's gonna be the witness

To the ultimate test of cerebral fitness

This grips me more than would a

Muddy old river or reclining Buddha

And thank God I'm only watching the game controlling it

I don't see you guys rating

The kind of mate I'm contemplating

I'd let you watch, I would invite you

But the queens we use would not excite you

So you better go back to your bars, your temples, your massage

parlours

One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster

The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free

You'll find a god in every golden cloister