No licence was required, and few questions of a legal nature were asked. It resembles a gigantic car boot sale, except without the cars. Trading is allowed between 6am and 9pm, though the police do not rush in to enforce closing time. Many people use the opportunity to dispose of household junk, while more enterprising folk buy wholesale and were using the opportunity to turn a handy profit on 10 green bottles of Heineken or 100g of Lebanese red. Were it not for the fact that everyone is in far too good a mood, you might feel that you have stumbled into a congregation of homeless people.
Homelessness is a real risk for visitors.
Increasingly frantic phone calls revealed that, of the city's stock of 32,000 beds, only one remained in the whole city. It turned out to be an oasis of wholesomeness in a city where sin seems embedded as firmly as the 13,659 wooden piles on which the Royal Palace stands. The bed rate of 11 entitles you to a smoke and alcohol-free environment, with a wide selection of religious literature in a dozen languages, and optional Bible classes. I checked in then slipped out as soon as I could, to greet a city swaggering with pride and staggering with the effects of an ambition range of mind-amending substances. You walk, and shop, and look.