The suspicious death of a British stockbroker's daughter in a cheap Bangkok hotel was being investigated by Thai police last night.

Jayne Nixon, 26, was discovered on a bed by a maid at the building in the popular backpacker district of Banglampu yesterday morning.

Police Captain Suchart Kiram, who is heading the investigation, said there were no signs of bruising or a struggle, but the man she checked in with had disappeared and was being sought 'as a matter of urgency'.

He said there was no evidence of drugs or associated paraphernalia in the room, but the body was taken to Bangkok's Rama Hospital for forensic tests, which usually take weeks in Thailand.

Jayne's death comes two years after the unsolved murder of another British backpacker in Thailand, 23-year-old Kirsty Jones.

A spokesman for the £6-a-night Nakon Ping Hotel said Jayne booked into room 148 on Friday with a man who appeared to be her boyfriend. The couple were later seen going out for the evening, though nobody saw them return.

Neither the police nor the hotel would release the man's name or his nationality, save to say that he was not a Thai national.

Last night, Jayne's distraught parents, William Nixon and his wife Sandra, were still waiting at their £400,000 home in the Oxfordshire village of Kencot, near Lechlade, for confirmation of their daughter's death from the Foreign Office.

Mr Nixon, who recently retired from the London Stock Exchange, said last night: 'We drove her to Heathrow on Monday and then she telephoned on Wednesday to say that she'd arrived safely and was going to book into a backpackers' hotel.

'She said that it was very hot and that she was eating rice and vegetables and avoiding eating meat. She was well and excited about the start of what for her was to be the adventure of a lifetime.

'She had decided to go on a backpacking trip after splitting up with her boyfriend Nick who she'd been with for six years. She gave up her job as a legal secretary and sold her home to go.'

Mr Nixon said that she appeared to be following in the footsteps of her brother Chris, 28, and sister Sara, 30, who had both travelled.

He went on: 'Jayne was going to do Thailand then go on to Australia and New Zealand. It was an open-ended trip lasting perhaps six months.

'Chris had done the same recently and they talked all about it. Jayne was not a naive girl, she was well aware of the risks and dangers and read the newspapers regularly to keep up on world events. She was no fool.

'I just cannot believe this has happened. I am absolutely devastated.

'The last time she spoke to us she said it was going to be a two-minute conversation and it ended up as four. She was literally standing at a payphone with her pack on her back when she spoke.

'We had not heard anything about this man she'd met. The only thing she said was that she had met a girl on the plane and there had been a lot of single people flying to Thailand to do what she was doing and travel.

'I cannot take it in. She was a tall, fairhaired, beautiful girl and I just can't believe what I am being told.'

Mr Nixon was trying to contact the Thai police and the British Embassy 'but things are very difficult because it is night time out there and I'm having very little luck'.

Sandra Nixon added: 'It seems to be a mystery but the question on my mind is who is this man she was with and why did he vanish?'

Nick Hayes, Jayne's former long-term boyfriend, said he was devastated. Mr Hayes, 29, from Tring, Hertfordshire, said they had sold their cottage in the town last year when they split up.

'We had been together for six years,' he said. 'Jayne was a really friendly, bubbly person and did not have an enemy in the world. She had wanted to see the world and used the money from the sale of our house to go.'

He said Jayne's family were originally from Preston in Lancashire and had lived in Berkhamstead until moving to Oxfordshire about a year ago.

Jayne had always enjoyed good health, he said, and 'would never have anything to do with drugs'.

The Banglampu district is Bangkok's busiest backpacker area where rooms can be found for as little as £1 a night.

It is also home to many long-stay Westerners who are drawn there by the free-spirited lifestyle and access to cheap drugs.

Thai police have still been unable to solve the murder of another British backpacker, Kirsty Jones, a 23-year-old Liverpool University graduate from Brecon, Wales, who was raped and murdered in a guesthouse in Chiang Mai, about 500 miles north of Bangkok, two years ago.

Their investigation was described as a shambles and they were accused of abducting and beating one of the suspects.

In January, the Royal Thai Police in Bangkok announced the formation of a new unit to take over the investigation into Kirsty's murder from local officers following a review of the case by detectives from Wales.