Last night in Bangkok and typing this whilst Shirley is cooking me a lovely steak as a farewell meal - I've been so spoiled since I've been here - manicures, pedicures, hair conditioning treatment (to let my hair recover from the de-lousing :) and general lazing around and drinking wine. Think I have probably gained around a stone with the general lack of activity, but thought it would be good for me to pack those calories in before the infamous 'Delhi belly' hits me :), Hitting India with mixed feelings - everyone I have met on my travels has varying stories about India - it appears you either love it or totally hate it - not sure which camp I will fall into, but slightly apprehensive about going to find out. In any event, only a few hours left in Bangkok, so enjoying a nice glass of red waiting for my steak to appear in front of me like the spoiled madam I am...:) Had a great time here and thought it would pass slowly as I had no plans, but it has flown by! I had a trawling around the shops day which was nice, stopping for lunch, afternoon tea etc and then decided to visit the sites I missed last time I was here. I fancied the floating market, Bridge on the River Kwai and the Tiger Temple - thought I had hit on a brilliant idea when I found a tour doing all of them in one day - Shirley's look when I told her gave me the first indication that it wasnt one of my better ideas. I took a moto down to the pick up point at 0615 - got picked up at time and we then proceeded to trawl around the extremely busy traffic to pick up twenty million other tourists. Although I know I should be more tolerant now, have discovered, I'm not.....:). The whole trip was a bit of a nightmare - the floating market was okay, but we were herded around like cattle and didnt have long enough in any one place to have a decent experience of them. Was really looking forward to the tiger temple, but we arrived late, so although I did get some photographs with the tigers (which as actually pretty scary for me), didnt have enough time to visit the temple. A couple of tiger cubs were taken in by the monks some years ago, they kept getting more added and they now have around 20 fully grown tigers hich have all been reared by hand by the monks and are really 'friendly' - hmmmmmmm - never trust animals or children has always been my philosophy, but they were chained up and although I did feel apprehensive I went along with the photo opportunity. If I thought that was bad, the 4 hour trip back to Bangkok was worse - my mini bus was full of chinese tourists loudly yapping the whole way - the driver thought it would be a good idea to drown them out with classic 70s pop so by the time I hit Bangkok in a traffic jam decided I couldnt stand it anymore and jumped out and took the first skytrain back. I was absolutely starving by 915 as I didnt really fancy the fly infested lunch that was part of the trip from hell!! Most of you will know how moodly I am with back of food, so stopped at a street market stall and restored my good mood with some amazing food and a beer before going back to Shirley's. Next day was a lateish start to Koh Samet - Shirley's husband let us have his driver so we drove down to the pier in style anyway! Although Shirley promised me a speed boat in true ex-pat style, the reality was very different. The weather was so bad no speedboats were going over so we had to go on the local ferry which was a 'colourful' experience as we watched all the food, drink etc. being loaded on this boat to take over to the island. Safety is really ingrained in my brain now and I kept thinking no-one is checking how many people are on this boat, they are just loading them on fag in hand without a care in the world. I had a look around the boat and found 4, yes 4, life jackets (must have been around 30 people on board) thought to myself - hopefully there are more on board, but in case there aren't, Im sitting here near them so we were alright jack!! Crossing was pretty choppy and although I expected to be puked on by Shirls, we managed to make it across with no mishap. We got the Baht bus to our hotel, which was bumpy and I was a bit worried by the enormous puddles, but well, well it is rainy season after all! Arrived at our hotel which was lovely and we got a fabulous room right on the beach - boys were delighted. We decided to go in one room and Im sure the hotel staff thought we were lesbians as Samet is known for its gay scene, but who cares.....!? We had a lovely meal sitting on the beach and a few wines - kids got tired eventually and went back the room which was around 2 minutes from the restaurant. All was going well until Finlay came back to find us and we decided to finish our bottle in the balcony - or so we thought! Kids had been watching a movie and tv was on full blast - Ethan had fallen asleep and although we banged on every window and woke up all of our neighbours - he didnt move a muscle the whole time - out for the count! We went to the reception, but it was closed and no-one was remotely interested so we went back for more banging on the window - still not a movement from Ethan so back again to reception. We made them listen this time and the only person who had a key was the DJ - the club was very close, but luckily the club was very quiet as the music came to a complete stand still and a very disgruntled DJ came to our room and finally agreed to let us in!! So, just had dinner - yum a French-Thai steak, whatever that is...:) Anyway, continuing on, we eventually got into the apartment at which time Ethan woke up - kids eh!!???? The next day we had a day on the beach which although it was overcast ended up with a really sunburned back and Finlay was burnt to a crisp too. Dinner at Tubtim (a gay resort) was amazing, which was totally expected as I know gay people here have higher expectations where food is concerned! So, earlyish night and then a quick foot scrub on the beach before setting off for the public ferry home. We arrived at the pier to be met by a weird guy asking if we had tickets, when we said no, he took us to a ticket desk whereupon we were charged 200 baht for 4 tickets, seemed okay until he said come with me - he took us to a pier that was filled with cargoish boats - not very appealing, expecially when we found our boat which wasnt even tied to the pier - we had a dangerous climb over another boat before even getting there - yes we were right, a cargo boat which they had conned us on to - Shirley noticed them paying half of our ticket price to another guy, so guess it was to be expected when you have no idea what you are supposed to pay. The lifejacket scenario was even worse there with still only around 4 jackets and about 40 locals on board ..... but I made things worse by freaking Shirley out by planning our escape route before the boat even left and again made us sit near the only life jackets I could find on board - OMG - those HSE chats at work have definitely made an impression on me....:). She was only worried about how to stop being seasick before I got her all safety conscious....:) Anyway, we were met by Richard's driver again so the 3 hour journey back to Bangkok was easy and uneventful - short of a massive rainstorm, which felt fine sitting in a nice car....:) Next stop Delhi - hopefully a good experience!? Hope all is well in sunny Aberdeen....xxxxxxxx