Bangkok

After the long 12 hour flight, 7 different timezones & several in flight movies we finally arrived in Bangkok. Getting off the plane the first thing that hits you is the heat. At last we felt like we were somewhere that wasn't the cold UK.
We were a little wary about coming to Bangkok due to the riots two weeks prior, but the positive side of it was we got a free visa and other perks :)
Having nothing but our first nights accommodation booked we worked out how to get to the city centre. After an hours bus journey, we were dropped off in the middle of a typical busy suburb and first impressions were "wow, this place is intense."
The streets were quite narrow but crammed full of traffic. The pavements were lined with hawkers selling everything from red T-Shirts to red curries so it was a challenge to say the least trying to find the hostel with heavy backpacks. After a few hours much needed sleep we woke up in the middle of the night (UK morning time) and went on the search of some food. As Bangkok never sleeps, we were spoilt for choice so we found a little old lady who cooked us two delicious red curries for $1, our first of many, Happy Days!
The next day fighting the jet lag, we ventured off with the Bangkok map in our pocket to explore the city. First stop China Town with noodle bars a plenty. Everywhere you looked there was some sort of Chinese food being consumed or cooked. Every building seemed to have a big neon sign attached, but we hadn't come all the way to Thailand to see Chinese things so carried on to the temples.
We were a little wary of tuk-tuk drivers ripping people off, so we decided to walk. After a few temple visits and blaring 30 degree heat we decided to sit down and chill out. We were joined moments later by a couple of friendly Thai ladies. We were swapping language tips and they told us that the exact place we were, two weeks prior the riots were going on!! They pointed to where someone got shot ahhhh, literally 15 meters from where we were sat. They told us where we should visit and hailed us a tuk-tuk.
Our first tuk-tuk experience was pretty scary to say the least but soon we got used to them. Although they are the smallest things on the road, they act like the biggest. Our driver was a young guy who liked driving as fast as he could up until the last second, then slamming on the break.
We saw the Golden Mountain with a beautiful view of the city, Marble Palace, Lucky Buddha and Grand Palace which contains a beautiful Emerald Buddha that dates back to the 14th century.

The next day we went to Siam center, which was a much more developed part of Bangkok, big shiny shopping plaza's, malls and restaurants. This is where we watched England loose against Germany in the world cup tent (Al was quite sad). The Thai people didn't seem to care who wins as everyone cheered every time anyone scored!! Later that day we had an amazing Thai BBQ.
Our last day we were curious about the seedier side of Bangkok. We were on a tuk-tuk on way to town and he asked "you wanna see ping pong show". Without giving it too much thought we agreed and we really shouldn't have as a couple of minutes later we found our selves in a dodgy, dark back street being told to go into what looked like a garage. There was a few other tourist tricked into the same place who warned us not to go in. We quickly jumped out the tuk-tuk for a quick taxi ride to the actual Patpong area full of Go Go bars and you can imagine the rest...