We arrive at our guest house in Bangkok, tired from a seriously crap sleeper bus aka dilapidated small mini bus. Checking in we find out quickly that this guesthouse is a little quirky. We are given lots of vouchures for various things and a gold membership card for 3 years. Anything that you may want that is not on a voucher you have to pay for. At least the membership card gives us food half price which seemed to us was a fair price and not a bargain. So after a lovely Thai curry each, a call home, shower we fall asleep around 5pm and don't wake until 7am the next day making us super fresh and ready for Bangkok.

Heading into town on the sky train, our plan was to walk and see some of the Wats ( temples) and head to a tour agent to book our transport to Koh Tao. As soon as we got off the train we were greeted by an overly helpful Thai man who wanted to help us and suggested were we could go, so much so that he called over a tuk-tuk and instructed him where to take us and that we should not walk as it's too far "40km". After a lots of thanks but no thanks we headed on with our original plan of walking.... Why not? We like walking, it's the best way to get the feel of the place and we knew that it wasn't 40km. More likely 5-6 km. So 5 minutes later we are greeted by another very friendly Thai man who claimed he worked for the US embassy and we shouldn't walk, it's too far and it's dangerous, we should take the boat taxi. After again thanks but no thanks we left the helpful Thai man shouting at us that we should not walk. After the hawkers at Angkor Wat this is not what we needed but no matter how polite we were they still seemed to get upset. We carried on as it looked fine and the guy in the hostel hadn't mentioned anything about dangers when we had chatted with him on where we were headed. So now deciding that we wouldn't talk to any more Thai people until we reached where we wanted to go.... 15 minutes later we bump into another Thai man and this time we approach him as we are a little uncertain of what road is what - the tourist maps are not great and many roads are not on or not shaped as they are on map. After he sets us straight he goes into the same old bla bla bla that the other Thai guys had gone into and that we should get the boat. So continuing on our way we head through China Town and although many shops are shut the streets are alive with lots of sellers selling anything from food & drink to second hand brass kettles?? An hour and 30 minutes later we arrive at Wat Poh and pleased that we hadn't taken too much notice of the not so helpful Thai men. We later found out that one of the scams in operation in Bangkok is helpful well dressed friendly Thai men try to help you but you end up paying lots of money for tours, boats, tuk-tuks, etc. We found a government run tourist info near the wats who found us a reasonable tuk-tuk and took us to the main tourist office (TAT). This tuk-tuk was the most powerful tuk-tuk i have ever been in. When he applied the gas there was a G force!! Excellent for weaving in busy Bangkok traffic.
After booking our transport to Koh Tao we were then taken to a "cheap good restaurant"... it wasn't really what i would call cheap - as much as a nice restaurant at home and the spidey senses started to tell us that we had been had. We were about to leave so the waiter said we should share a curry as there was enough, we were really hungry and thought that this might be ok but unbeknown to us there were hidden charges (service and VAT) on top and so it still ended up being expensive. Annoying.

We then headed to a market at Mo Chit, it was heaving and huge. Lots of old clothes and food stalls with the occasional British Royal Mail postman bag for sale.

Our last day in Bangkok brought thunder storms and these persisted on and off all day, we decided on a trip to the cinema to watch The Last Air Bender. You think this would be straight forward but no, before the film started we had to stand for a short film on HRH the King of Thailand. It seems the Thais are really fond of their royal family. It was now time to head back to the TAT for our coach, but it was rush hour and in Bangkok this is extremely busy. The sky train was packed like the London tube at rush hour and then we tried to get a tuk-tuk but there didn't seem to be any. We started walking in the direction of the TAT panicking that we would miss the coach. A tuk-tuk stopped but would only accept a fair four times the norm as he knew we had a bus to catch so we told him no thanks. It was now thundering again and the rain drenched us as we ran/walked towards the TAT. A nice tuk-tuk driver stopped and offered a good price so we arrived 15minutes late but thankfully hadn't missed the sleeper coach which really was a sleeper coach. Hurray!

Helena + Andy

Croc watch = 0