Day 43 -

Leave for the mainland at 1pm, taxi then boat (which doesn't have air-con so is rather sweaty and humid). We get to the train station, book the next train which leaves at 8:30pm (doh no sleepers left!), get something to eat as we haven't eaten all day yet and the wait for our train whilst surrounded by monks.

Our train runs through the night and gets into Bangkok early in the morning. Our train is also cockroach infested so neither of us gets any sleep. Ew they are everywhere. Big, fat mother of all cockroaches crawling up the seats in front of us, along the floor and down the sides of the cabin. Gross, gross, gross….

Day 44 -

GET ME OFF THAT TRAIN! We arrive in Bangkok at 8am after the worst journey of our lives which still makes me shiver thinking about it now.

We get a taxi to the Khao San Road which is the backpacker place to be! Lots of bars and clubs, markets and guesthouses run along both sides of the road which suits us just fine.

We find a nice hotel to sleep in tonight which has a pool on the roof, air-con and a TV, sweet!

Fay had told us about the T.A.T. Office (Tourism Authority of Thailand) which is a government run travel agency which sorts out all of your traveling requirements to your own itinerary for the whole of Thailand at quite reasonable prices. As we new the route we wanted to take around Thailand we took this to one of the offices and the man there sorted it all out for us.

The next 33 days are now going to be stress free as we have all of our accommodation, transportation, some activities and monument admission all sorted out and paid for in the overall price. No more hanging around at bus stations, lugging our bags around in the heat or cockroach infested trains!

We did a quick calculation to see how much we would have spent if we had done the same trip on our own and we think we would have spent more so hopefully this is the best way to do it.

After the T.A.T. Office we went in search for a water park which is something we have wanted to do since we arrived! We found one called Siam Park about 1 hour out of the city. We called down a taxi and got on our way.

There park was really good, lots of slides, pools and water sprays. There were also a lot of other rides, mainly rollercoasters but we were too chicken to go on them!

After a few hours we headed back to the Khao San. At night we mooched up and down the road, stopping for a few drinks here and there, looking at the clothes stalls and got a bite to eat.

So far we love Bangkok!

Day 45 -

Today we wanted to head to Chatachuk Weekend Market which is the biggest weekend market in Thailand. We got there for about 11am and my god it was massive! Apparently over 200,000 people visit this market over the weekend, every weekend so you can imagine how big it was.

There was a huge food area selling everything from fruit and veg, fish, sweets, and tons of meat with flies all over them!

Then the clothes area. Mountains upon mountains of clothes piled everywhere; you wouldn't know where to begin!

My main intention for coming to the market was to get some new clothes as I hadn't bought any in a while and also I wanted them to be dirt cheap. Unfortunately, because the market was so well known now, it attracts so many tourists that the prices aren't as cheap as you would expect for a market. A pair of trousers were probably about GBP5.00 which isn't that much but Primark probably does the same pair for cheaper so I refused to pay! We are trying to be a frugal as possible at the moment as Anth kept reminding me so unless I saw a pair of trousers say for 50p I wasn't buying!

We found also that the Thai salesmen refuse to budge even a penny on the price so our bartering efforts were pointless too.

Anyway I didn't want to leave the market empty handed so I ended up buying some tags for my bag, an apple shake and a memory card, just what a girl wants when trying to indulge in some retail therapy!

As most of the market was underneath plastic sheets, like marquee type material, we were hot and sweaty when we finally left and just headed back to the hotel for a cold shower.

After this we went out onto the Khao San Road where the clothes and such like seemed to be cheaper than the market we had visited today. I ended up with a few tops and a couple of pairs of trousers and Anth and I both ended up with dreadlocks.

YES DREADLOCKS! We had seen a few people getting it done and both wanted it for ourselves so we spent the next 7 hours (about 3.5 hours for Anth) sitting on the Khao San Road having a drink whilst getting our hair dreaded which, I may add, is rather painful.

After this we went back to the hotel to check out what we looked like maaaan!