Alison: The flight in to Bangkok was a rough one. Lots of turbulence so very relieved to touch down. My friend Fay met us at the airport. Many of you will know her but for those who don't, Fay is a very good friend of mine from both school and university :-) She had made the brave decision to fly out to Thailand on her own to meet us for a couple of weeks. We stayed in a hotel near to the airport for the first night as we arrived late. Nigel and I had a reasonable nights sleep but unfortunately Fay had a little visitor in her room in the form of a lizard which we think was a gecko. Fay was very pleased to leave that room in the morning! We had decided to throw ourselves in at the deep end and stay on Khao San Road which is the main backpackers street in Bangkok. It is what you imagine a classic travellers street to look like. A mixture of dread locked westerners wearing tie dye trousers, lager louts, ravers and a tamer group of travellers like ourselves. There are market stalls, bars, restaurants and pad Thai vendors everywhere. This place was quite a shock after the China experience! It isn't normally recommended to stay on Khao San Road because of the noise but we booked in to a hotel right at the end of the strip which had been recommended to us by a few people. It is called Buddy Lodge and it has a roof top swimming pool which is a bit of a luxury in Bangkok.

We didn't spend much time in Bangkok but we still managed to squeeze in a few interesting nights out. On our first night we went to get food and a massive storm started out of nowhere. The rain was hammering down. We sat in a wooden open front bar which was very cosy until the wind sprung up and a cockroach blew in and landed on Fay's face! Funny now...wasn't at the time. On our second night we over indulged on vodka buckets, almost ran out of money and found out that credit cards are not accepted as a method of payment in Thailand McDonald's. On our third night we decided a trip to Bangkok wouldn't be complete without seeing the famous Patpong red light district with it's lady boys! We weren't sure exactly where it was but we got on the sky train and headed off. We had been on the sky train a couple of times but something about it was different this particular evening. It didn't take long to work out that there was an unusually high number of older western men that were travelling alone. We knew when to get off when they all piled off the train!! We arrived very early so there wasn't much to see really. There were a few scantily clad dancers in doorways and a few questionable 'females' hanging about but nothing too shocking on blatant display. The most disturbing thing was the men trying to get punters in. They were approaching literally everyone with price lists. The red light district is a bit of a tourist attraction now and even has a market running through the centre of it. The market is an attraction in itself so it's possible that some people there may not even realise that they are stood in the red light district. God help any of those oblivious bargain hunters who also happen to be keen table tennis players because the 'ping pong' on offer in this part of town is NOTHING like the usual version at home. Interesting that Nigel was the only one to have heard of the Bangkok version of ping pong.........!!

Nigel: The hotel was very nice and was just far enough away from the bars that we didn't get kept awake all night. The first day we were there we thought we would venture up to the swimming pool in the evening and swim before tea. We had just lay down on the sun loungers and I had just got into the pool when out of no where thunder and lighting came above us and that was the end of our swimming session. The next day we decided that it was time to visit some of the sites of Bangkok. The first place we went too was the Grand Palace which is the Royal residency of Thailand. There is a very strict dress code that you have to adhere too, which we didn't come prepared for (actually Alison & I didn't) but luckily there are clothes that you're allowed to hire. Unfortunately you're not allowed to choose the colour of the items and I ended up with some very coulourful purple trousers. Once inside the palace the colours and buildings just hit you straight away. It seems that they started building and were unable to stop until they had filled most of the land. It was very nice and well worth the entrance fee. One thing, no sorry two things that are not good about Bangkok is the smell and the transport. We tried to get up to the northern part of the city as there is a market that has over 6000 stalls in there. It wasn't through lack of trying to get there (even the taxi men said they wouldn't take us) but we didn't manage to make it as Bangkok is a logistical night mare.

As Alison said, on the road that we stayed on there is a lot of stuff going on and there are many market stalls, so on the last night we went out looking for sun glasses. There are plenty to choose from but luckily Fay and I manage to find a pair on the same stall so we were able to haggle with them, well sort of as they did give us the wrong change, but anyway they were still cheap. We knew that the items sold are imitations of the real thing but out of some sheer fluke I had manage to pick up a real pair of Rayban sun glasses. The disappointing thing was that Fay's unfortunately weren't so the atmosphere after the discovery was a little saddened by this. For the record though, I think Alison & Fay had a conspiracy against me as 3 weeks later Alison "accidentally broke them" and they are now in the bin but I enjoyed them while they lasted.

I wasn't that keen on going to Patpong and it was Alison and Fay who were instigating us going and, as it was Fay's holiday and I wanted to make sure they were safe, I agreed to go along "for them". As Alison said we weren't there long but in the time we were, I had to pull Fay out of 3 bars and Alison was warming up to have a game of table tennis. If only she knew. The next day we were off to the airport early ready to fly out to our next destination, Koh Samui.