Well this is nearly the end of my Bangkok stint with Mark, we head our seperate ways tomorrow and I go and join a tour group.

It's been really interesting we've just done the normal tourist things, visited the Grand Palace and the temple of the Emerald Budda, hired a long boat and toured the canals, ventured to the markets in China town at night and viewed the very expensive shops in Siam Square.

There are people that stand near tourist attractions here and try and tell you the attraction is closed so they can divert you somewhere else - I cleverly read the guide book so was prepared for such eventualities! This very thing happened at the Grand Palace and I felt quite proud of myself as we strolled in. Later in the day we were haggling with a tuk tuk driver to take us to the Dusit Palace and zoo and he kept insisting it was closed - but no I was having none of that I insisted he take us there forth with. Once we arrived we noticed a huge amount of buses parked in the way and as the tuk tuk driver sped away he pointed us in the direction of the zoo. We headed that way and found rather a lot of people dressed in red!?! Those stupid bloody protesters that were on the news last month at the airport had only got the place shut down hadn't they!! There were thousands of them, thankfully they were friendly enough as we wondered through looking a tad out of place!! Should of listed to the tuk tuk driver though!

The funniest event with the tuk tuks (or nip tucks as Mark refers to them) was last night when we were getting a tuk tuk back to the hotel; the geezer gave us a price which sounded alright to us so Mark went to trot round the other side to get in (the wrong side) and the driver only thought we were walking off coz he gave us such a bad price and promptly halved the price!!

I can't believe how expensive things are; to go out to dinner it's about half the price as in England - I expected it to be loads cheaper than that! Also things in the guide book that were 70B at time of print (Sept 07) are now being charged at 200B - that's a hell of an increase! I also can't believe how many food stands they have, they are everywhere, boy these people can eat!!

Overall I have enjoyed it here but it's definately not somewhere you'd want to spend too long!