After flying up from Surat Thani we landed in Bangkok at around 5pm Sunday 5th Jan (at present I am playing catch up on my blog sat on a Reunification sleeper train in Vietnam and remembering dates/ days is very hard! They've all rolled into one!). Anyways... At Bangkok we were, and after a half an hour Q for the taxi we finally made it to our hotel.

It was a nice hotel & close to the sky rail to head into the city but also close to the airport as we flew to Vietnam at 7am on the 7th plus with all the protests going on, staying in the city didn't really seem appealing. We chilled out that evening & ate in the restaurant who tried charging us loads extra on our bill. Unlucky for her we'd been in Thailand a while now and knew their tricks! That's probably the only downfall about Thailand, they know how to rob tourists! Every price they give you, you had to half it and barter them down and the taxis were just ridiculous prices around the islands (well for Thailand prices). We realised this when we jumped in a meter taxi in Bangkok for a 10/15 min journey which only cost 80 baht. At first he tried charging us 250 baht but we made him put the meter on after hearing it from Jamie HB. Cheeky or what! Around the islands we were getting charged around 500 for the same length of journey! That's about a tenner in the UK so same prices as back home... Mate we're in Thailand, not England!!

On Monday we headed on the sky rail to Siam which had a huge shopping mall! It was good to be in a city and be able to head into somewhere that was a little bit of normality... It definitely beat the Trafford centre! We took a look around the water fountains, Christmas trees & around 10 Thai people were sculpting a huge Disney sandcastle with characters all around as a tourist attraction. That was good to see in the progress of being made as the effort that was going into it was amazing! After browsing around Mac, Clinique, Benefit & numerous designer shops we stumbled upon H&M :0) I never usually find anything in H&M at home but I strolled out of this one an hour later with 2 new dresses, a skirt & 2 new tops! The only dilemma I had now was getting it to fit it my jammed packed 50L rucksack! Whoops.

Since it was our last day in Thailand we agreed we had to eat a proper Thai meal... And my god did we! It blew my mouth off! I'm a little bit soft when it comes to spicy food and Thailand definitely lived up to its expectation in the food department, it was just sometimes way too spicy for me. I still ate it though... After that we came across a really nice themed cake cafe called Mr Jones Orphanage so decided to have afternoon tea for a taste of home, plus I had to go in as it looked so cool! The place was themed with wooden railway tracks running through it with huge toy wooden trains, turning cogs hung from the ceiling and Teddy bears were dotted around the tables.. It was so good! We ordered a pot of tea for 2 which arrived in a china tea pot with miniature matching cups & saucers, a huge piece of homemade carrot cake, chocolate brownie & chocolate milk! The milk came in miniature milk bottles which I thought was amazing! Mmm mmm.

The next morning we was up at 5am for our taxi to the airport. It was good to meet up with Leanne, Lianne & Alice and hear their stories of Phi Phi & Krabi. They had spent 5 days there when we were in Ko Samui & they was on the same flight with us to Hanoi.

Next stop is to the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi.

Good bye Thailand and Good morning Vietnam!!!!