The overnight train from Chaing Mai to Bangkok was surprisingly comfy and spacious and even had its own party cabin! I woke early and opened the curtain to see brick ruins covered in monkeys. I recognised it and realised that I had seen this on 'An Idiot Abroad' when Carl came to Thailand and visited Lapburi, this also meant we were delayed as this was about 3 1/2 hours from Bangkok.

After arriving in Bangkok Amy and I headed to the Food Loft (one of my favourite places to eat in Bangkok) and ate pasta (which I had been craving for a while), before heading to Jim Thompson's house for a bit of culture. After visiting a few of the massive shopping malls we headed back to the hotel for our last 'group' meal. The 3 of us went to Cabbages and Condoms for dinner, where the food is great and lots of things are made out of condoms and sat outside under the fairy lights to enjoy our last meal together.

In the morning Amy and I caught the metro to Chatuchak Market. We were there for a good few hours and I brought a lovely maxi dress (the maxi dresses out here are perfect length for me as thai people are short). We spent a good few hours at the market but I dont think we even covered half of it. The market sold everything you could think of and was so organised and divided into sections, but very hot to walk around.

Amy then left to start the next part of her adventure while I grabbed some dinner and had a relaxing bath and chilled out night in the hotel, before heading to see Lucie, Ben and Delilah in the morning.

Unfortunately when I got there Lucie was really poorly so I did not see her for a few days as she was taken into hospital. For these few days I tried to be good and go swimming, reply to emails etc and I also looked after Delilah so Ben could visit Lucie in hospital.

When Lucie wasn home it was great to sit and catch up and enjoy sofa days (as I dont know the next chance I will get for a sofa day). Luckily by the end of the week she was feeling much better so we were able to attend our cookery class 'Cooking With Poo'. Our fist stop was a huge market where Poo walked us round showing us all the different wierd and wonderful things you could buy, including fish, meat, insects, frogs, fruit and veg. It was definately an experience having fish flapping so much they fell onto the floor, seeing a pigs head just sat on the table, dried insects and fish turned inside out and put on kebab sticks, to name a few! After the market we headed for the slums where she lives and after she showed us where she lives we headed to her kitchen to start our class. We cooked lemon grass salad, stuffed omlette and massaman curry and they all tasted great! Poo also made sticky rice with mango for us to have as a desert. After buying a cook book, getting it signed by Poo and having a few photos taken it was time to go, but was such a great thing to do with Lucie, and would recomend to anyone!

Once back at Lucie and Ben's it was time to pack and get a taxi across town to start my next tour.

I checked into my hotel and headed to my welcome meeting with Brian our tour leader. 3 of us were joing the tour (2 English and 1 Irish) and after our meeting we headed out for something to eat and a few drinks so we could meet some of the other 9 peoplae who had already been on the tour for 5 weeks. We had the following day in Bangkok, which I spent catching a boat and the skytrain to the shopping centres, before getting a night bus down the coast so we could catch a ferry to Koh Samui!