Hey peeps. Finally got to Bangkok last night after a tiring flight. On arrival we were pleasantly surprised by the new airport but once we were driving through the city, passing all the slums..(and we MEAN slums) and dodgy street corners with some questionable genders we suddenly felt extremely homesick but we are putting this down to tiredness and culture shock. When we got to Khaosan Road we were petrified and felt vulnerable with all our luggage, so crowded and some wierd people trying to sell us..

Got to the hotel, room seemed nice at first sight, for $10 a night, but on close inspection..there were small curly hairs on the bed and some questionable stains which carly had to sleep on. But thankgod for our sleepingbag liners, pillowcases and 3 locks on the door with an industrial strength padlock which slightly worried us but guess its better than none at all!!! But soo glad we had an air conditioned room..its SWELTERING out here!!

Had an AWFUL night sleep litch 1.5 hours coz of jetlag but set off at 7 this morning to Damnoen Saduak floating Market where we did a tad of haggling. Carly got a top for 400 baht from a nicely haggled original price of 700! we really lived the life, drinking from coconuts, eating fresh pineaple dad! which was strangely salty!? and only 10p. The actual boat ride to the market was amazin, and rather high speed so considering carly's fear of boats and laurens habits of falling off them we really done well! we saled through hundreds of coconut and mango trees, but despite this tropical setting we felt like we were at a theme park! had to que to get on a boat and they took our picture as we sailed off and wen we left the market they shoved a china plate under our noses that (to our horror) had our picture printed on it!

Our tour also included a visit to a orchid and coconut plantation where we ate coconut sugar and done somemore shopping.  Then it was onto the Royal Thai Handicraft Centre which was amazing, Charles you would have loved it, i took lots of picys for you-bet youv never seen anything like that at work before (although my button mite give them a run for their money). And then onto the largest chedi Phra Pathom Ched in Thailand. Was amazing to see, what an amazing religion and culture.

Tomorrow we are going to River Kwai, another early start but hopefully we wont be soo tired. Just discovered theres a maccie ds opposite us..we havent quite mastered the art of buying food from the street yet..

Missing everyone, we'll update before we travel up to Chiang Mai! xxxxxxxxxx