Greetings all!

I thought it was high time I put my stamp back on this blog, after Mike's essay about the highs and lows of Kanchenaburi.

Well, we hot-footed it to the bus station and picked up a suitably rickety bus to Ayutthaya, arriving early evening. For once, i'd made our accommodation plans, and was feeling suitably proud of myself. The guide book and reviews online promised a colonial-esque guest house, complete with peaceful surroundings and a hot shower. 'I'll show Mike how it's done,' I thought as I smuggly called to book a room. Except when we arrived, we were in for a bit of a shock - the tiniest box room you've ever seen, minus curtains, and with the nastiest, dampest bathroom i've ever had the misfortune to use. It smelt of pee! It was like something from my days as a guide when I went youth hostelling, except much, much pongier. To add insult to injury, the traffic roared past our window all night (don't they ever sleep in that blummin city?) and the hot shower we'd been promised was in fact an ice-cold wake-up call - suffice to say we couldn't leave the city fast enough to continue our journey. As we hopped on the train going North, we felt very glad to be waving goodybe to a quite dull city...

After my disastrous dabblings at booking us a room, Mike took control again and found a lovely little bungalow in the heart of New Sukhothai, where we wiled away a lovely evening reading on the veranda, then dinner in a local restaurant. It made such a refreshing change, as the people seem to be getting much nicer he further North we go. Spotting Mike as a fellow drinker, the owner of the restaurant quickly accosted him and invited us to join the locals in a spot of whisky-drinking - random, to say the least!

Tragically we wasted the entire morning the following day in the police station, as some sly little b***** has managed to clone Mike's credit card, and had run up a nice debt of 12,000 quid in Bangkok - it would seem the thief has a penchant for shopping at the Tesco Lotus and jazzing up his Subaru - what a geezer! More bizarrely, when we looked again at the statements, the swine had then paid back a fair whack of the debt, so we now just have an outstanding balance of 5,000 to deal with - an honest criminal methinks! In typical Mike style, he handled the situation with great grace - first came the swearing and footstamping, followed by some major head-hanging and panicking, finally followed with humour as he tried to explain to the police that he likes Tesco, but not enough to spend that volume of money. Reporting it to the police was a challenge - our Thai is non-existent, and they barely spoke a word of English. What followed can only be described as a game of international charades, though eventually the police drove us back to our guest house for a spot of assistance in translating. I hope that will be our only experience in the back of a Thai police car!

We then had a mad dash around the ruins in Old Sukhothai, which was pretty gobsmacking. The photos will follow as soon as we've got them uploaded, but the ruins were amazing (though not quite as amazing as the fact that Mike talked me into hiring some bikes to ride around the ruins, and I didn't crash - not even once!)

We're now in Chiang Mai, and are loving the city. The people are charming, and it's got a nice buzz about it - a peculiar mixture of beautiful temples, loads of shopping and markets, and lots of good food. We had fun last night drinking beer with another English couple we'd met, while listening to the owner of the bar singing rock ballads with his in-house band - great fun!

We've just spent the day trawling around the markets buying the supplies we need for a 3 day trek we've signed up for, and I think i've taken just about all the abuse I can handle - by Asian standards i'm a big girl, so a few shopkeepers have sent me away empty-handed, after telling me they don't have anything large enough to fit my hips! And they all keep laughing at the size of my feet, as no-one stocks walking shoes small enough - so i'm basically a large lump of a woman, with pathetic trotters at the end of my legs. Anyway, after buying a pair of lurverly mush-coloured shorts (size XL) and a nasty tie-died sarong (apparently I need to be modest when washing in the lakes, as the tribal women always bathe fully-dressed), i'm just about prepared for my trek - if a little scared at the prospect of poo-ing in a hole and sleeping amongst the jungle iggly-wigglies!

Anyway, we'll check in a again soon - by then i'll be a fully-fledged jungle trekker. I might even have dreadlocks, and a nose ring... watch this space folks...

Much love as ever to all of you

Susie and Mike xxx