Amelia and I arrived in Bangkok after taking a 15 baht (30p) train from Ayutthaya, which at just over 70 kilometres away, must be one of the cheapest journeys we've experienced across SEA.
From the railway station, we knew our way through the city using the 'MRT' and 'Skytrain' lines. Knowing your way around any city has its benefits, in Bangkok it's especially true due to the amount of infamous 'tourist traps' set by the tuk tuk drivers.
We decided that we would 'treat' ourselves to a hotel with a pool. The deal Amelia found online, turned out to be just a few pounds more than what we would be expected to pay for a hostel or guesthouse. So it was a very easy decision to make.
The last section was on foot down a very busy road in Sukhumvit - an exclusive area in Bangkok. The hotel was called 'Woraburi Hotel' and it turned out to be a very mediocre hotel. It was like your average Travel Lodge back home. But it was clean and tidy and had a pool so we were more than happy!
The room wasn't quite ready when we first arrived, so we went on the hunt for some lunch. Amelia was also keen for some retail therapy (to replace some ageing clothes) so we went to 'Siam Paragon' shopping centre which has a huge food court with a massive array of choice at a reasonable cost. We both went for Japanese chicken Katsu Curry. We were able to choose the level of spice (1-5) for our curry. Amelia sensibly chose level 1, I on the other hand decided to throw caution to the wind and go for level 4, 'super hot' - as it was named on the menu!
With my mouth still intact, I went off to have our SLR professionally cleaned (to remove dirt from the sensor and viewfinder), whilst Amelia went off to her version of paradise.
By the time we got back our room was ready. We chucked our bags in the room, changed into our swimmers and went straight to the top floor for a much needed dip in the pool. Although the pool wasn't as cool and refreshing as we'd hoped, it was a nice sanctuary to escape the hustle and bustle of the manic, hot and humid streets of Bangkok.
Unfortunately our newly discovered haven was soon spoilt by a group of English louts on a 'lads holiday'.
Dinner was at a local supermarket that night. We'd spent ages trawling through the numerous restaurants of Sukhumvit before deciding on the supermarket, which had a very popular restaurant section and served fairly good food at a low cost.
For a change, we spent the rest of the evening back in our room sharing a cheap bottle of red wine, and watching the only English channel on our TV (National Geographic). Needless to say it wasn't the best wine, but it was a welcomed change - even for me as a beer lover.

No alarm to start the day! A novelty, but we were still up early enough to be eating our breakfast with the locals at a street food vendor down the road.
Guessing that the lads from yesterday were still in bed with a hangover, we went back to the pool to give it another chance. Luckily we were right, we were almost the only ones there.
Amelia and I were both in need of a haircut, so after a few hours at the pool we went over to a salon I'd used last time we were in Bangkok. For 360 baht each (£7) the haircut includes a wash and cut, a head, neck and shoulder massage, and a blow dry (for Amelia). We definitely couldn't complain at that!
Before going back to the hotel, we stopped by MBK shopping centre, which is the place in Bangkok to buy anything, from electrical gizmos to fake Calvin Klein underwear. I was in need of the latter and Amelia 'had' to buy a phone case - it displayed a picture of a pug on the back!
I'd read about a quirky market in eastern Bangkok called 'Talad Rod Fai'. So that evening we decided to try and find it. All we knew was it was located behind a shopping mall in Eastern Bangkok, so we took the Skytrain almost as far as it'd go and hopped in a metered taxi. The driver couldn't speak any English but we hoped he understood our instruction "Rod Fai". Ten minutes or so later he dropped us near a shopping mall and repeated our instruction "Rod Fai".
Eventually, after wandering a few nearby streets, we found it. The place was huge and unlike all the other markets we've seen in SEA. It was cross between a car boot sale, a food festival and classic motorbike/car show. Rather than choosing one main dish for dinner, we snacked away on the huge variety of food. Starting with Asian (chicken satay), meeting somewhere in the middle (oyster omelette) and finishing with Western (cheese on toast). We could've spent a lot of time there, soaking up the atmosphere in one of the numerous quirky outside cocktail bars, but unfortunately we were restricted on time. The last Skytrain left the station just after 11pm, so we caught a taxi and made it to the station just in time.

After a lazy morning by the pool we ventured out to find some lunch. Quite often reasonably priced, good quality food can be found in shopping mall food courts. The nearest one was located in a very classy shopping mall, within the centre were the likes of Prada, Channel, Luis Vitton etcetera. Whilst trying to find the food court we were offered free chocolate brownies! The only catch was to advertise their promotion on Instagram by taking a picture of ourselves in front of their stand.
The food court wasn't what we were expecting, it was located in a Waitrose style supermarket, which had deli counters serving a variety of food from lasagne to Indian curries. After a bit of 'shopping' around, tasting and taking advantage of the numerous stands offering various samples (strawberry cheesecake, avocado oil, and meatballs), we chose a portion of lasagne and chilli con carne to share followed by our scrumptious free chocolate brownie! We were stuffed, but that didn't stop us from entering the refrigerated cheese room.
Inside the cheese room there were also samples, including cheese from Waitrose. We had some much craved cheddar cheese and others including - Red Leicester, Camembert and Edam. I think we both felt a bit overindulged but couldn't help ourselves scoffing most of the samples they had on offer. The rest of our afternoon was spent digesting and catching up on the blog.
Talad Rod Fai also had a 'little sister' market, located closer to the city (just off one of the MRT stops). So we decided to pay a visit and compare.
First thing we noticed was that it definitely wasn't as vast as the main one located further out of the city, but it still had a similar quirky style and feel. However, because it was smaller it was a little more intimate, and in someways it felt like it had a better atmosphere. The downside to the smaller size was having to waddle like penguins down the rows of stalls. Amelia and I decided, after a fairly thorough look around, to go for a drink. The 'bars' were located near a stage area where a great local band were playing some classic rock songs. Most of the bars were actually old shipping containers piled on top of each other. Firstly we sat at 'ground level', drinking beer whilst sat on redundant pharmaceutical storage containers. Amelia then fancied a change of scenery and tipple so we went to the second level for a White Russian and Daiquiri.
Not wanting to cough up for a taxi or tuk tuk back we caught the last metro back to our hotel.

We'd set our alarms to make sure we had enough time to have one last swim, get ready, pack and eat breakfast before check out.
After check out we made our way across the city to find a hostel ('Cozy Bangkok Hostel'). The hostel was discovered online by my little sister Beth.
Our main reason for being back in Bangkok was to meet Beth. Beth, after finishing uni for the year, was travelling from the UK to come and join us for a while.
The hostel was easy enough to find, it was located near the main railway station and not far from Chinatown. Amelia and I were chuffed with Beth's find, it was clean, the owners were friendly and the place seemed quiet. Our only slight worry was the pair of brand new ear plugs by the pillow!
It's not very often we do our own laundry, as most of the time it's easier and cheap enough to get done at a laundrette or by the guesthouse. But this hostel didn't have such service. They did have a washing machine for their guests use though, so the rest of our day was spent doing the much needed chore and catching up on the blog.
In the evening we decided to revisit Bangkok's Chinatown. It's a great place for street food as long as you avoid the numerous shark fin soup stalls and restaurants! Amelia had a fried noodle omelette dish with chicken and I ate a seafood glass noodle dish.
Still feeling a tad peckish we paid a local minimart a visit and treated ourselves to a Magnum ice cream each before going back to the hostel by tuk tuk.

Six hours of nonstop thunderstorms equals a very bad night sleep! They were so bad they even made national news!
Because of the heavy flooding from the storms the traffic was horrendous that morning, which made for a very busy public train system.
We managed to squeeze on to the crowded train system to the airport. Beth's flight had arrived early, by twenty minutes. Unsure if she was already through and waiting for us, we checked around the arrivals hall and meeting point. We couldn't see her, so we decided it was best to go and wait by the arrivals gate.
We waited and waited, until eventually we saw a glimpse of Beth walking down from another arrivals gate. I wanted to run down to see her, but unfortunately a grumpy security guard wouldn't allow it. So I had to wait for Beth to come past the barriers, before I could give her a big hug. Assuming Beth was tired I took her bag from her and we all made our way back to the hostel.
We got back to the hostel and transferred our bags to the triple room before heading out for a late breakfast. Amelia and I decided to drop Beth into the deep end, so to speak. We took her to a nearby street vendor to try our much loved breakfast of noodle soup.
Much to our relief Beth loved it! And she even spiced it up with a fair amount of chilli flakes too!
Understandably Beth wanted to return to the hostel after breakfast for a freshen up. I was surprised to see that she wasn't too tired, so Amelia and I offered to take her around and show her some of our favourite sights.
First to the nearby temple of the golden Buddha, then to Chinatown to show Beth the horrible amounts of shark fin soup restaurants. To get to the other sights we had to take a tuk tuk to the old part of the city.
Unfortunately we didn't have much luck showing her around the other sights. The Grand Palace seemed closed and Wat Arun was covered in scaffolding, we presumed that because it's low season they take the opportunity to make any needed restoration work. We did manage to get Beth into see the stunning reclining Buddha with mother of pearl feet at Wat Pho, so it wasn't a completely wasted journey. Neither the MRT or Skytrain have routes into the old city so again we flagged down a reasonably priced tuk tuk to take us on a very quick and at times heart stopping journey back to our hostel. He was like the Lewis Hamilton of tuk tuk drivers and knew Bangkok road system like the back of his hand!
Beth was still keen to see a bit more of the city, so we decided it'd be a good way to end our day at one of Bangkok's stylish skybars. We decided on the famous State Tower aka Lebua (featured in 'The Hangover II' film) which Amelia and I had visited before. Beth, with the use of trusty Tripadvisor, found a highly recommended restaurant just opposite the State Tower. So before going up we had a very delicious meal at 'Tea-Licious'. It was owned by a 'vertically challenged' man from Kent, England. He was a very nice guy who recommended a few dishes of his. Amelia went with her favourite of duck red curry, Beth had 'waterfall beef' and I went for prawn Tom Yum soup.
When Amelia and I went up to the 63rd floor to the Lebua skybar back on our first visit, we were able to avoid paying the extortionate amount for a drink and stand by the bar without a drink whilst taking in the awesome night-scape and dazzling lights of view around. Unfortunately this time to get to the best views at the bar you had to order a drink beforehand. Neither of us wanted to hand over that sort of money for a drink, so we only managed to stand in the 'waiting area' whilst pretending to be indecisive about our drink choice. The views weren't as breathtaking, but it still had a good vantage point and was still a nice place to end the day of whistle stop sight seeing.

The next morning we got up early (yet again), took a taxi to a different airport from the day before and boarded a short flight to Hat Yai, South Thailand....