So we check into The Grande Ville Hotel near China Town which is where we were meeting our group... lovely hotel! The next morning we had breakfast early and went exploring..we had a few things to pick up before starting our month tour...including malaria tablets, rucksacks as there was no way we were carrying our huge ones on and off tiny asian boats! and appropriate clothing! So the whole day was spent shopping and we came back just in time for a quick nap before going to the lobby to meet our guide and group.

Our Group: Dara our tour guide (USA), Laura (Scotland), Renee (OZ), Camille (OZ), Gemma (UK), Bella (UK), Becks (NZ), Mo (UK), Lewis (PORTUGAL), Marina (PORTUGAL), Lucy (HOLLAND). Yes so you may notice there are just 2 guys and one of which is married.. hmmmm...we werent too sure about spending a whole month with this many females but hey we will see how it goes..?!

We met up and had a briefing about the month to come where we asked questions and Dara made sure we all had what we needed etc... and went off to Khao san road for dinner.. This is where all of the hostels are backpackers eat and drink so it was great to be somewhere with a buzz again as we were already missing samui! had a few drinks, went back to pack and hit the sack ready for our new adventure! Early start the next day to go on a longboat cruise to Wat Po, which houses one of the largest laying Buddas in the world! We wandered around Wat Po with our local tour guide looking at the temples and Buddas. We also paid a donation and wrote put names and a message on a tile which will be used shortly to retile the temple roof which was cool! The afternoon was free to do what we wanted around Bangkok so we went back to the Khao San road to change some money and have lunch with some of our group.

We had to all rendezvous at 4.30pm back at the Grande Ville to make our way to the train station in order to catch the sleeper train to Chiangmai. We absolutely loved the train, we shared our cabin with Renee and Laura as us four didnt plan on going to bed too early. The Thai man who was serving drinks was called Jambo and we had many hours of entertainment learning some Thai and trying to have full blown conversations with him.. what a LEGEND!!!