We headed to Bangkok on a night bus from Surat Thani after a 3 hour ferry from Koh Pha Ngan to the mainland. One thing about Thailand, the Thais love their air conditioners. One the ferry, as with every bus we've been on, they crank the AC to ensure maximum freshness of all people and produce in the vehicle. We've realized now that we have to pack our sweaters and pant legs (our only pants are the zip away legs kind) to ride on public otherwise it is uncomfortably cold. We arrived in Bangkok at 4:45 am not the 7am we were hoping for. At the bus terminal, all the cabbies refused to drive us because we wanted to use the meter and not pay their inflated flat rates. Eventually we found a ride and were dropped in the deserted backpacker ghetto of Khao San Road. We found a hotel and then crashed. Finally, we got up and explored the neighbouring markets before deciding that we would much rather watch a movie-something we have rarely been able to do since leaving Canada. We caught Blood Diamond which made us long for Africa and our friends in Lesotho. Leaving the cinema, we realized that we had not been in Bangkok for even 24 hours in the 2 times we had been there and we had seen 2 movies already. That night, we went to the Muay Thai boxing fights. There are fights every night in Bangkok, 2 stadiums and over 50000 boxers in the whole country. We show up and there is unfortunately a "Foreigners Line" which meant we were going to be gouged. And we were, but it was worth it. There were 10 fights in total and we caught 8 of them. The rule of Muay Thai boxing is: no head butts. Pretty simple. Each fight starts with a little ceremony which I don't really understand. The fighters wear boxing gloves. The fights would consist of dancing at the start, followed by a punches being thrown, and then a couple of kicks. But the real excitement comes when they are in close combat trying to knee each other in the stomach. The crowds love the knees to the stomach. All the while, the crowd (they were all wearing yellow as it was Monday in Thailand and nearly everybody wears yellow) places bets on the fighters all the way to the end of the 4th round (there are 5 in total). In the end, the fights were a very Thai experience (which was something we had been lacking since spending nearly 3 weeks on the beach). Day 2 in Bangkok was kinda productive. We had made plans to visit the Grand Palace but were side tracked (we had huge c*** roaches in our hotel so we needed to find a cleaner place to sleep). In the end, we went of the river riding the river taxi to catch the skytrain to Siam station which is a insanely busy shopping district with 4 or 5 massive shopping malls and many boutique lined streets. Shopping isn't really our thing, but we've felt the urge to get ourselves some tailored pin-striped suits. We priced it around, found on place that tailors suits for my former MP, Raymond Simard, and then we got fitted. Come to think of it, we accomplished incredibly little that day except getting fitted for suits. Bangkok is certainly a interesting city. It's huge, sprawling not tall. Unfortunately, it seems to be place that we go to only to get somewhere else.