Once again I've been very lazy and waited a week before updating my blog - anyway here goes. Since the last time we left Krabi and went to Bangkok with the intention of heading to Khao Yai National Park - however due to a surge in people wanting to go there last week we were unable to find a hotel (OK, I just left it too late) and had to stay in Bankok for a week. My initial reaction was that I would be bored out of my mind, however it actually ended up being a very enjoyable week. It didn't start too well though as after a delay in our flight we didn't arrived in Bangkok untill after midnight only to find that our hotel was based on a road which, let's just say, was on the seedier side of life!!! The hotel itself was OK - it was clean and big although it did sell condoms in the rooms so you get the idea of the kind of place it was. After this small hick-up we woke up bright and early the next day and went and found a really nice hotel down the road for the same price (it even had "Royal" in the name) and then headed to the aquarium which is amazingly under a huge shopping centre in central Bangkok. The afternoon was spent viewing various species of fish that could kill/amputate or poison you. After taking about 200 photos of the fish and dodging past all the tourists in there we headed back to our hotel after dinner for some sleep. Having been thoroughly wooed by the fish at the aquarium, we took it nice and slow on Tuesday and went to the cinema (aaahhhh cute). Not very exciting you may think, but this was no ordinary cinema. This was a luxury champaign serviced waiter cinema with sofas. After slouching into our huge plump reclining sofas the waiter brought over our drinks and popcorn and we began watching Yes Man with only 3 other people in the cinema all for the same price as 1 adult ticket in a local Odeon in London! There was only one way we could follow this experience on Wednesday - getting drunk at a Hard Rock cafe and dancing to their band who were playing Santana! But before that we went to Jim Thompson's house. For those of you who don't know who Jim Thompson was here is a quick summary, he was an American who after serving in the US army in Thailand went back to live there permanently. He was intrigued by the Thai culture and specially Thai silk and is responsible for bringing it to the world's attention and ultimately the huge growth of the industry in Thailand. And by the time he mysteriously disappeared while on holiday in Malaysia he had built and lived in his house in Bangkok for almost 10 years. The reason why his house is a tourist attraction is because of it's design. Basically Jim Thompson took 6 different houses from different parts of Thailand and brought them all together to form one large house. I have to say that this isn't the first thing that you would see in Bangkok but is worth a visit if you have a few days to spare. After that - we got drunk!!! As we were a little worse for wear on Thursday we went to a shopping centre for KFC and discovered that there was a singing contest so sat down and enjoyed watching people get up to make total fools of themselves. This was funny for a while but then got bored and went back to bed to get through our hangovers, plus we had to be up early on Friday to catch a mini bus to the Floating Market. I have to say that I was very disappointed in the floating market - it's a complete tourist trap and you don't really get a sense of Thailand at all. All of the stalls sell the same touristy junk and there are more boats with tourists in than the local people selling things. What made things worse was that we had a Dutch woman on our boat who clearly thought she was David Bailey and proceeded to tell our driver to slow down, stop, speed up etc. I think she was about 3 seconds away from being thrown in the water by me before we stopped and got out to go to the snake farm. The snake farm as the name suggests is a snake farm with tons of snakes (in cages) all with enough venom to kill anything in a nano second. The is also where you get to see a snake show where snake catcher type people (not charmer) spends a few seconds doing everything they can to get a cobra or other snakes angry before catching them by the head using some part of their body. Our guys just stuck with good old fashion hands much to my disappointment. To be fair I'm not giving them enough credit, the show is a great way to spend half an hour of your time and one guy actually caught snake with his mouth!!! We then headed to a place called Breadtalk, which is basically a really nice bakery in a big shopping centre and after devouring enough bread/pastries and cakes to feed Liberia headed back to the hotel. In the evening we went to China Town for dinner and had the best dim sum we've ever had before heading to the night market on our way back to the hotel to pack. Finally on Saturday very teary eyed we went to the airport to catch our overnight flight to Sydney. I will try to write a blog in few days with a fairer view on Sydney as I think at the moment we are both still missing Thailand immensely. I actually do get emotional every time we walk past a massage place and I don't hear those famous words - "You want masaaaaage?" Kav