Edd set his phone alarm for 6.30am on Thursday morning as we were being fetched at 7.30 for a morning of floating markets. We awoke to the somewhat loud chirping of what we thought were local birds and I wondered why they only seemed to have one tune - this was quite a change from Bangkok as we hadn't really seen any birds there, apart from the odd pigeon. We were still in bed when we heard a knock at the door… It was our driver. It was 7.30. Our alarm had not gone off. We got ready in record time (having packed the back pack the night before) and were out the door in less than 10 minutes! We climbed into his black Ford that had cracked leather seats and a pink umbrella with Celine Dion ringing in our ears. We realized soon after that, that the beautiful melody of the local birds was actually Edd's alarm - his phone had reset itself when he'd tried a Thai sim card in it. The alarm had gone off, but we were expecting ear harassment, not the Amazon.

The driver was kind enough to stop for coffee and with the mad driving of the Thai, where there is no speed limit really - you can drive everywhere at 100km/ph except where it says 30km/ph probably because there's a sharp turn, always turn left as long as you won't hit anything, countdown traffic lights and no indicators-1 ½ hours and 1 cappuccino later, we were at the floating markets. Getting out of air-conditioned happiness and into the blazing heat, I realized something was different. There was something off that even a cappuccino couldn't fix today, I was jet lagged. I felt slightly less Blair Witch project after the caffeine, but it was going to be a long day.

We coated up on mozzie spray as Edd had only been bitten twice since we arrived, I on the other hand was a walking buffet lunch. We climbed into our motorized long boat and headed for the markets. We realized pretty early on that there was a lot of 'Thai tat' for sale again; all of it was overpriced and none of it was worth lugging in our turtle shells. We bought some breakfast - noodles of course, and watched elderly Thai ladies concoct delicious meals from inside their boats. I didn't like cooking in a westernized kitchen on a good day, never mind in a canal, on a long boat, in 38-degree weather! Their skills were inspiring and they were very well organized. We got our daily fill of mango and Edd managed to haggle down a swimming shawl for me. We were there for under an hour, but were more than done when we got off - a definite must do, but an only do once.

Our driver then took us to a handicraft market that completely blew our minds. Edd basically kitted out our entire not-yet-purchased-in-Australia house with the amazing furniture in the show room. The craftsmanship would put even the most skilled wood carver to shame. He took more photos than two people would ever need and has put their business card in a safe place for future reference. Edd had a small nap in the car on the way back and I had to wake him up as he was snoring quite loudly; I found it quite funny, he would have been happy to continue snoring in the back seat, however.

We got back to our hotel and managed to upgrade our room. We asked to see the 'superior' room and were greeted by a rather large black and yellow dragon, swimming in the river by the balcony, and decided paying a little extra for a balcony overlooking the River Kwai and in fact, a room floating on it, was well worth the money. We had an afternoon nap while they waited for people to come and fix the aircon and transplanted our belongings to our new room. We then went for a swim at Tara B&B (same hotel, but on the high street) and ordered Banana Flitters (fritters, but it said flitters on the menu) as an afternoon snack. We sunbathed in stupid-degree weather again, but I decided to fry myself, 10 minutes a side, before putting sunblock on. It was still too hot (at 4pm) to lie in the sun for too long so we alternated between that and hiding under a big umbrella, held up by a sleeping Buddha with gold lips (someone had fun with gold nail polish one night).

For dinner, we meandered back to the bus station (minus the turtle packs) and ordered Pad Thai with calamari, from a street vendor in the night market. It was absolutely delicious until I got a mouthful of little bones. Knowing full well that squid did not have miniature bones, I spat my food into a pocket tissue. The pungent smell of fish filled my nose and I heaved, trying as hard as I could not to bring the food I had eaten, back into the world the same way it had exited. Edd thinks I'm a fussy eater and we were both secretly hoping this holiday would sort me out. It wasn't going to be tonight that's for sure. I immediately lost my appetite and stopped eating. Playing a game of charades with a vendor behind us, I managed to buy a large corn on the cob for 15 Baht; this would have to finish what the Pad Thai started.

We walked around a bit longer and Edd took a picture of the 'perfect family vehicle:' dad with 3 children aged between about 3 and 8 on a scooter, no helmets, hold on or fall off. This was definitely a survival of the fittest kind of moment. We got back to our superior room and I set my alarm for the next day… Minus the chirping birds.