After the history of Angkor Wat we found ourselves in Bangkok for 3 nights to introduce ourselves to Thailand. Our original plan would have seen us travel north from Siem Reap to Laos, but we really didn't have time to make that journey and therefore had to change the plan. It was a shame and we'll have to visit Laos on another trip.

We travelled to Bangkok by bus, although this time the border crossing was not nearly as smooth as we had become accustomed to. The journey by bus took us just short of 12 hours to cover about 540 kilometres, it would have been a lot quicker had we not spent an hour in the scorching midday heat to go through Thai immigration, or waited for 2 hours once through immigration for another bus to turn up. Still we were lucky to have seats, some poor punters spent the trip on plastic stools in the aisle! The service stations in Cambodia are worth a mention, if only to say that we didn't partake in either the fried locust or scorpion on a stick that were ubiquitous.

On arrival in Bangkok we checked into our hostel just off the Khao San Road and spent the first evening strolling around the Khao San Road and wondering at the hectic party and market scene that dominates the area.

Our first stop in Bangkok, was of course the train station so that we could book our onward travel arrangements, this time a combined train, bus and boat ticket to Koh Tao. The train station in Bangkok was almost serene, definitely more relaxed than stations in India and China. With that chore done we turned our attention to sightseeing. We went straight to the Golden Buddha housed at Wat Traimit. This Buddha is the largest solid gold Buddha in the world at over 3 metres tall, it is an incredible sight. The temple that houses it is modern and very shiny itself, although probably not made out of solid gold. Next was Jim Thompson's teak house which is now an okay museum. Jim Thompson was a famous silk manufacturer and CIA agent who mysteriously disappeared in 60s. The nearby Erawan Shrine was our next stop, we reached the shrine by skytrain, which is like a tube in the air, and as busy as the tube! The shrine itself was very small, open-air and totally out of place stuck in the middle of large modern buildings. It is supposed to be lucky, but not if you are mad and try and attack the shrine, a man who did so was beaten to death by worshippers! Not whilst we were there we'd add. We wanted to see some muay Thai and fortunately the stadium was on our route. It was a Saturday afternoon competition and the stadium was all but deserted (the Saturday evening competition looked very busy). We weren't that impressed by the muay Thai, most of the fighters were under 16 and weighed around 100lbs. We'd been warned that bouts could be very violent, so we were expecting lots of blood!!! There wasn't!

In the evening we made our way back to the Khao San Road for a wild party! We bumped into Jeff who we'd met on the ferry to Shanghai and again in Beijing and downed lots of 3.50GBP buckets of spirits. Our recollection of the evening is sketchy, we remember being in a nightclub at some point and little else. We were so hung over that the next day was a write-off, Craig couldn't even make it out of our room!

After a day of "recovery" we were back to sightseeing taking in the Royal Palace (housing Wat Phra Kaeo), Wat Pho and the Golden Mount. The Royal Palace was excellent, although as we searched for the entrance we were told a few times by helpful locals that the palace was closed for a Buddhist festival. It turns out that this is a well-know trick to divert tourist into tuk tuk tours of far-flung sights. Once inside we saw the emerald Buddha (this one is a tiny 75 centimetres!) and a model of Angkor Wat! Wat Pho holds a 45 metre reclining Buddha (it is massive) and hundreds of other statues of Buddha, some small, some large. The Golden Mount is another Buddhist temple, with more gold atop a hill. It has great views over Bangkok, but the temple is the more worthwhile part of the climb to the top of the hill rather than the views. After all these temples we went back to the Khao San Road to do some clothes shopping for the beach!

That evening we boarded a train bound for Chumphon where we'd catch a boat to Koh Tao for 17 days of relaxation!