Hi Kids,

Hope all is good, were loving the messages from everyone, its great so keep it up!!

So we went to the Grand Palace yesterday which was fantastic! its huge and surrounded by a great white wall. For this we were told we had to cover in head to toe in order to show respect. so there we were, in long trousers, trainers, t-shirts and a cardigan for lauren, "now bear-in-mind it is like a million degrees here with a 15 minute walk (not the most hygenic days for us to say the least)! when we got there it was very uplifting to see that everyone else had ignored the respectful cultural tradition and wore shorts and flip-flops!

besides the fact that we were sweating our arses off it was really good there! we saw the emerald bhudda which was amazing and loads of really nice traditional thai buildings and temples! got lots of pics but we wernt allowed to take pics of certain things like the emerald bhudda which was a shame! we had a really cool coconut drink where they just literally chopped the top off a coconut and gave you a straw! very refreshing!

when we got back we jumped straight in the pool to cool down! had a little look round the stalls where Lauren bahted (negotiated) and bought a lovely thai beach bag.

in the later part of the day lauren stumbled upon a street that we had not noticed before, so we thought "lets check it out!". in which we did and to my great surprise was a 'back alley' muay thai kick boxing gym. this was wicked to see. however my surprise turned to trauma when i was having my super cool manly photo taken with the main thai dude, when i suddenly felt a hand on my left buttock. yes..............it was him! He was cool though, i knew i'd have trouble looking the way i do.

Finished the day with dinner and coctails.......................very nice.

Oh and by the way, me and lauren are bummed out as we have not got a photo of chang! of course if we had known he would make this amount of impact in our lifes we would have!

Overall Thailand has been an amazing experience! just when you think that Bangkok cant get any better, we find a muay thai gym!! The local people have proven them selfs to be real friendly to tourists and are always pointing you the right way.

Well, need to go now and finish packing as we are flying out to Sydney later today, so will post all pics and keep you informed then.

mums and dads, we will text you when we arrive in sydney and call home when we are settled in the hostel!

Peace and much love to all,

Greg and Lauren xx