Sawadee Ka,

We arrived in Bangkok on Wednesday afternoon. We caught the airport shuttle bus to Sala Daeng MTR station and caught the sky train to Saphan Taskin. The sky train was pretty cool, you get to see the city below from it. We walked to try and find our hotel - at only 7pm it was pitch black and the road signs are mainly in Thai!

We arrived at the hotel rather hot (it is baking here!) and looking like scruffy backpackers... The hotel was the equivalent to a UK 4 star hotel, but at hostel prices. It was absolutely amazing, we had a studio apartment so had a chance to get heaps of laundry done, and an iron - such luxuaries after life on the backpacker road. :) We had a bath (woo!) and crashed out for the evening.

On Thursday morning we went for a swim in the hotel pool (!) then went for our buffet breakfast.. so refreshing to have a nice slap up brekkie! We had fruit and cereal and freshly made pancakes and bacon and eggs - all cooked fresh in front of us. It was absolutely amazing. We chilled out for a bit as it's far too hot to do much in the midday heat, then in the afternoon we grabbed a river boat up the Chao Phraya River. We saw a lot of wonderful sights along the river, and hopped off at the Grand Palace for a mooch. The Grand Palace was immense, a huge Royal complex with temples and great halls made of gold and covered in beautiful glass mosaics... Shiny things!! It was superb and we were allowed into the temples (minus shoes) where there were hundreds more shiny shrines! We were a little worries that we'd read about people "borrowing" your shoes from the racks outside the temples but thankfully no one dared borrow the giant smelly western shoes!!! It was really nice and peaceful in the temples, there were some monks hanging out there too and Pete and I both wondered if they get tan lines just like us but only on one shoulder?? Answers on the message board please.

We hopped back onto the boat which was a little bit busier than earlier, and we clung on to the edge for dear life while we sped down the river to the next stop. Parking of the boat was smooth, consisting of basically crashing into the pier... Still, saves energy having to step off the boat when you can just be thrown off it :) We actually missed our stop so we had to double back to get to our next stop, the boats only stop for a matter of seconds to unload, and we found that out the hard way! We went to the flower market which was an amazing show of craftsmanship and colours. Hundreds of market stalls all competing to make the most beautiful decorations and displays out of flowers. By this point we'd lost all body fluids due to the heat so we headed back and grabbed a cold shower :)

On Friday we went back to being backpackers for the day... We grabbed our ruckies and hit the roads. We hopped in a bright pink suped up taxi (it was every chavs dream) that the hotel kindly 'obtained' for us... after a very bumpy drive to the bus station (imagine 20km of Lifford Lane bridge for all you Brummies) we wobbled off slightly disorientated due to the speed and rough road weaving though the traffic with little concern for road laws. (Are there even any road laws here?)

We eventually got onto a bus after going up 3 floors of a shopping mall to get a ticket, back down 3 floors to the arrival station, then across the bus depot to departures! We jumped on the bus and were on our way to Kanachanaburi (River Kwai). The bus was surprisingly smooth compared to our taxi and we both managed to grab a bit of kip and watch a film on the way.

Thats all from Bangkok!

Hol and Pete

xXx