Day 1 in Bangkok - We sat at breakfast at our little hostel and planned out our first day of Thai sight seeing. The plan was to head off to the Grand Palace, see the Emerald Buddha and walk around this amazing city but a series of events followed that lead us somewhere completely different and which has since caused us to say 'if only' so many times. As we were wondering the streets and mulling over out map, a sweet woman approached us and asked us where we were headed and offered to help us out. She lead us to a map of the city across the road and told us that it wouldn't be a good idea to go the palace that day as it was already late in the morning and it would be better to save the visit for a day we could get there very early. She suggested a few places along the map and hailed a Government Tuk tuk for us and told the driver where to take us - a price was agreed upon - 20Baht each for the day! SCORE! We were shocked at the unmotivated friendliness of the locals. It was such a change from the aloofness we had encountered in South America. And just like that our day plans changed - we went along to a number of temples, a suit shop and then....the TAT office. We were told that TAT could give us some helpful information about Thailand and plan out an itinerary for us .Natasha, our agent, was full of ideas and before we knew it we had the next 2 weeks of our trip planned. She offered to book everything for us and gave us a price that we thought was pretty reasonable based on our fledgling knowledge of Thai prices - a bit more than we would pay by ourselves, we thought, but the extra would be worth having everything organised for us. So after some deliberation, checking of the TAT license number and confirming the inclusions we handed over the money and received our vouchers.

We then headed off to a large intersection in Bangkok - the Democracy monument where there was a huge event for Formula 1 going on. Jeff was very excited about it and wanted to wait in the crowd in the scorching heat - I decided to give it a skip and found a quiet corner in a restaurant to wait for him. I pulled out the Lonely Planet and started to read - that was our biggest mistake looking back - we hadn't read before we landed in Bangkok. Our other mistakes became gaping clear as I read...

• "Most scams begin in the same way: a friendly and well dressed Thai approaches you and strikes up a conversation. Invariably your destination is closed or being cleaned, but your new friend offers several alternative activities such as sight seeing at smaller temples or shopping at authentic markets." - Wow - that sounds outrageously familiar!!!

• "Beware of Tuk-tuk drivers who offer to take you out on a sightseeing tour for 10-20Baht - its a touting scheme designed to pressure you into purchasing overpriced goods" - Should have known that was too good to be true.

• "Travel agencies often masquerade as Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), the government funded tourist information office. The official TAT offices do not make hotel or transport bookings" - WHAT?!?!?!

Jeff was shattered when I showed him. We went straight onto the internet and googled 'Unseen Travel' and were bombarded with sights warning travellers that it was a scam. We then realised why Natasha was in such a hurry to make the sale - she knew we would never have booked if had the opportunity to check them out on the web. She used every trick in the book - 'its peak season and you need to have hotels and transportation booked', 'We are closing in one hour so we need an answer right away'. The fact that there were so many other backpackers in the office at the time gave us a sense of comfort - surely all these people cant be getting duped - but obviously they were. We would only realise over the next 2 weeks, the extent of their dupes. (One guy we met paid 19 000Baht for a 5 day tour around North Thailand!! 100Euro a day - about 4 times what we paid!!) Our only hope was the tourist police - We headed there the next day and were greeted with a shake of the head by the agent as soon as he saw the 'Unseen Travel' Envelope. The agent then proceeded to call Unseen to seek out a refund for us but as we had signed a no refund agreement she would not budge but she knew we meant business and warned her that should we see out the next 2 weeks and anything is not as agreed, we would be back to the tourist police to seek compensation. So it was set - Kachanaburi, Ayuthaya, Sukothai, Chang Mai.

We were gratefully picked up from our hostel right on time and headed to Kachanaburi. This city is infamous for the local and ally lives lost during WWII. They were forced into building a railway for the Japanese to connect Burma with Thailand. The allies bombed the railway on the bridge over the river Kwai and many lives were lost. Our first stop - the Kachanaburi War Cemetery - a pristinely maintained cemetery with rows of over 5000 tombstones. Then we were taken to the War museum where we learnt more about the construction and destruction of the Burma-Siam Railway and caught our first view of the rebuilt bridge over the river Kwai. We caught a train along the railway for 1.5hours and after lunch on the river, we were then taken to the Tiger Temple - a sanctuary for adult and infant tigers run by monks and volunteers. An amazing opportunity to touch and have photos with these majestic creatures. We slept over on a boat house on the river and enjoyed sunset and dinner on the deck. The next day was spent at the Arawan waterfalls. It took us about 2 hours to walk up to the 7 different levels of the fall and on the way down we chose two of the prettiest to swim in the rock pools. The water was completely clear and as we walked into the water we saw hundreds of little fish swimming towards our feet and then proceeded to lunch on them. The sucking feeling was way too ticklish for me but Jeff got used to it and giggled his way to the far end of the pool and showered in the fall.

We had a long journey back to Bangkok and then straight onto our next stop Ayuthaya via train. Ayuthaya is small city bordered all the way round by river and which is dotted with Wats/temples. We spent 3 nights and 2 days there one of which we rented bicycles and rode around the city and its outskirts enjoying the rush of the centre, the authenticity of the wats and the beauty of the surrounding landscapes. We ate all of out dinners at an enormous night market - the most interesting looking and smelling foods at each stall - we were spoilt for choice. We met two couples at our hostel - Ryan and Gabi from Australia and Rose and Stephan from Holland. We got talking and as it turns out, Ryan and Gabi had the exact (and I mean exact) same thing happen to them in Bangkok with Unseen Travel - they had signed on for 3 weeks and whole lot more money! As we sat and chatted we figured that even though we had undoubtedly overpaid and our faith in humanity was a bit shaken, we were still having a great time, we weren't the only ones that got had and we had paid a lot less than the other Unseen victims.

Our next destination was Sukothai - a city split into an old and a new city. We were booked into a guest house in the old section right across from the Sukothai historical park. Just like Ayuthaya, the city and its surroundings were dotted with Wats but these were all more intact and much much bigger. We decided to rent out a motorbike for the day - a first for me and being the cautious person I am - got on with a tinge of nerves. But those were soon shaken off as we headed out for an afternoon drive to the new city. It was actually quite exhilarating. We drove around for a few hours and decided to treat ourselves to our first Western meal in 2 weeks - quintessential KFC! We had the bike the whole of the next day and went out for kilometres of aimless driving. The scenery was beautiful and luckily the roads were very quite - just us, the bike and the northern Thai rice fields. About 100 kilometres later, we were coming round a bend, less than 1km away from the rental office, went over some lose gravel on the road and the bike slipped from under us and we went skidding across the road. Both our immediate reactions were to see if the other was OK and then straight onto the status of the bike - We had just a heard a story 2 days earlier from Ryan and Gabi that they had had an accident on their rental and a few scratches had cost them 7000Baht! We were both pretty grazed up especially my right knee and the bike had a few scratches to but otherwise, thank Goodness, all fine. We hopped back onto the bike, went to our hostel, cleaned ourselves up, put on long pants and went to hand the bike back as nonchalantly as possible. Lucky for us, the woman who took the bike back barely even checked it and we got away scot free!