Collected washing, paid the bill for the accommodation and set out to the pier by long tail boat. Took a boat to the mainland, which unfortunately caused Darren to be ever so slightly sea sick. Continued straight onto a bus, which after 8 hours or so, arrived in Khao San Road, Bangkok. We were oober lucky to come across a really cheap hotel with air-con and tv. Only down point was that the beds were so rigid that it was like sleeping on bricks and the walls were paper thin. Dumped our stuff and headed straight down to the main road to check out what all the "Back-packing fuss" is about. At first, it was way less 'in your face' than I thought it would be. It wasn't too intimidating, unless I was just being naïve to what was going on around me. There were clearly plenty of Lady boys but they weren't exactly too much to handle. The one amusing thing was that when we checked in to the hotel, we had to read and agree to a list of things- ie, that we would not bring anyone back with us to stay in the room. If we did so, they had to show their passports at reception and pay a huge fee if they stayed over. No Thai people were allowed to stay there at all. If there were any 'stains' left on the bed sheets, you had to cough up big time. It was just quite funny reading all the stuff that obviously must have been common occurrancies in the past, but they are now clamping down on it all. I didn't come across any drugs in Bangkok though, which I was pretty impressed at. Spent a couple of hours just walking up and down the road, just soaking up the atmosphere. There were stalls either side of the road, selling clothes, leathered goods, fancy lights, crazy food. Twas pretty cool. Most stalls backed into a shop, so there was plenty to gander at. I could pretty much see no sex industry stuff. Except the prostitutes on the street corner at night. But apart from that, there were no designated shops or anything. It was pretty much just restaurants and backpackery shops. Tame is the word to descibe it. I can imagine it would be a tad different a few years ago. We sat in one of the lively restaurants and had a pretty minging western meal. They offered Chang and Singha (Thai beer) in absolutely huuuge containers with their own tap. All of the waitresses had like "Tiger Beer" and "Chang Beer" dresses on. Darren was a bit freaked out that our waiter was ever so camp. After that meal, we headed to a place near the hotel that was an amazing stop for travelers. It was a restaurant downstairs with really good, cheap food, while upstairs, it had internet service, international phone calls and a travel agent. So we grabbed a lemon shake there before heading in to bed.