We have arrived in Bangkok! We have to admit we were quite intimidated when we first arrived its really hot and very busy. When we arrived at our hostel we discovered it to be slightly different from what the pics on the internet had led us to believe. Firstly the dorm we had booked wasnt available so we got put into a double room (as in we have to share a bed) the room has interesting decor to say the least with huge mirrors covering all the walls - including the ceiling. To get to our room we have to walk through a dorm currently inhabited by one elderly gentleman (who last night we discovered watching porn). Unfortunately we have to share a bathroom with said gentlemen and even worse there are windows in the walls between the bedrooms and bathroom (although it is frosted glass) and the toilet is right against the wall to our bedroom which means we can hear (and kind of see) pretty much everything! In the end we have concluded our room is most likely some type of brothel mainly due to the door which connects our room with a back alley to enable easy escape of clients. After dumping our stuff and running we decided to brave the night market. This was not a wise choice. We got too scared to try anything and after wondering bewilderly along the market we promptly ran into tesco and hid among the chocolate aisle. After pulling ourselves together and gaining a little courage we gave it another go. We ended up (by pointing, nodding and smiling) with a chicken curry (which laura liked and claire didnt), some banana fritters covered with condensed milk (yum yum - both big fans of these) and some melon. We then went back to the hostel and waited for the dysentry to kick in (it didnt thank god with our bathroom, a little too soon for that degree of bonding between the two of us). By this point we were both a bit freaked out so we went to sleep.

So began our first full day in bangkok and our early start didnt exactly start early. There are no windows in our brothel room so it is pitch black at all times and we didnt even realise it was morning until about 10am. After rapidly (ahem) getting ready (about 2 hrs) we finally made it out in the city where laura then led us into the completely wrong area of the city because she is too stupid to tell the difference between two place names if they start with the same letter (woops). But eventually it turned out that we did need to go there after all so as per usual she was just one step ahead (guess who is writting tonights blog). So after this parlarver we finally made it to siam where we were immediately set upon by hawkers, this may be due to us clutching a map in one hand and lonely planet in the other and a look of sheer terror on our faces. Once we got rid of him we followed the stream of tourists (white people) to find Jim thompsons house (for you lesser educated cretins he is the man who rescued thai silk production by introducing it to the world) it was very pretty and we wanted to steal things. Claire did her own tour based mainly on following the fans in the rooms and got a bit over excited when she answered a question correctly about people peeing in frogs (trust her to get that one). Next stop was MBK shopping centre where we promptly fell in love with thailand. It is a huge building which is essentially an air-con market full of really lovely cheap clothes (although we discovered that when you buy many cheap things it starts to get a bit expensive and causes us to panic). To relieve the stresses and strains of shopping we decided a bit of sophistication was in order(cos you know how sophistimicated we are) and headed off to the bayan tree hotel where we tagged along with an american couple to try and pass our selves off as their children in order to get in. It had been a long hot day and we were minging and also dressed in shorts and flip flops (basically we looked like gypos). When we got in we actually discovered this is a 5 star hotel and generally doesnt welcome gypos. To be allowed in we were made to trade in our flip flops for some old man skanky white leather slip on full of other peoples sweat (and now our own) and had long black skirts wrapped from our (high) waists to the floor - this made us look even worse. We were then led up to the top of one of the tallest skyscrappers (and poshest) in bangkok to mingle with the gliterati, although funnily enough people just backed away from us as we were the only ones dressed in such a ridiculous set up. We ordered our cosmos and took lots of photos like the uncool tourists that we are. For some strange reason we drunk our drinks pretty quickly and toddled off back to the station to the crap hole we now call home (tomorrow we leave thank god) after getting on the metro that went in the opposite direction to where we needed to go. We are now very tired and off to bed before tackling the old part of he city tomorrow. Nighty night xx