Bangkok bound…

We headed out of the hostel this morning to find some breakfast and found a small café just along the road - 2 'American' breakfasts (basically a fry up!) went down very well as we watched some Bollywood dancing on the Indian music channel! We went back to the hostel to check out and hung around for a couple of hours chatting to the owner and a couple of young Malaysian kids that were visiting him. The little girl liked watching Laura draw and they took turns at drawing pictures, while her brother watched on!

Soon it was time to head to the airport…we'd planned to get a bus from the stop over the road that goes directly to the airport, so we sat and waited…for over an hour! The heat was incredible and we couldn't really risk waiting any longer and possibly missing our flight, so we ended up taking a different bus into Georgetown (this took about an hour!) and then a taxi to the airport. All in all it took us about 3 hours from leaving the hostel to getting to the airport for a 1.5hour flight - crazy! Anyway, there were no problems with the flight and before we knew it, we were landing in Bangkok - very exciting!

After a long queue at passport control, we grabbed our bags and met Chris, who was waiting for us in the arrivals hall - good to see him again after all this time! Next challenge…getting a taxi to the hostel. Ever since we booked the trip, I've read countless stories about how easy it is to get scammed or ripped of by Bangkok airport taxi drivers so I was a little wary, but in reality it was a smooth, hassle free operation. You get a ticket from the public taxi stand and pay based on the meter at the other end - easy! I really enjoyed driving into the city by night with all of the buildings lit up across the skyline - looking forward to the next few days here!

We eventually arrived at our hostel, Cozy Bangkok Place, and didn't even need to check in as Chris had done it for us earlier in the day! The place was really nice - rooms built around an inner courtyard, clean toilets and showers and some brilliant AC! It'll do for us!

After getting sorted we decided to catch a taxi (because they're really cheap here!) to Siam Square for some food and drinks. We ended up in a place called New Light Coffee House which is apparently popular with University students - we could see why as the food was fantastic - Laura had beef curry and I had a noodle dish - yum! We got caught up with Chris over the meal and then headed out to find a bar.

We were stopped just outside by a guy who said he was an English teacher here. He told us about a bar called Bossy and suggested that we catch a nearby waiting tuk tuk to get there. He seemed genuine at the time, but later we thought it was probably a ruse set up by the bar. Anyway, suddenly we were hurtling through the back streets of Bangkok on our first tuk tuk ride! We all managed to hold on as the three-wheeled contraption whizzed along, eventually pulling up outside the bar. The deal was that you pay 300THB to get in but you get a free drink…it wasn't enough to tempt us as we could hear the booming dance music coming from inside, so we beat a hasty retreat!

We had a wander around the area and eventually found a place called Water Bar, where we ordered a 'tower' of beer (3.5 litres that you pour yourself from a tap at the bottom!) and listened to an inexplicably popular acoustic guitarist being screamed at by the Thai girls in the bar. We soon realised that the one sitting behind Chris was most definitely NOT a lady…we'd found our first Bangkok ladyboy! We found it hard not to stare so we got a shock when s/he introduced herself, shook our hands and started chatting away! Very surreal! She took a particular shine to Chris, he'l have to watch out while he's here!

After finishing our tower we caught another cab back to our hostel, stopping to buy a few beers along the way, which we drank back in the room! An eventful first night in Bangkok - tuk tuks, towers and transsexuals!