We left Koh Samet last Thursday and headed for Pattaya. I can safely say tha tit is the most disgusting place I have ever been to!! We had heard it had a quite shady reputation so only planned to stay for two nights and after about half an hour of being there I was very pleased about this! I don't really know how to desrcibe it- a lot of people compared it to the red light district in Amsterdam but a million times worse (having not been to that part of Amsterdam I'm not really sure!!) but there was literally sex everywhere. We couldn't walk two footsteps without being offered some kind of show or prostitute and it did get quite annoying. The main street for this Walking Street was absolutely heaving and I was shocked by the amount of famillies with young children walking through it considering the main objective of the street seemed to be to sell sex. We met up with Flo and Jessie, the people we'd met in Koh Samet and as they'd been there a day longer than us they showed us the sights. It was quite a surreal evening but we did see some thai boxing (although Lawrence thinks they were faking the fighting) and an awful lot of naked ladies! Even more bizzar than this was the walk back to the hotel; we walked along the beach front and there was literally just rows of prostitutes (both male and female) and we were offred drugs several times. Unsurprisingly, no purchases were made!!

The next day we decided we wanted to avoid the sex industry which was easier said than done in Pattaya. We ended up going to Mr Ripley's Believe it or not exhibition which was pretty good and killed the whole day. We also went to their "haunted adventure" which was pretty jumpy but still not as scary as the chamber of horrors in Madam Tussauds in New York!!! We als wandered around the mall and after so long on small islands it felt quite weird being able to go to proper shops. On Saturday we had to come back to Bangkok to head off to Kanchanaburi the next morning, We shared a taxi with Jessie and Flo and then ended up staying out with them that evening far longer than we should have considering we were up at 6 am the following morning.

Kanchanaburi was definitely the highlight of the trip so far. It startde off with a visit to a floating mnarket. We were taken there on little wooden boats and on the way we saw a crocodile swimming past, I was terrified! The market was quite nice although pretty much just like any othre with the addition of water. A lot of the people selling things were a lot more forward about it though and I got hassled quite a lot- one woman literally just started massaging tiger balm onto me to demonstarte its many uses until I felt obliged to buy it and one little girl hassled me so much I gave her 10 baht just to leave me alone!! So I didn't buy very much. Next, we went to a cobra show which was quite scary but we'd seen something pretty similar just on the street in Pattaya. After lunch we went to a death railway museum and for a walk along a bridge over the river Kwai which was good but very very hot. After was the bit I'd been most looking forward to- visiting the tiger temple. We got there and I had to put trousers on because it was a temple so I literally boiled to death. It was very cool being up so close to real tigers and being able to pet them and whatnot but the whole thing was very much like a cattle market in the way they sheperded us around. We did, however get some good photos out of it. Also, seing the baby tigers was a bit more interesting as they were more awake and playful. I said I wanted to live there.

After a brief stop at a waterfall on the way home we went to the hotel which was a floating raft house on the river. It was really nice to stay in but I was convinced we were going to get eaten by alligators in the middle of the night that would just burst through the floor!! We had a few drinks in "beer corner" that night to celebrate an Irish girl's birthday.

Bright and early the next morning we were on our way to visit a seven tier waterfall. It was in a national park and a very pretty walk (although we only made it up six tiers) and went swimming a lot. I wasn't as brave as the boys who were all jumping off things like mokeys/fish but gave it a go. I thought I was quite brave at least!! Especially considering there were fish in the water that would kind of nip at you if you stayed still for too long which made trying to climb out an issue!! On the way back to the bus we saw monkeys too and managed to get photos this time. I still love just randomly bumping into monkeys along the way, I dont think the novelty will wear off! That aftrenoon we went to another war museum along the death railway and had a walk along the hellfire pass. The evening was much quieter and I was very glad I'd been bullied into buying the tiger balm the day before as I somehow maneged to aquire 135 bites that day, a world record surely?!

We chose to pay a bit extra to go and bathe the elephants the next morning and I'm so glad we did, it was the best thing we've done so far. We got to sit on elepahnts who would suddenly just dunk us in the water or spray us with their trunks. There was also a lot of jumping off them involved (although I was a bit of a scaredy cat about this!) It was great fun and I'd love to do it again. After this, the trekking seemed a bit tame but it was still a lot of fun and we got to see beautiful scenery with the bordering mountains of Burma being so close. Feeding them afterwards was also great, I honestly wish I had a trunk and the elephants were almost begging like puppies which was so cute. We then rafterd down the river to get lunch before getting a bus back to Bangkok where we are now. We've been here for a couple days but not really done anything too exciting (apart from eating crickets!!) as we're killing time waiting to get the bus to Koh Pangan whichhh we're getting in about half an hour and will take us 16 hours to get there.