Well, we won't do that again. 12 hours in a bus. 3 hours of which was along the Cambodian road to the Thai border. For such an important road, you have to ask why it is still made of stone and sand compressed flat. (Some say an airline is paying to keep the road bad). The road is rollered flat but it quickly gets pot holled, so for the first 90 minutes it was like a roller coaster with us literally being thrown airborne off our seats in the bus every 20 seconds or so. After the first 10 minutes of laughter the novelty wore off as we tried to find different seating combinations to add more shock absorbtion. Dirty smelly cafes on the way and frankly the least said about this the better.

On the Thailand side of the border we transferred to some like the A-team van but with a VIP fit, the sort of thinkg a pop star would ride around in. Smooth tarmac roads - wow. The Bangkok hotel is great, equivament to an old 4 star but with a great breakfast spread and all for about 30 pounds a night. Expensive but a nice respite. We said godbye to our fellow travellers here and are now on our own.

The next day was a Thai cooking course, which we have already uploaded photos for. 10 dishes in 3 hours and dessert too! We were re-united with one of our previous travelling friends who had booked themsleves onto the same course - its a small world!

That afternoon, we went to Siam shopping world, in the centre of bangkok, consisting of 3 different shopping malls, a posh, a not so posh, an a quite cheap mall. We went to all 3. We also foudna Mcdonalds where Ian had a Double Big Mac, and Lins played aafe with a fillet-o-fish. It was all going well until someone came and at next to us with a tarantula in a cage...and then they walked away leave us in a Mexican stand-off with a spider. Most locals didn't seem to notice! Eventually the girl came back and removed the spder - I think she had been invited to leave. On the way back to the hotel, we had the normal problems with taxi drivers trying to rip off unsuspecting tourists with the "we don't use meters in taxis after 10 pm" line, and then the "it will cost 150 baht" which led to us pretending to get out, at whihc point, the driver suddenly found his meter did want to work. A 50 baht fare later and we were home. Strangely, taxi drivers atepting to rip us off are now pretty easy to spot and deal with. We fly to Krabi airport tomorrow for a bit of a respite on the beach.....and more taxi drivers!