Hi Guys,

Well hello from Thailand! We arrived safe and sound and have had a busy couple of days in the city but with no internet…shocking, so got a bit to fill you in on. We landed around 11am with Gemma and went with her to meet with her tour pick up and say bye before we shot off ourselves. This proved much more of a challenge than expected as we assumed that it would just be a Thai driver with a sign, but it turned out to be an English lad with no sign. Basically we confused him because he was looking for 1 person and there were 3 of us looking for a Thai man (seriously, who doesn't bring a sign to pick up someone you've not met?! It turned out he had looked on facebook at her to see her picture but didn't recognise her… go figure lol). Anyway this whole confusion worked out well for me and Katie as we persuaded the guy to let us share his taxi saving us a few Baht on the bus and we would know where Gemma was staying.

Katie has been to Bangkok a couple of times before so knew roughly where we should go for the nicer hostels and luckily Gemma's was in that part of the backpacker district. We said we would pop back later to say bye and then walked over the road to the hostel opposite which was a about half the price and quite nice and checked in there (don't think we'll ever lose her lol).

Katie and I then spent the rest of the day wandering around some of the Bangkok sights near the hotel. We checked out the royal place as well as the Emerald Buddha (which are both very impressive and gold). Then later we wandered around the Koh San Road area by the hotel in the daylight to see it before all the night time action kicked in. We also managed to squeeze a bit of lunch and a beer into our pack schedule (now drinking Chang beer), the beer bottles seem to have doubled in size since Vietnam not that we're complaining. The foods not bad either, we had some lovely sweet chilli prawns and Thai glass noodle salad.

In the evening we had decided to do as everyone does on Koh San road and go out for a few drinks; we grabbed some food from one of the street vendors and then went out for a few Changs. A bit later in the evening we met back up with Gem and her new group for a drink but then left them to it a short while afterward, as they moved on to one of the pricier joints on the road.

The next morning we were up early as we had to check out of the hotel and wanted to see a few more of the sights. Gem dragged herself out of bed after a heavy night out to have breakfast with us and then me and Katie set off over to the river. We had heard that you can get a locals ferry boat down the river, so had decided to see if we could manage it ourselves. It turned out to be much easier than anticipated and there was even a tourist desk when we reached the pier to direct us to the right boat. We sailed down the river to the flash hotel district and got off near the Sheraton and Hilton. This is where the plan went a little wrong. We thought that we would walk from the hotels to the main shopping district as we assumed it would be nice. It turns out it wasn't. The area wasn't rough but there were no sites or attractive architecture on the whole walk.

The centre of Bangkok, around the Siam Square area, was as expected and very modern. We wandered around the flashy shopping centres for a few hours and then walked back to the hotel. The walk back was much nicer than the walk to town and took us past quite a few nice temples and the democracy memorial. Once back we grabbed some food and then met back up with Gem to say bye for the final time. It was great to have her travel with us and we are both very jealous that she gets to continue for another month and a bit.

Once we had left Gem we went for a quick bite to eat to sustain us for our overnight bus journey to Chang Mai tonight. We weren't overly impressed with Bangkok, although we can see the appeal of the backpacker area of Koh San Road but beyond that and the sights are limited.

Will let you know how we get on in Chang Mai when we arrive.

Lots of love

Martin and Katie