Bangkok is insane!

Our overnight train experience was a good introduction - noisy, sweaty, cramped and lots of jostling around! We were impressed though by the little man who very kindly made everyone's beds for them with lightning quick precision - all neat and tucked in and cosy!

We headed for Khao San road, backpacker mecca - mainly because the Lonely Planet assured us it was the cheapest place in town, despite more overuse of its favourite adjective - 'dank'! It was a crazy street constantly lined with market stalls selling food, clothes, alcohol, people getting braided hair and full of traders insistant on selling you a wooden frog that gave a hearty 'ribbit' when tickled with a stick. It was here that we were dismayed to find that we really were 100% tourists. We went on a long trek one day round the city to find a market that local people used and trawled through it for hours (it must have been at least a mile long!) being hustled and bustled, only to realise that we didn't really want to buy anything local people wanted (which included an assortment of plastic fruit, sheets and sheets of material, very dubious looking items made from egg and dried shark, and brooms of every shape and size) - we were much more interested in all the junk being sold on Khao San road! Shocking. It was fun strolling through Chinatown though with all its lanterns and red and gold writing.

The famous floating market two hours out of the city tempted us one Saturday but not quite enough, so we decided to settle for a nearby smaller version. A clever lady helped us find a boat and gave the impression we would share it with other market goers but as it turned out we were paying to charter a long tail boat just for the two of us! Oh dear for the budget but it was a fun morning, if a little perilous on entry and exit of the boat!

Another day we stumbled upon a most enormous golden Buddha in temple grounds - standing up for a change (about time he tackled that middle aged spread) - really very big and very golden!

We kept ourselves going with constant sustenance from nice cheap stalls - fresh fruit juice smoothies in plastic bags, sliced pineapple, meat on skewers, bowls of noodles, and one day Matt felt the need to spend an evening crunching on a tasty bag full of fried cockroaches, grubs, grasshoppers and other similar delights!

It wasn't long before the Bangkok craziness was giving us a headache so we escaped to the cooler northern slopes of Chiang Mai (but not before sitting on a bus for 12 hours).