Hello everyone,

We finally made it to Thailand! I would firstly like to thank Dan, Sadie and Mark for dropping us off at Heathrow :)

Our flights over were great and pretty luxurious considering we were just in the standard seats. We had to change planes in Mumbai. I was fascinated by the slums we saw as we flew over, they're absolutely massive and come right up against the airport. After a bit of a delay, we continued onwards to Bangkok. Ryan wasn't too happy when we had to circle round above the city for a while in a thunderstorm. The airport is huge and very modern, it didn't take us long to get our baggage and find our way to the taxis. Our driver was very friendly and gave us some sweets (luckily it turned out he wasn't trying to drug us!). We got some good views of the Bangkok skyline at night as we drove in and our driver pointed out some of the important landmarks such as the tallest building, the sky train and some Thai lady he fancies on one of the billboards. Unfortunately he wasn't exactly sure how to get to our guesthouse so just dropped us off at Khaosan road instead. From there it is pretty straight forward to walk to. Unfortunately though, I thought we had been dropped off at the opposite end of Khaosan and we ended walking in exactly the wrong direction. A nice man on his bicycle who could see we were lost stopped to help. He spoke to a tuktuk driver who drove us there, though he had to ask for directions a few more times. To be fair, the map I printed definitely wasn't good enough. Our guesthouse is called 'Khaosan Baan Thai' and is located a few minutes walk away from Khaosan road itself, down a side street or 'soi'. Its basic but really nice and although the people who run it can't speak much english, they are very friendly and helpful.

This morning the long journey had caught up on us and it was a struggle to get up (though I'm sure mum would say this isn't any different to usual). Breakfast was really nice and the toast even came with pictures of a cup of coffee and a smiley face on, an added bonus! The original plan today was to catch a water taxi (as instructed by Beth) down to the grand palace and other temples. We went to the nearest stop but the man said we needed to go to the next stop down to go where we wanted. After getting a bit lost (again) and having to ask directions, we came to a nice park by the river with a fortress in. We also saw some filming going on for a TV programme. Before we could get to the water taxi we were collared by a man trying to get us to go for a tour in a long-tailed boat. I was pretty sceptical at first but when we started to walk away he lowered the price, then I got him to lower it again. He also promised there would be no visits to shops or anything. A man we spoke to later said we had got a good deal. We had a boat to ourselves and the trip lasted about an hour. I'm really glad we did it in the end, it was pretty amazing. We saw lots of houses on wooden stilts along the river, some of which looked like they could collapse at any minute. In fact there were some places where this had obviously happened and there where broken rotten stilts left sticking up out of the water. We also saw some quite posh houses and quite a few temples. A man persuaded us to buy some bread to feed some enormous fish with in the river, apparently they're not good for eating. The trip was also a nice way to get a bit of breeze on our faces. Our boat driver dropped us off by the grand palace. By this time though it would have been too late to go in. Instead we headed towards Wat Pho. I was hoping to see a place to hire a long sleeved top as I haven't brought any with me but I couldn't see any. A man pointed us towards Wat Pho but said we weren't wearing the right clothes and tried to persuade us to go on a tuktuk tour to four other temples where it didn't matter so much what you wore for 40baht each. I kept saying no even when he lowered it to just 10baht each and in the end had to just walk off. It was pretty obvious we were going to be taken to various shops, especially since the tour itself cost practically nothing. I think we made a good choice. By this point we decided it was probably best to get up early and go and do the temples tomorrow.

Next we popped into a 7/11 to buy a map, a wise move I think. Then we wandered back up to Khaosan road where we sat and ate some yummy pad Thai and did some people watching, we saw lots of backpackers (on their gap yahs) and some dirty old western men with young Thai women. We then had a bit of a look around the shops and I bought a long-sleeved top ready for the temples tomorrow. When we got back to the guesthouse we chilled outside for a while and Ryan drank some Chang beer. We tried to book another night here but unfortunately they're fully booked for the next week. He suggested a few other places we could try though. We ended up falling asleep in our room for a while because we're still pretty tired. We woke to the sound of thunder and heavy rain which was pretty cool, its still raining now. We might venture out to buy some nibbles from the 7/11 round the corner in a bit. Today has been great despite not going exactly to our original plan. We've got our bearings a bit more now and will hopefully have a more productive day tomorrow. I'm liking Bangkok so far, it's a bit rough around the edges but there's a good atmosphere here and it's surprisingly green. There's lots of things to see and smell, especially from the street food vendors which are everywhere. Crossing the road is a bit sketchy too, the Thai people just seem to go for it and manage to weave through buses, scooters, cars and tuktuks. Anyway, I'll stop rambling now, to sum up we're having a great time so far.

Lots of love, Jo and Ryan xxx