We were swiftly woken on the bus with cried of' last stop, everyone off'. Not the way you want to arrive in a city, at 5am and an hour ahead of schedule. I was having a suprisingly good sleep thank you very much! We were dropped at the end of Khao San Road which is the main backpacker road in Bangkok and lined with bars and a market 24 hours so finding someone to get a hostel recommendation was not an issue, even at this time of day. We got ourselves a room and promptly fell asleep again, despite the loud music coming from somewhere above/below/nextdoor or somewhere!

We got back up at a more reasonable time and took ourseleves out to see Bangkok. We were going to navigate by bus but the afore mentioned infected mossie bite was increasingly infected and nicely positioned on my ankle so tuktuk it was. For 20 Baht (50p) we were driven around all the major buddahs including a 43m tall one, the lucky ones and a black one which wasnt open. The pay back for the cheap price is that you are dropped at various tailors and jewellry shops en route and if you buy anything the driver gets a cut. We didnt buy anything, though one of the suit salesmen was very persuasive, but the driver didnt seem to mind. We had been told all day that it was a Buddhist holiday and therefore the Grand Palace wasnt open until 3.30 so at 3.30 we got the driver to drop us outside the palace and left him there. Complete scam. The palace shut at 3.30. Plus there are loads of people outside saying that you cannot go in unless suitably covered. Also a lie. We read the information board and talked to the guard and decided to come back the next day. Couldnt get annoyed about this though as we cant see where anyone benefits from this. The driver didnt get any more money and we didnt buy anything so what was he doing?! Baffles me. We walked around the back of the grand palace to see the reclining Buddah (which people also tried to tell us was shut, it wasnt) which was a pretty impressive site to see. Unfortunately my ankle was really hurting now so homeward bound we went, Buddah-ed out, though travelling via river boat which was pretty exciting!

We decided that a night out on Khao San Road was a necessarly addition to the day, most importantly because if we werent out we would be listening to the music as loud as if we were there anyway! We grabbed some street vendor noodles and then positioned ourselves in a random bar before moving around a few of them. We befriended an Argentinian guy who I reminisced about the beginning of my trip with and tried to find somewhere to go dancing. Instead we found some live music and a street vendor selling bugs! Im not quite sure what kinds of bugs we ate but they were surpisingly tasty! Alex and I called it a night at an early 3am because once again I could not walk and left Juan to party the night away!

The next day we decided to take the river boat to the Grand Palace but didnt actually go inside. We saw the grounds and then river boated back again! A lame attempt at sightseeing for the day, but when you are away for so long these things happen! We found a lovely street for a street vendor dinner (I have eaten out every night for months but cannot remember being in a restaurant) before finding a place which was showing a film. I also had a momentous moment when I bought not one but two tops. The first I had bought in the 5 months or so Ive been on the road. But when one of my three tops came back from the laundry with a tear across the back the matter was taken out of my hands!

We had to get up at 4am for our train to the Cambodian border so we caught about 3 hours sleep before leaving Bangkok exactly 48 hours after arriving.