Beth and I flew to Bangkok on the 15th March from Hanoi. Weirdly we both had visions of the plane crashing and neither of us could relax but we didn't tell each other that until we'd got off the plane! Very weird! Luckily that didn't happen and we landed safely in Bangkok. The political protests were in full swing and the red shirts were all over the city. Stupidly, I was wearing a red tshirt when I landed in Bangkok, much to the amusement of the bus driver!!!! We caught the bus into the city taking detours to avoid the red shirts as much as possible. The protest was actually fenced off so there was no chance that you could just stumble across it. The fences were right at the end of the road that we were staying on, but we didn't see any people up there.
Steve (Beth's boyfriend) came to meet us on our second day there and his brother came to meet us too. He'd seen action from the red shirts before and said it was nothing to worry about and we should actually go and have a look at it some time. I was avoiding it for the time being, especially in my red shirt!!
Steve, Beth and me went for a 2 day trip to Kanchanaburi where the bridge over the river Kwai is located. We stayed in a floating hut over the river which was pretty cool when any boats went past as the whole hut swayed! We took a trip to the bridge and had a walk over it. It was quite scary walking over it, there are no barriers up over the sides and it could be quite easy to fall in (if you're as clumsy as me!). We managed to avoid the trains coming past but when we saw some from below they were going so incredibly slow I think it would have been easy to get out of the way!
We caught a bus back to Bangkok, which seemed to take forever, and Rich came out and met us that night!! It was really cool having the boys out to spend the time travelling with us! It felt like we were on holiday for a while rather than travelling!!
We went straight out for drinks when Rich arrived in Bangkok. We decided to stay out of Bangkok city and stay nearer to Steve's brother so as to avoid the protests.
The 4 of us took a cultural visit to the Grand Palace and then a not so cultural visit to Ko San Road where we all bought lots of tshirts! So cheap!! We also decided to take a walk through the red shirts protest. It was certainly an experience. It was almost like a concert atmosphere. There were just hundreds of people crowded around a stage where someone was speaking over a megaphone, and people were waving clappers around in agreement with what they were saying. It all seemed very peaceful and we managed to take some photo's!
We took a trip up the Baiyoke Sky Tower the next day and looked over the whole of Bangkok. We had to catch their smelly, dirty river boat to get there and it was horrible! Actually, we ended up spending a lot of time on those boats as we were staying so far out of the city! That night we went to a music concert where 'Placebo' were playing (I remember them from back in the 90's!!). They put on an amazing show and it was very strange as you could easily walk to the front of the stage without any problems, and not get jumped on when you got there! I think the Thai are a bit more polite at their concerts! We had a night out in Bangkok and met some Thai girls who Steve's brother knows. They really know how to party! And they love having their pictures taken too! So the whole night they were grabbing hold of us getting us to dance and pose for photo's! It was quite funny!!
I managed to persuade Rich to have a fish foot massage before we left Bangkok, and I'm not sure he liked it! It was funny watching him though!!
We caught a night bus from Bangkok to Krabi on the 21st, which was just awful!!! Firstly, it wasn't a sleeper bus like we had in Vietnam so we had to sit up for the whole 15 hour journey! Secondly, this stupid woman decided to start shouting at the bus driver that there was no air conditioning just as everybody on the bus was just falling asleep! That was it for the rest of the night then, I couldn't sleep! After she'd done that she obviously upset the bus driver as he reversed into another bus and then kept slamming on his brakes so hard every time he wanted to stop! Then, she managed to annoy part of the crew on the bus who started shouting back at her and banging metal bars on the chairs in front! This did not make for a pleasant experience! We then had to change buses about 4 times after Surat Thani because the bus companies sell you on like cattle! We had to wait around for ages during each of these changes! There was also a girl from Stoke who was so loud and I happened to be sitting next to on one of the bus journies! Just to top it off, when I arrived in Krabi, I realised my bag had been rifled through and the bus crew had nicked my mosquito net. Luckily I didn't have any valuables in my bag!!! Apparently it's quite a common thing that they rifle through people's bags and steal things.
Anyway, we made it safely to Krabi!!!