This morning I woke on the bus after not much sleep at about half past midnight and decided to demand Vincent sang happy birthday to me. He refused but did come up with a piece of chocolate Swiss roll as birthday cake so was forgiven, lots of people on the bus wished me happy birthday too so it was OK, although one lady said I looked good for 50...hmmph. When we got about 5 hours from Phuket the bus stopped and we were all told to get off for a break and take our...

Today our main mission was to post the remaining gifts from China that the Chinese wouldn’t let us send and to also post the gifts we had bought so far in Thailand. The posting process was easy. Buy a box that you fill up and then a guy tapes it and tells you how much it costs and how long it will take. You then pay at a separate counter with a very enthusiastic lady with a stamp that says SURFACE (I’m sure it won’t go by air by accident the lady was very t...

Today we checked out of the Baiyoke hotel. It was lovely but the internet was so pricey and we had seen the view several times now, so we opted for a cheap and cheerful hotel with internet. The price difference turned out to be 600b at Baiyoke and 30b at the Malaysia Hotel. As we had so much stuff and we weren’t sure how far it was we popped out into the Pratnum area to have a final gift buying session. As usual we haggled away and got a whole heap of presents ...

Today we hoped to take the sky train. We wanted to go to some of the historical sites around Bangkok but sadly after taking a closer look at the map the train ran on one side of the hotel and all the things we wanted to see the other. Typical. We jumped in a taxi, a bright pink one of course, and asked him to take us to the area for the Grand Palace. It wasn’t a long journey and I was quite glad of the AC in the taxi. To go to the temples we had to wear clothes...

Today we wanted to go to the gym at the hotel to get some controlled exercise. First we popped downstairs to buy Vincent some shorts. Then off we went for a work out. Vincent did his usual thing while I did 10 minutes on a reclining bike, my physio and then tried not to go backwards on the cross trainer for a few minutes. After that I went for a swim in our roof top, 11th floor, pool but it was pretty cold so I only did a few minutes before getting out again. We ...