allo allo allo!

Wow we are in Thailand!!! Hehe. Was quite a journey up here. We had a 8 hour bus journey from east to west across Malaysia, back through the Highlands which was cool.. even saw a sign on the side of the road warning of Elephants! Didn't see any, but I suppose that can only be seen as a good thing as Elephant + Bus = Bad!!!! The journey was pretty hard going although I (nina) admittedly slept most of the way. We then stayed a night in Penang whilst waiting for the train the next day which was so nice as the food is amazing there! We proper pigged out lol. The next day we got going on a very very long 22 hour train journey straight up to Bangkok. It was actually pretty cool. Our seats were very comfortable and turned into surprisingly very comfy beds over night. We even had meals on board (sort of like airplane food!) We basically sat reading and playing cards and listening to music the whole way. Occaisionally getting up to stretch our legs. We had bought tickets for an upper and a lower bunk, the upper bunk was soo small but pretty cosy and the lower bunk was huge (Ben's bunk of course being bigger!) so I stayed in Ben's as late as possible before climbing up to bed. Actually had a really good nights sleep rocking and swaying with the train lol. Breakfast was pretty grim though, but we forced it down!!

On arriving in Bangkok we realised that despite having a map, we didn't have a clue where we were going lol! We stepped out of the station, and all of the roads immediatly surrounding us were written in Thai (basically just squiggle writing!).. so we decided on getting a tuk-tuk to our guesthouse which it turned out was miles away. It was quite a 'hairy' ride. I think we had picked the craziest tuk-tuk driver possible and he over-took everyone and was squeeling round corners, even almost ran somebody over as they were crossing the street. Didn't think drivers could get any worse than in Malaysia, but apparantly they can!!!!

We stayed in a place called the 'Riverview Guesthouse', so you can probably guess from the name that it had a river view, which was pretty cool! Good place to go and sit in the evenings, which we did most nights (when it wasn't raining), drinking big bottles of beer for 42 baht a go... not bad considering there are 48 baht to the pound =)! On our first day there, we didn't do a great deal... got our bearing with the local area, and scouted out good places to eat. That evening, we wandered down to Khao San road (the main backpacker district) which was about a 10 minute walk from us. Very strange really, walking around that part of town you really wouldn't have thought that you were in the middle of Bangkok.... there were an unbelievable amount of travellers around, so we were pretty glad we hadn't chosen to stay there... especially as we had barely bumped into any westerns for our whole time in Malaysia! It was nice to wander around stalls, and we sat and drank a beer, with people coming up to us trying to flog us stuff every other minute... One lady selling stuff was rather bizarre and quite funny, she kept trying to sell me (Ben) ladies jewellery, and even tried to sell me the hat that she was wearing. After trying it on, I decided against it lol!

The next day, we did alot of sight-seeing, and hired ourselves a tuk-tuk driver for 30B for 3-4 hours.. who took us all around town. Must have gone to around 4 different temples, but to be honest the only one we can remember the name of is 'Wat Pho'! Really cool though, one temple we went to had a standing buddah (there are three types.. sitting, standing and lying, all representing different stages of enlightenment) which stood at around 47m from memory.. give or take 5m's, so it was pretty massive! Another temple had a sitting and lying buddah, both of which were covered in gold leaf, and quite stuning, and another temple that you had to pay to enter, and the ticket man was very grumpy and would change 100B.. so we snuck in around the back, but didn't see much!

After taking us around, he dropped us near 'Wat Pho', and as soon as we stepped out some begging sorts thrust bags of bird seed into our hands.... then as if out of nowhere about 200 pidgeons appeared and started attacking us for it. I (Ben) found it quite funny.. and couldn't move for pidgeon having a good old peck at me, but Neen didn't enjoy it so much! I was planning on giving the bloke about 5 baht.. and he kept going to me 'paper..paper..200baht', I told him where to go, gave him 10 baht and wandered off! That's the one difference from Malaysia that we have noticed the most since coming here... is that on every turn there is someone trying to rip you off!!!! After a few days in Bangkok, we got to the point where we didn't want to accept help from people, in case it was some sort of scam... luckily we didn't get scammed, but can see how a lot of people do!!!!!

Wat Pho was absolutely incredible.The grounds were massive, surrounded by a big wall with so many temples and pagodas (tall carved spire things). The temples here are very different and much more elaborate. They are all white and gold and sparkly. It took us a good few hours to wander round the whole place. We saw many many many buddahs, sitting, lying and standing all in gold leaf on top of glass mosaic shrines. Some were absolutely huge, the biggest one was 42 METRES long and 15 METRES high. He was lying down in a massive hall. All the walls were painted with thai rural scenes and there was even a lady painting flowers and patterns on the walls (I want that job!) The pictures will describe it better than we can but it was amazing and very awe inspiring! It was really impressive to see how well kept it was as it dated back from the 16th century. Mad to think it was all built without modern tools. After our mammoth temple seeing day we went for a lovely thai green curry, twas so good! And then had a beer on the rooftop overlooking the river and pretty city lights.

The next day, we went to an English cafe called 'Oh My Cod' which we had found wandering around the night before.... it had a proper English menu with the like of Pie and Chips, Fish and Chips, Burgers, and selection of English breakfast! We decided to go for a Wiltshire smoked bacon baguette each, which was amazing as we haven't had bacon in like 2 month.. mmmmm! So so good, but quite expensive.. would have cost us 500 baht if we had gone for a full english, so it wouldn't have been much cheaper than back home! Ah, how we miss English food!!!! That afternoon, we went to the shopping district, where all of the recent protests took place.. it was really strange to think only a month ago the army were firing live rounds into the crowds. Glad we were safe in Malaysia then! We had a wander around a few shops, trying to scout out some bargains, but there wasn't much to be had. We did get ourselves some 'Dunkin Doughnuts' though.. which were amazing! After that, we took a stroll down to the 'Central World Plaza', which, until it was recently set alight by red shirt protestors, was Asia's largest shopping centre! Part of it was still open, and temporary stall had been set up (there was even a McDonalds stall lol).. but the centre was really eerie as there were only a handful of people in there, and there was a smokey smell still lingering in the air... on the outside you could see the bullethole in the glass, and the damage that the fire had done.... very bizarre! After wandering around, we took a bus down to Chinatown, where a really sweet old lady went completely out of her way to show us the way to the centre of it.. really nice of her! When we got there though, there wan't a great deal to see... and unless you wanted to pick your favourite squiggle off the menu, there weren't any restaurants to eat at. Really wish we could read Thai, and I thing we will have to play pick the squiggle sometime soon, could be fun lol! After wandering around for a couple of hours, we headed back to our part of town and chilled out for the rest of the evening!

The next day we went to Chatuchak market. It was so amazing. Quite a few of our clothes had been ruined in the laundry so we were shopping yay! It was so huge with 15,000 stalls and 200,000 people!! We reckon it was the size of a small town. Hundreds of tiny little streets you could barely squeeze down and so many good food stalls and trinkets and clothes (all so cheap) we had to resist buying quite alot lol. We have decided we will go back there before coming home to get souvenirs and bits for our own place (think we will need another big bag!) Was so amazing though, we got a few tops each and a pair of shorts each, all good quality for about 25GBP! It was like shopping heaven. We walked round and round it for about 6-7 hours. It was so big that when we wanted to go back to a certain shop for a t-shirt it took us about an hour to find it! New stalls just kept popping up everywhere totally disorientating you. Eventually we got a bus back home and found a wicked little restaurant/stall. It was loads of little tables outside on a tiny side street (soi) served by a teeny kitchen with 2 woks and 20 tables! The most amazing food though and so cheap. We ate there alot lol.

The next day we went to Lumphini park and sat under the trees in the shade by the lake. Was very relaxed and chilled out. We even sumbpled upon a massive, free aerobics class in the middle of the park. There were about 100 people doing synchronized dancing to cheesy music. It was hilarious. Next time we will join in (Ben wouldn't let me lol). We then went to try and find little India as we really fancied an indian curry. However when we got there it turned out it was in the very posh part of town (funnily the red light district was in the middle of it all!) and all the restaurants were mega expensive. Eventually we gave up and caught a bus back. After sitting on it for ages and realising we had no idea where we were, a lady told us we'd actually wanted the bus going the other way!!! Was pretty crap as we wanted to get back early so we could take phone calls from our parents. Eventually we got home and got a take-away curry from a local place. Then came hours of non-phone calling haha. The lady at reception was a bit divvy and the phone connections are pretty awfull here so we went to get a phone card which cost a whopping 800baht for just under an hour!!! Thats like a whole days money for us here (although only actually 16GBP) but was good to talk to everyone. It's wierd cause you can go weeks without speaking to anyone and not miss home but when you knwo you will be talking to your parents, and then you suddenly cant, it makes you really miss everyone! lol.

The next morning, we had a last English Breakfast at the cafe around the corner, and packed up our stuff to move on to Ayuthaya. We caught the train for our hour and a half journey out of Bangkok at around 2pm, after a couple of hours waiting in the station.... it was quite a relief to be moving on from Bangkok, as nice as it was to see the sights, it was sooo touristy, quite manic, and very polluted (to the extent that you would get a headache each time you got on a bus)!!!!

All very exciting to be starting our trip up north through Thailand, and we are yet to decide how it compares to Malaysia... I think Malaysia will be pretty hard to top, but we keep open minds. Should be exciting, and we are looking forward to seeing some Elephants, and such... maybe even some tribe people..............

Anyway, will write about Ayuthaya as soon as we can, and speak to you all soon!

Love to all

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