Hey guys. We have spent the last couple of weeks checking out the sights and sounds of Thailand, and now is the time to tell you our thoughts!

The trip from Siem Reap to Bangkok was certainly an experience. We were bundled into a small, rickety bus whose air conditioning comprised of how wide you could open the windows. We travelled in this fashion, crammed in so tightly, with our backpacks carelessly shoved along the aisle making it impossible to move, for approximately 6 hours until we reached the border. Here we were unceremoniously thrown out of the bus and made to queue to receive our stamp to leave the country and then trapse across to the Thai side of the border to repeat the process in order to get in. That complete we then waited for about 2 hours for the other bus to take us to bangkok. Thankfully this bus had air con and a proper luggage compartment!

We arrived in Bangkok at around 7pm and managed to locvate ourselves a place to stay. We immediately decided to take a peep at the infamous Koh sanh Road. It is the quintisential bustling backpacker street, people selling buckets of cocktails, fake goods galore, street food vendors, all in one small stretch!

We did not spend all of our time idling up and down Koh Sanh however. We did manage to drag ourselves to see the Grand Palace, in all its shimmering glory. The Garand Palace is what we imagined all the previous temples and palaces to be like as we made our way through Indonesia and Asia. Everything is guilded in gold and to be treated with the utmost respect. It is very rude to point the sole of your foot at the Budda statues - and even more difficult to prevent yourself from doing so once you are aware of the fact! In the Grand Palace one of the main focuses is the Emerald Budda, which is not made of emerald but Jade! We also made our way to the reclining Budda a little further away from the palace. The reclining Budda is the largest Budda and is HUGE! It is also rather impressive!

Best go now....some girl is rabbiting down my ear and annoying me...

Ok the annoying girl has gone, we can continue!Anyway the reclining Budda was very impressive, as was the huge downpour that occurred as we were looking at the aforementioned Budda! Thats the one thing....we are in rainy season, so it tends to rain quite a bit! Also the tuk tuk and taxi drivers do their best to take you in the opposite diection to where you actually want to go! One evening we decided to go to one of the markets and decided to trust a tuk tuk driver to take us there. Instead he took us to a bar down a really dark alley and tried to get us to go in to watch the wonderful sex show. We politely declined and got into another taxi who took us to another dark alleyway containing a bar and another sleazy show. Again we declined, and this time we opted to walk to the market - it was much easier!

We have also managed to make our way up to Chiang Mai on what has to be the most scary bus journey we have ever undertaken! As we boarded the tourist police came on over a megaphone and told us to keep all our valuables with us and to continually check our bags as lots of things get stolen on this journey! They then came and took photographs of suspicious characters (thankfully not us) and travelled with us on the 12 hour journey. I dont think we slept much for fear of being robbed, but all was well! Although we did hear later on that someone had $600 US stolen and another $300 US. That to us begged the question why are they carrying that much money in the first place? Anyway we arrived in Chiang Mai and familiarised ourselves with the area before booking our tours. We decided to do a day long cookery course and a one day trek.

The cookery course was amazing! We made 6 dishes including spring rolls and a curry and it was amazing how quickley everything came together in the pan. Andrew had a couple of difficulties with some of the dishes I believe (Emma was making different dishes at the time!) but all in all everything was lovely...except for the fact that Andrew put too many mouse-s*** chilies in his soup so it was too hot for him! Our trek was just as cool. We were driven to an elephant trekking area about an hour south of Chiang Mai and spent the next hour trekking through the landscape on a rather naughty elephant who continuously decided to go off the track to gather some more food for himself! We did ask what the elephant was called, but the response we got either meant he was called yes or elephant...we gave up asking after a while!

After our trek we took a bamboo raft down the river for a while...all was well until Emma in true form managed to half fall into the river (3 rafts, 3 times in the water!) It was quite relaxing to gently float down stream on a big bamboo raft, getting a wet bum as we travelled through the rapids! Although Emma was rather damp following her experience! A quick bite to eat (consisting of cabbage water soup and cucumber in vinegar!) and then we were off for a trek into the 'jungle' to meet some tribes living there. The tribes were a little disappointing to be honest. They were more interested in selling you things than actually allowing you to experience the tribe itself. But then I guess thats what you get on some of these tours! We had a final trek back to the van and then a sleep on our way home!

unfortunately Emma caught some sort of bug and spent the next day feeling awful and looking it too...she ended up retreating to the bedroom to suffer while Andrew wandered around Chiang Mai and discovered that all the shops sell pretty much the same things as the rest of Asia! We did manage to check out the Night Bazaar though, which had pretty much the same stuff too, but it was fun all the same!

Back in Bangkok and Andrew finally caught the bug Emma had and spent the day lying in bed while Emma nursed him in return for he nursing her. Despite the illness we decided to check out one of the islands in an attempt to top up the rapidly fading tans and make ourselves look a bit healthier! We chose Koh Chang as our island, partly because it was pretty close to Bangkok and partly because with it coming up to full moon the bigger islands would be swamped with revellers attending the famous full moon parties and pushing all the prices up! It took us about 7 hours to journey to Koh Chang and we grabbed a taxi to a stretch of coast called Lonely Beach. It was a short walk to the beach, but being rainy season the weather was rather unpredictable. Our one day of sunshine was somewhat marred by the fact that Andrew felt particularly unwell again, so after 40 mins we headed back to the room again. The next day it rained, constantly! It was too soon time to return to Bangkok and prepare to fly to Vietnam. Typically the day we left was glorious and it was really hot on the way back! It was obviously not meant to be!

So now we are ready to fly off to Hanoi and experience something new. The highlight of Thailand was the cookery course and the elephant trek - although we did wonder how well the elephants were treated at times. The lowlight was being ill and having to stay in the room to recover, but we are all well again now....just one thing to say...

Good Morning Vietnam...