Hello everyone - We've arrived!!

We landed in Bangkok yesterday - our time around 4pm which is 10am in England. We got the taxi to the hotel which took around 2 hours due to crazy Friday afternoon Bangkok traffic, the hotel was around 20 miles away. At one point we were at a red trafic light for 20 minutes before it turned green! But it only cost 1100 baht which is around 15pounds.

It was raining really bad, thundering and lightning but it was 34'C!

We got dropped off at Kao San Road near the hotel as the taxi driver wasn't sure where the hotel was (as we didn't have the address!).

Kao San Road is the main back backers road. Full of bars, guest houses and stalls selling clothes, jewellry and Thai noodles. We walked down the road with our backpacks trying to find our guest house (Erawan house). It was so busy and a real first experience. In the end we stopped of at an internet cafe and got the address. I showed it to a tuk-tuk driver (tuk-tuks are like a moterbike with a small shed on the back!) and he took us to it. The guest house is really nice, it's a boutique guest house with no lifts, so we have to walk up 2 flights of stairs in the Thai hummidity - luckily the room is air conditioned!

After a shower we went for a walk on to Kao San Road again without the luggage. Its about a 5 minute walk from the room. We ate some Thai noodles for supper (it was still raining) and walked back to the room for around 10pm for some much needed sleep after not having any for around 30 hours! We slept in until 1pm today!!

Today we applied for our Cambodian and Vietnamese Visas and also booked the overnight bus to our next stop- Koh Samui for Wednesday. We were going to get the overnight train but all rail travel has stopped for the next 2 weeks due to the protests (we haven't seen any trouble or protests by the way).

It started raining again today at exactly the same time as yesterday. One minute its glorious sunshine and then a massive storm comes in. Never heard thunder so loud!!

Anyway, just thought we'd update you all on our first couple of days. We've added some photos of our room and of Kao San Road.

Speak to you all soon - Missing you lots

Paula and James x