We landed in Bangkok in the early hours, so when we got to the hotel we got a couple of beers and drank them sitting on the steps outside our hotel. It's the first time on the trip we've felt real heat and it was safe to say we didn't adapt very well during the first few days. The hotel was really nice in the lobby but pretty bad in the rooms. It suited us fine tho, we really appreciated the air-con.

The next day we explored Bangkok. After a while we decided to go for a massage, not a dodgy massage, although I can only speak for myself. I did hear a lot of laughter coming from James down the corridor, he claimed the lovely masseuse was massaging his feet that are really ticklish. Decide for yourselves what really happened there.

We walked around Bangkok finding a few bars, a little in disbelief at what Bangkok is like. I heard it was bad/interesting, but it's a lot worse. James and I decided we could get into a lot of trouble here so decided to behave. We found a few bars then we stumbled across a big area cornered off, after some investigation we found that they served beer in 4 litre jugs. Safe to say we spent the next 2 hours drinking 4 litres. Each. The rest of the night is a bit of a blur but I can remember getting food and drinking more beer then waking up feeling like i'd been hit by a car, my head hurt so badly. No idea why I drank 4 litres of beer when I don't even like the stuff.

We checked out and got a taxi to the bus station. We were heading to Pattaya, probably worse then Bangkok in someways, since my grandad might be reading this I won't explain how.

The buses air-con was broken so it was a hot 4 hours. On the bus we met an Irish guy called Cian. He is a lecturer at the Bangkok uni. When we got off he made sure we knew where we were going and gave us his number. We didn't meet up with him in Pattaya but were heading to Bangkok again in a few months so will give him a call then. It was our first experience of a modern tuktuk. A pickup truck with seats in the back. Not the safest form of transport but its either that or a moped taxi driven by a teenager or an old man, probably with the same reaction speed as the dead.

Even though we had help it still took us ages to find our hotel - again. No one had heard of it before, very annoying in extreme heat. But once we found it we were happy, and only a short walk to the beach.

The next few days leading up to Christmas blended into one, just a lot of lying on the beach, eating and sleeping. The most interesting thing that happened was James decided to shave his beard off to my disappointment.

James and I have a tradition on Christmas Eve to have a few drinks throughout the day. It didn't change this year. We were sensible and started at 3 instead of midday like other years.

Early evening we met an older guy from Birmingham. He'd been going to Pattaya for years so he showed us some good places to go. One was a lady boy bar which was interesting. They seen to really like James, I was very happy about this. He then took us to some other interesting bars. We finally made it to bed at about 7am.

Christmas Day was pretty short. We got up at 3. Went for Christmas dinner which was sea bass and prawns (turned out to be raw but nice), went to the beach then chilled out in the hotel room with a few films wondering if the raw prawns would make us ill, they didn't.

Boxing Day was spent finding a new beach and finding a way to the next destination. We decided we would get a private mini bus to Koh Chang. It's about £5 more expensive but picks us up from our hotel in Pattaya and drops us off outside in Koh Chang and only takes 4 hours.

We got up early and waited for the minibus to pick us up at half 7. After an hour of waiting we decided to go to the shop where we bought the minibus ticket from. There was a nice lady in the office, we explained what had happen and she made a few phone calls. The reason why they didn't pick us up was because it was full. Retards.

We got a full refund and got some breakfast to ponder what to do next. We asked a few people and got palmed off to other people and eventually found a minibus to a city half way between Pattaya and Koh Chang, where we'd catch a normal bus to the ferry terminal in Trat, after an hour of waiting that bus didn't turn up either. We got palmed off again to another minibus that dropped us in the middle of nowhere. After 15 minutes waiting a tuktuk picked us up, drove for another 40mins and dropped us at the ferry. After the ferry we got another tuktuk that took over an hour to our hotel. It took us 13 hours instead of the 4 hours it would have taken on the original minibus.

We are now in the arse end of no where lying on a beach :)