we got up early to catch a mini bus to kanchanaburi with marianka and lorraine, which took about 2 hours. we are staying in the blue star guesthouse which is pretty basic but only costing just over 2 pounds a night, in little bungalows situated on silts over the river. really pretty and even have a resident monitor lizard! back to cold water shower again and this time we dont have a flushing toilet. have to pour buckets of water down instead, but its fine. we to...

we got a lift to the train station for the next part of our journey to ayutthaya. we travelled third class, our tickets costing about 50p for a two and a half hour journey! this meant the train was pretty full with locals, so we just had to place our bags where we could and stand in a corner somewhere. after a while i decided to do what the locals do and sit in the doorway of the train with my feet dangling out the door! was much more fun, even if it was dirty! f...

we left bangkok to head to pak chong (khao yai national park). this wasnt so straight forward as the bus terminal is out of town. had to catch a sky train and then get a taxi, who couldnt understand us and had to find someone to translate for us where we wanted to go! once at the bus station it took 3 attempts to find the right place to buy the tickets and found out that the next bus was leaving straight away, so was a bit of a mad rush! we were catching a 3rd cl...

day 3 today we decided to head back to the grand palace.. this time with no problems! we knew where we were going and we didnt even get hassled. the grand palace cost us 350b (just over 7 pounds) and was jaw droppingly beautiful. lots of ornate sparkling gold and jewelled buildings and giant statues. inside some of the buildings were paintings on the walls and large gold buddhas. really stunning. outside one building we used a flower to dip in a gold bowl and po...

day 2 after a nice long sleep (though kept waking up with dead arms from the hard mattress!) we headed downstairs for our complimentary breakfast of cereal, bread ( the toaster didnt work!) tea and coffee (some kind of strange herbal tea - yuck!) and got talking to 3 other english girls who were lovely. today we decided to head to the grand palace. we had to catch 2 sky trains (took us a little while to get the hang of the ticket system and different lines!) an...