Well i made it here!!! My flight was ok, glad it was an overnight flight and i took a sleeping pill so managed to sleep for bits of it. Was really emotional leaving the UK, spent quite a bit of the flight in tears but the girls sat next to me were really nice. Had a bit of trouble finding my pick up man at the airport but was ok in the end when i realised that when his board said 'Faye Johnson' it actually meant Rosie Clark. I shared a minibus into Bangkok with a really nice group of girls who are all doing some sort of volunteering with the same company as me, but we are all doing different things, which is a shame because we wont see each other again now, and they were all really nice. I was the oldest out of them all which felt really strange. So far everyone keeps telling me how brave i am doing this on my own, which is nice but scary when people say it when they have been travelling for a while. Make me wonder what they have seen that i havent! Bangkok is really quite beautiful, hundreds of skyscrapers as you come into the centre, in amongst temples and tiny side streets. Got to my hotel about 6pm and got to my room and had my own room!!! i was expecting to share and the other girls i was with all had to share so i was lucky to have a double bed all to myself. It took me about an hour before i figured out what was different about my room, then suddenly i realised, it has no windows!! it is very dark and the lighting is crap so i lose all sense of time when i'm in there. i do have BBC world though so thats good!
I was supposed to meet the people who are doing the volunteering with me and a couple of the girls i arrived with at 8pm to go and get something to eat, but no one turned up! So i sat in reception for a while hoping someone would turn up but no one did. so in the end i just walked out of the hotel, turned left, saw very quickly that left was not good, turned right and headed towards lights. i just kept walking and thought i had walked into Chinatown, but it was in fact Khao San Road, which is the main tourist area and the place i wanted! i dont really know how to describe the place, except to say it's mental. i just walked up the streets on my own, feeling hungry and a bit lonely so got some Pad Thai from a street seller and just walked up and down soaking up the atmosphere eating my food. It really is a strange mix of people and cultures. Here is a list of strange things i have seen since i got here:
1. Ladyboys
2. girls wearing very short skirts. in fact to call them skirts is too much credit to them.
3. a 70ish year old man playing electric guitar and break dancing in the street.
4. people lying in the street
5. people with no limbs walking/crawling in the street.
6. people frying scorpians
7. people eating scorpians
8. a petrol station forecourt turned into a restaurant at night.
9. tinsel.
I'm sure i will think of more...
I then went up to a girl, asked her if she spoke English and asked her to take a picture of me (see me and the mango). i thought i had better prove that i was actually here. I told her i was on my own and just got here, and she was so so lovely and asked if i wanted to go for a drink with her and her friends. She is from London and teaches English at a school in Korea with the friends she was with. She is actually trained as an architect but couldt get a job in the UK because of the slump in the housing market so just went to Korea to teach english. All of her friends were either Canadian or American, and we went to a bar where there was about ten of us. I think she was as pleased to see me as i was her as all of her friends make fun of her for being english, so i think she was glad to have someone to back her up! We sat talking about English things and ended up telling her most of my life story (poor girl). I met a guy called Mike and we had a 2 hour conversation about how to pronounce the word 'Middlesborough' which Americans and Canadians just cant say. It was one of her friends birthdays (Rocky) a couple of days before, so tequilas started appearing, which was deadly, and i then had a whole tray of tequilas dropped on my head. Natalie and i each had a bucket (yes they sell it in buckets) of Strawberry dakarai (never sure how to spell that), 4 tequilas and a cosmopolitain. i didnt intend to go to a bar and get drunk on my first night, but it's almost impossible not to. needless to say i got pretty wasted and ended up loosing Natalie after she announced she was going shopping at about midnight as she wanted to get some souveneirs and then i never saw her again! They all left today to go back to Korea for their teaching jobs, and i have got some of their skype names and email addresses so i will try to keep in touch with them. It was really nice to meet people and have fun on my first night, but i am very hungover this morning. Why do i never learn when the sensible place to stop drinking is. i think i will have to except that i probably never will, especially when they serve the alcohol in buckets.
Am off to Singburi today to go the Eco house to begin my volunteering tomorrow. I should be meeting the people doing it with me to get the minibus. i hope they will be nice. Sorry i have just seen this is a complete ramble! but then it is Rosie's round the world ramble...
More soon as i can...