Well, there was no avoiding it, it was time to go back to Bangkok.

We trekked back up to the train station with only a vague idea of when the trains were (it's surprisingly difficult to get decent bus/train information/timetables in this country!!) and luckily we didn't have to wait too long for the next train going north, but it was pretty full and we ended up walking through the staff carriage right to an empty carriage at the front - the conductor indicated that we were ok to sit there though, so spent the next 3 hours with a whole carriage to ourselves! Lovely J

This time around, we chose a slightly cheaper hostel that was a little farther away from things, but from my quick look at the map, was pretty close to the train station that we were getting into. (Also the reviews were pretty good - U-Baan hostel near Thonburi). All good…until we got to Thonburi train station and I realised that my quick look at the map had been me mistaking another train station for the one were actually at. Oops. It was a 3 mile walk, we could have got a taxi, but it was coming into evening time so was cooler…and well, we like a bit of a challenge sometimes! Hungry and tired, we found a little noodle soup stall (I can't imagine how many gallons of noodle soup we've eaten since being in Thailand! It's basically all we are eating at the moment!!) and then headed back with a few beers and the plan of an early night.

Oh the best laid plans and all that! Enter - Vanessa and Max (California), just finished teaching in S. Korea, travelling for a while and fresh of a plane from Singapore. Except, they'd booked their room starting the next night - but by the time they realised this, it was coming up for about 11pm. James and I had had to book a twin room, so given the late hour, we offered up our 2nd single bed…it was going to be a cosy night!! It was so nice to be back in a sociable hostel environment as most of the places we'd been staying recently seemed quite quiet…anyway, long story short - an early night was not had by anyone…in fact it was quite early in the morning when we all eventually made it to bed!

So, our plans for seeing the sights of Bangkok were put into action a little later that day. There are a few buses you can pick up near the hostel that take you basically to the famous Khao San Road (number 3 and number 9) - we had been told the number 82 would work as well and as this was the first one we saw, we jumped on - however nobody (not the bus conductor/driver or 15 or so other passengers) could work out where we wanted to go - even with much map pointing and trying out different pronunciations! Eventually a girl said something about the number 3 bus - at which point, we all said many 'thank you's' and hopped off the bus having gained 600 yards for free! The number 3 bus was much more successful and before we knew it, we were back in the throng of farang (white people). Vanessa and Max joined us for the day - a day of James and Podgi stomping around with only a vague plan(!) - we took in a few sights that we missed on our first trip to the city and then headed back to Chinatown where we promised a culinary wonderland where we would feast our way back to our hostel, just over the river. Hmm. The last time we'd been in Chinatown was a Sunday (as this was), however it had been at least 6 hours earlier - more around lunchtime. Evenings saw less snacks and more sit down meals - but we still managed to, eventually, find some food on sticks and instead of feast, we nibbled our way around Chinatown.

The whole reason we'd come back to Bangkok was to sort out our visa for Myanmar, and armed with instructions, this is exactly what we set out to do first(ish) thing on Monday morning. Before we handed in our passports, we stopped to pick up some pristine US dollars from the SuperRich branch just around the corner (which are now safely stowed flat and clean ready for Myanmar) and then went to tackle the visa office. Easy when you know how - we paid 20B at a shop next door, filled out the form, copied the passports and used some glue to stick down our pictures. An hour later, we were done, passports gone, fee paid (810B for a 3 day return) and off we went on our merry way to book our bus tickets to Chiang Rai…which, to cut another long story short, involved to-ing and fro-ing on the sky train and we ended up with 2 train tickets to Chiang Mai (from there we'd get a bus up to Chiang Rai). Missions accomplished.

We didn't really achieve much else in Bangkok after that! As Mum is coming out in February, we decided that any more exploring could be done with her, which left nothing else to do apart from eat, drink and socialise. Not a bad way to spend a few days.

Picking up our visas was easier than expected as well, pick up is between 3.30pm-4.30pm, so anticipating big queues, we arrived bang on 3.30pm, with all of our luggage (we had a train at 6.10pm from Hua Lamphong station and it didn't make sense to go back to our hostel to then go back past the embassy to the train station)…by 4pm we were at the train station with our passports and shiney new Myanmar visas. Good to be early!

As this is the main train station in Bangkok, there's quite a good food market and as the train was already at the station, we got on with almost an hour to spare and settled in….hoping that as we got going they would turn the air con down a little. When we had booked our tickets, we'd managed to pick up the last few remaining seats in the air con carriage (yes, a seat this time for 14 hours rather than the nice comfy bed we had before - still, thought this would be marginally better than 14 hours on a bus, at least on a train there's a bit more room to move around!). Lets just say, if you plan on travelling in the air con carriage - pack some thick clothing to wear. Even with the blanket they provide, it was basically arctic temperatures in there - probably not helped that we were sat right under the vent. So our 14 hours passed, actually relatively quickly, in bursts of sleep and with the blanket pulled up over our heads This was our 3rd time in Chiang Mai and we checked back into our hostel (we've now come to think of it as 'our' hostel) for a night before our bus north the next morning (all sorted out over email with the lovely host at The Blue14 House). Intent on spending some money and filling up all the space we've created in our bags, we tried to do a bit of shopping in the market - but maybe we are just too pragmatic about things now, it wasn't the most successful of our trips and James came away with a pair of shorts! Never mind - at least we saved ourselves some pennies!

Vanessa and Max arrived early the next morning from Bangkok so we managed to have a quick cuppa with them before heading off to get our bus, we'd catch up properly when we came back (yes, again!) in a few days. Time to go to Chiang Rai - see the famous White Temple and 'posh it up' in a nice hotel for my birthday for a few days.