29th and 30th May 2009

We arrived in Bangkok around 4:30am after a fairly successful night bus from Ranong in which we both got a bit of sleep. We were surprisingly able to easily find a public bus to take us to Kho San road where we would stay for our couple of nights in the big smoke. Arriving in Kho San road in the early hours of the morning could have been a scary experience but it was actually rather nice and not too seedy at all. A few prostitutes/lady boys were walking the streets but other than that it was fairly tame. We walked around for a short while looking for a place to stay before settling on a place called Four Sons Inn for 600 Baht ($20 AUD) a night that had air con and was one street over from Kho San road. We emailed Justine, Sams cousin, who would be meeting us for our time in Bangkok. Both Justine and her boyfriend Dion came over and met us in Kho San Rd for some coffee and a catch up.It was only 10am at this point so we decided to get some rest and meet up with them a bit later to see a movie. Sammy played doctor and removed the stitches from my foot before we headed over to Siam to meet up with them.

Trying to meet up at the Siam shopping precinct was possibly the hardest thing we had to do. Little did we know there were three main shopping towers and we had no idea which one was the correct one to meet at. We spent 2 hrs and countless phone call attempts before finally finding Justine. I don't think we've been so relieved the whole trip as we were when we found her. Big hugs all round. We hunted for some drinks after that experience and then headed to watch Terminator 4. During the previews we were required to stand whilst the king was honored on screen. It's really special how respectful the Thai people are towards the royal family. The movie was brilliant and we've since watched Terminator 1 and 2 to catch me (Nikki) up to speed. I've thoroughly enjoyed all three and the third one, the worst by Sammy standards, will hopefully tie everything in all together even further.

Following the movie we headed to Patpong for some market shopping and a brief run in with a Ping Pong show. The markets were the usual Thai deal and the Ping Pong show was another 'experience'. Fortunately I was sitting in between Justine and Sammy so didn't cop the brunt of the attention but both Sammy and Justine had the pleasure of massages and advances from the many girls. We stayed for the compulsory beer and were out of there as fast as we could be. It started pouring with rain not long after leaving the club so we had some dinner and ventured home.

The following morning we decided to head to Chatuchuk market which is a huge weekend market in Bangkok with over 15000 stalls. We entered at gate 25 which was where they had a lot of unique clothing and bags. We all spent a bit of money before heading back to Siam, this time with Dion, for another movie. We decided on Tsusami 2022 (or something like that) which turned out to be the worst movie ever, in a funny kind of way. The special effects in Terminator 1 from 1985 were better than those in this movie. I'll never forget walking out of the cinema and watching Justine crack up laughing for a good five minutes! Worth it just for that! After admiring the 'lambos' and 'porshes' housed in the shopping centre (they actually have these for sale inside the shopping centre we said our goodbyes to Justine and Dion who were returning back to oz, and headed back to Ko San road for a bit of a wander.

The next morning we got up and arranged our bus up to Chiang Mai which would be cheaper than the train and also pick us up from Ko San Rd. We spent the morning wandering along the main river where we watched some local kids swimming nude and jumping off the platforms. We also ran into a guy doing some parkour which was great to watch. When it was time to get on the bus around 6pm we were lucky enough to get the front premium seat and settled in for our trip up to Chiang Mai.