Greetings from Bangkok!!

Well where do we start..after a mammoth 2 flight journey Bangkok was a shock to the system to say the least. Its alot bigger than we expected and a mismatch between extremeley poor and rundown areas and some modern buildings.

We arrived at our hostel after an hour and a half taxi ride as the traffic is crazy and no sleep to find we couldnt check in til the afternoon so we had no choice to explore which was probably a good thing to reduce the nerves.we were told to watch are bags so off we went in the 40 degree heat (it is so humid here weve been sweating 24/7). Luckily we are right by Lumphini Park which is a park and lake and really nice so we spent the day there. We also ventured on the metro to buy train tickets to chang.mia.

On day two we took the boat up the river to visit The Grand Palace. On the boat we met a man from texas and suprisingly found ourselves giving him advice on how to get to the palace :-) so what we didnt realise was how the stoppin system worked...we were at the front of the boat and it pulled in to each stop via the back. So we reach our stop and start making our way down the boat which is packed, just as we reached the end the boat star tsto.move away and i see vicki jump across so now im panicking thinking i have no choice but to jump too...lets just say there was alot of commotion and thai men shouting at us so we ran ha! Unforunatley the american didnt make it :-P

So then we were off to the Palace,we had been warned to avoid any strangers who tell ypu the Palace is closed as they are likely to try and sell you other things...as we reach the entrance a lady in.unigorm (i would argue the uniform is what threw us) tells us the palace is too busy now so it might be better to take a tuk tuk ride around the city so very quickly she grabs a tuk tuk and before we know it were off...we wanted a tuk tuk ride anyway so we thought why.not. So first stop is The golden Mount whic was really cool we walked to the top and had a view of Bangkok and our driver waited for us so at this point we wete thinking this was great!! Little did wevknow...next she took us to a travel agents which we thoughtvok wecwont buy anything but could be handy fr advice so thos wasnt too baf...then we went to a jewellers so now we wete thinking oh dear n we saw two guys who wrte in the same situation which was funny and then we went to a clothes shop...by this point we had had enough and we had an arguement with the tuk tuk driver and demanded to go to the palace...in the end she said yes but it was tense 10min.journey back as we had no idea where she was taking is, luckily all was ok and we finally got to see tge palace which was amazing!! So we were well and truly taken for a ride :-P

we finished the day in Kho San Road which is basocally the hub of all travellers and one road of clothes street food bars and other madness...we spent the night here drinking chang!! And met some people,one of which was a thai man who bought us drinks n came n sat with us but we quickly realised he didnt speak any english so we spent an hour with him smiling and saying cheers to us every ten minutes n we all had to clink glasses...we were trying not to laugh!!!

So today was our ladt day and as yesterday was very budy we chilled in Lumphini Park catching some rays,we also had to stand and listen to the national anthem at 6pm,apparently this a daily occurence and was a shock to me ads i walked out of the toilet!!

Tomorrow were taking the sleeper train to Chiang Mai so we have an interesting 15 hour jpurney ahead...we will be in touch from thete in a few days time :-)

Sarah and Vicki (i apologise for spelling mistakes its hard to type on a phone!!) xxxxxxxxx