Hello,

We got to Bangkok from Singapore on 31st May. We arrived mid-afternoon and made it to a hotel recommended to us, called Rambutree Village, at around 6pm. The hotel is really clean, has a pool, and is quite posh for the 12 pound a night we are paying. We are in the thick of the backpackers here, its very touristy, and there's lots to do. The main road, Kaho San Road, is the place to be in Bangkok and is just a few roads down from us. Bangkok is immediately a million times different from anywhere in India. First of all its much more affluent. It seems very much like London really, with run-down areas situated only a short distance from areas of extreme wealth.

Our first night though was spent having a relaxing meal at one of the restaurants and a wander round the streets. We found somewhere to aquire visas for Vitenam, Cambodia and Laos, so sent our passports packing. Afterwards we were suprisingly tired and run down, probably because of the time differences and lack of sleep we had on the way to Singapore, so we decided to get an early night.

The next day we went to a big shopping market the other side of town. Sophie NEEDED new clothers for some reason, which is strange, because before we set off she insisted that Primark was the LAST money she would spend on clothes. The trip to the market was fun though, we got a boat down river past an array of glamourous temples, and then connected to the sky train, which travelled through affluent business districts, shopping malls and skyscrapers. On the way back from our days haggling in the market, Sophie semi-satisfied with items she had purchased, we stopped into one of the shopping malls. Unfortunately even in Bangkok, Gucci, Fendi, etc, are still too expensive for us.

That evening we went for some food and decided to sample BAngkoks night life. We started in a roof top bar with live music a pit sized Caiprinha's (pure rum, Brazilian cocktails). We felt pretty good after this but decided to slow down. In the next bar we got bucket to share and made some Australian friends. Another bcket each later wedecided to see what the much advertised 'pingpong' was about. This led us to another bar across the city which we will describe in more detail when we get back.
The next morning we felt a little worse for wear so a day by the pool was in order. We literally did nothing on this day so I won't say any more.

The next morning we had a much more productive day. We went to see, in more detail, the spectacular temples along the river. These included the Emerald Buddha, the Royal Palace, the Leaning Buddha (massive: as long as a bus) and Wat Arun. The last of these is a steep sided, climeable temple which you often see in pictures of Bangkok. On the way up we noticed some dark clouds gatherin above. We knew this was the start of the afternoon monsoon rain. We just managed to get down the temple in time to find cover and spent a good half an hour, in a space just big enough for 5 people, with an Indian couple and a Korean girl. See the pictures.

We had a relaxing day by the pool after this and finished our last night in Bangkok with a bar crawl with the same friends from Goa.

On our final day we sat around the pool waiting for a night sleeper train to Northern Thailand to Chiang Mai. When we got to the train we were pleasantly suprised and easily drifted off to sleep. We woke early the next morning and enjoyed breakfast whilst watching the jungle out of our window. We then arrived at our hotel at around 2pm and relaxed in preparation for our jungle trek experiene the following day.

x