My 3rd entry.

Near death experiences: 0 - Number of new injuries: 0 (surprise surprise) - Number of mozie bites: 2 which were due to being on an elephant - Number of manhandlings: 2

The last entry was at the end of my trip with the Ozzie girls and just about to pick up Gina and Nicola (poor b*****s!) Michelle, Gemma and I met up with Gina and Nicola at Bangkok airport. Gemma try to pre-warn the girls what i was like (He!He! they already know). In true Tanya style we arrive in Bangkok dropped off our stuff and heading out for something to eat and drink. Unfortunately nowhere was selling alcohol due to the general elections that were taking place in bangkok...no beer for 2 days.

Yeah right! After dinner we went for a walk down khao san road, then after unsetting a lady in a shop for not selling us beer when she was serving other people pre-us, we heading back to our hotel. We got chatting to a couple of lads staying at our hotel. They told us that the hotel stocked up on the beers and to help ourselves...big mistake as we didn't make it to bed until 4am ish and that's only because we empted the fridge....welcome to thailand girls!

I was told about a little island in the middle of the river north bangkok called Ko Kret, so i thought we could have an easy day and explore it (11th Jan). We arranged to met up with Dean (english) and Damien (ozzie) so that they could come with us. We managed to catch up with them for lunch and another guy called Kenith joined us for lunch. Thanks to Gina and Nicola, I ended up getting a married proposal from South Africa. My dad would be happy, he's a professional golfer. After lunch We bumped into Dom (the local thail pub promoter of Khao San road), we asked him how we should get there... he said 'no worry my friend, i'll take you'. So we followed Dom round some little streets round bangkok and then onto a boat. We get to the last stop and it didn't look anything like what i was expecting. He took us to a massive local fresh food market, teaching us about the foods and getting us to taste them. He made me laugh as he was focusing all his energy on Gina, showing her all the live fish and different body parts of animals (for those that don't know Gina, she is a veggie), so it was highly entertaining. I don't think he understood the sign language you're killing me!

After a few hours walking around the market we all agreed that we wanted a beer. This proved to be a challenge. We did eventually find somewhere down a back alley that was willing to sell us beer...they wrapped a brown paper bag around the beer so we all looked like wineos! A load of kids turned up and wanted to hang out with us. by the way they were acting it felt like they had never seen tourists before. Half way through my beer, i had to look twice down the road as we saw a random elephant coming towards us...i wondered for a while if i had too much to drink! After the drink we raced back as we realised it was later than we thought. dean had to get back to khao san road to catch his bus down south...lucky we didn't see him return to the hotel so we think he made it. We had a quiet night as we had to get up early the next for our trip to the floating marketing, river kawai and tiger temple.

I hate early mornings (12th Jan) and getting up at 6am was no fun, however the day was amazing and worth it. First stop was the floating marketing, I've been here before but i still found it really cool. i love it when you see old ladies who sell a variety of colourful fruits, talking away as if there is plenty of time in the world. we decided to have a coffee before we moved on and dan came and joined us (a guy that was on our organised trip). we were back on the bus and the driver got gina mixed up with someone else and thought that she was suppose to be going back to bangkok to catch a flight, unfortunately he could only speak thai, he made a call and passed over the phone to everyone on the bus. i love the comment someone made from the back of the bus 'who is this and what do you want'. The next place we went to was the river kawai, i didn't realise how many different nationalities were prisoners of war here and how many of them dead whilst building the bridge. i can't wait to either read the book or watch the film about it. After the river kawai we raced over to the tiger temple...oh my god! i was blown away...i've been hanging to be round tigers since i was in my teens, they are my favourite wild cats. i was like a little kid in a candy shop. you had to que up to get your photo taken with the tigers and at first my initial thoughts were this feels a bit like a circus. the tigers were on long chains attached to the floor. as i got closer to the front of the que i got to see what was going on and ask questions. i was told that tigers are more active in the morning and evening (cooler parts of the day). so in the afternoon you can be very close to them because they are too relaxed and chilled out to do anything. i managed to get lots of photos and asked if i could be by one of the younger tigers. these tigers are still in training so they came across to me like my cat...very cheeky. we got back to bangkok about 6-7pm and arranged to meet up with dan for dinner... which turned into a drinking session. poor dan, he had gina, nicola and myself giving him grief about his life...well he said he wasn't happy with what he was doing...in a short version we told him to sort himself out. i think we crawled in about 2-3 am, it might have been later than that.

(13th Jan) We arranged to meet Dan at 12 for an early lunch and to see the grand palace and the reclining buddha. First of all it took me ages to get the girls in any fit state to face the world and second i was surprised to see dan especially after the abuse we gave him. dan and i went for breakfast and the girls met up with us about an hour later (bless). we eventually walked to the grand palace (about 15 mins walk from khao san road) and had a look around. i think we got there about 2-2.30 and it didn't seem that long before they were trying to move us on because the place was closing at 4pm. I had been here before so dan, gina and nicola wondered around whilst i relaxed in the shade people watching and taking picture using dan's camera and learning more about digital. i'm not sure that anyone can change my mind about digital being good and better than 35mm. because it was so late we didn't get to see the reclining buddha, that's ok i'll see it next time i'm in bangkok. i needed to get some more memory cards for my camera, so nicola, dan and i went to mbk a massive shopping centre that sells everything. gina walked back to the hotel to relax. i thought i was getting a good deal on the memory cards and found out later that i didn't get a great deal...i was disappointed in myself and should have know to shop around. it wasn't by much but that's not the point. Dan had to fly home that night so we said our goodbyes and chilled out for the rest of the evening as we were having an early start the next day.

(14th Jan) We were picked up really early in the morning to head for khao yai national park (about 2-3 hrs north east of bangkok). We stopped off at a local market on the way and our english speaking guide talked to us about the foods that were being sold there. one of the guys that was on a trip ate a black egg. the eggs are completely black inside and outside, they are pickled and painted pink to make them look pretty and more appealing...i don't think that is going to hide the fact that the egg tastes horrible. after the market it was just a short trip to the outskirts of the national park where we did a water buffalo ride through some beautiful countryside. its not the most comfortable ride that we've been on, but it was lovely to get dusty! everywhere we go gina is always talking to dogs or cats and at the end of the ride gina was caught talking to the local dogs. from the village we went up into the national park and walked to a waterfall...it wasn't that far from the car park however the hike up and down the steep stairs almost killed us off. After the hike i was glad to sit down to have our lunch. as we were finishing off our lunch we saw lots of elephants go by and was told that we would be going on an hour trek through the jungle. about 15 mins into the trek the owner of my elephant jumped off and told me to takeover. this was different i was a bit worried incase the elephant decided to take off with me on it and no control. the elephant didn't seem to be phased by it at all. the owner of the elephant that gina and nicola did the same thing...the girls made me laugh as they had a look of horror on their faces. i eventually encourage nicola to do the same and ride the elephant at the front. gina wasn't having any of it...and decided to look like the queen of sheba for the rest of the trip. nicola and i have decided that gina's new nickname should be 'sheba doolittle'. after we got off the elephants we fed them with bananas. if you ever get the opportunately to feed elephants do so...its worth it just to see how big theirs tongues are.

(15th jan) We headed up to Lop Buri, known as the city of monkeys. its a quiet little town 3-4 hrs north of bangkok. There are some beautiful ruins there that we wanted to check out as well as see all the naughty monkeys. after we checked in we went for a walk and came across a street were there were loads of monkeys hanging out. as we continued walking, a man (in a car) pulled out of a road...we saw a monkey go into the back of the truck and it stole the man's wallet out of his bag and disappeared up a building. the cheeky thing, after a few minutes the monkey popped his head out and gave a look as if to say 'ha! ha!' and then disappeared again. later that evening we did some enquiring about getting a train up to chiang mai for the next day and we were informed that they were full. we were told to come back in the morning to check if there were any cancellations.

The next morning (16th jan) we got up early, had breakfast and headed for the train station. we got there and still no tickets for 2nd class. we looked around and saw pictures of the train and the different classes. 3rd class didn't looked that bad in the pictures so we booked tickets for 5pm so we could have a look around the town...just would like to mention at this point that the train journey is suppose to be 12hrs long to chiang mai. as we were looking around an old palace we came across some school children who wanted to practise their english. one of the kids said that he saw us in town the previous night. i don't remember seeing any other westeners there, except for teachers whom we had a drink with them before we got on the train and they laughed at us for booking 3rd class tickets for an over night train. as the train pulled into the station that the first few carriages looked like a full chicken pen, so we aimed for a carriage that didn't look too busy and jumped on the train. all the seats were taken so we had to stand up. after about an hour into the trip, the ticket inspector looked at our tickets and said that we were in the wrong class (ooops!) and told us to move. the train was pretty busy we tried to move with our backpacks and couldn't move. in the end the ticket inspector gave up and told us we could stay. the first 4 hours (i thought) flew by. There were people getting off and on the train selling different food and drink, an 70 year old (ish) thai lady who was very drunk and had no teeth, she took a liking to gina and wanted to rest her head on gina's shoulder, and monks that were travelling to chiang mai. we had this idea that as soon as someone got off a seat we would take it....like that's going to happen! it got to about 11pm and gina threatened to get off at the next station and take a taxi all the way to chiang mai. i think at that time our luck was in as some people left and we got the seats.

(17th Jan) We managed to get seats for about an hour before we realised that the seats were allocated to other people and it was a 10 second rule jobbie! half an hour later the ticket inspector came over to us and said 'i have a bed for you, you pay me 200 bht each for bed.' so nicola and i went to have a look. we got to the back of the carriage and stopped 'here!' he said 'two people can sleep here', he was talking about the area where you get off and on the train. 'i will stop people from getting on at these doors'. i looked at nicola and then back at the guy and told him to jog on. 'ok, ok, 450bht'. nicola said lets take it. i told the guy that i wasn't going to pay that and offered him 300bht. i still can't believe we bribbed a ticket inspector to let us stay in that small area. off we went to get our backpacks and gina and took them to the new resting hole. we just about managed to fit our 3 backpacks in the area and sit on them...we looked like refuges. gina fitted in nicely and got the new nickname of refugina. i think we managed to get to sleep about 2am and got a few hours kip off and on. around 5am we started to get restless as we should have arrived by then. someone informed us that the train was running late. eventually we found out that the train was behind by 6 hours...so what should have been a 12hr trip turned into 18hrs of almost hell in a strange way. around 9am we had a thai man that kept coming past us, his english was great and kept saying 'ecuse, ecuse'. we tried to teach him the proper way to say excuse me and he couldn't say it. he entertained us for a while and then disappeared. 10 mins later he came back with a piece of paper with bad english written down on it asking us to meet his sister. for the next 3 hours we were entertained by a thai lady who was called doctor williams. her english was very good for a thai person however there were still some communications barriers as things were not explained very clearly. this we discovered as we got off the train. we thought that she was going to take us to our hotel...we were so wrong. after an hour, we pulled into a driver and was told that her friend own the place and she cooked sauces and sold them around the world. as we got our of the car doctor williams said 'you stay one night'. we looked at each other and said 'um, ok!' they showed us to the hut so we could put our bags in there and as we had lunch they setup the beds. on the top floor of the building there was a room which was used as the doctor explained it as a school for buddhism and that a seminar was going on and invited us to join them after lunch. Nicola and gina started to worry as they asked us to write our names and addresses down on a form. the girls thought that the thai people were trying to make us join a cult or something like that. i tried to reassure them that its not in thai people nature to do that sort of thing as it was against their region. however they still felt uncomfortable, so i told the thai that our friends called and wanted to meet us in chiang mai and we had to go. i know we told a little white lie...our friends weren't arriving until the next day. anyway they arranged for us to go back to chiang mai and we managed to get into a guesthouse called julie's.

(18th Jan) After the train trip from another planet, we decided to chill out and walk around chiang mai. the old part of the town is quite small so we managed to visit most of the Wats in the area. As we left the last Wat, before heading home, we saw a lady outside selling birds in little wicker baskets. the lady told us that it was good luck to release the birds...Sheba Doolittle wanted to release them all, until we were told the price. we released 3 sets of birds and put water down for the other birds we couldn't afford to rescue. whilst walking away, we all thought that we had been done over...we were right because when we turned around she had disappeared. As we walked back to out guesthouse the locals were setting up stalls for the night market. So we freshened up and the girls got to practise their haggling skills...i'm sure between gina and nicola they would have bought all the jewellery that was there.

(19th jan) we arranged with a tuk tuk driver to take us to the winter palace and Wat Phra That Doi Suthep (a place i've been dreaming about visiting for 20 years). the palace gardens was very peaceful, pretty, colourful and lovely to walk around. I didn't think the palace was anything special. However the Wat blew me away...it was everything i imagined and more. i remember seeing this place on one of the travel shows 20 years ago and the show didn't do this place justice. We had to climb 306 step to get to the top. once we got our tickets we walk through to see a jon rushton's buddha. it was a buddha statue with a leopard skin throw on it. it had us giggling for a while. as we carried on through to another area we came across some monks with SLR digital cameras taking pictures. we decide that they must be on holiday or they were monks on the run! i could keep going on about this place but i will bore you. if you ever come out to thailand, you should come visit this Wat. in the evening we met up with Matt (nicola's boyfriend) and matt's friend colin for dinner and drinks. in one of the bars we went to a young thai girl came over to me and wanted to sell me something. i told her know and she just stood there, so for about 20 mins i tickled her. i think i got her into trouble with her mom for spending too much time with me and not selling anything. oops! eventually we made it home about 4am ish after god knows how many beers and bad games of pool.

(20th jan) this was a quiet day. we booked our tuk tuk driver the day before to take us to Tham chiang dao caves. as we got there i saw a monk sat at a desk working away on a laptop. the caves were pretty cool as you walked through the entrance there was huge buddha statues. as you carried on walking round we came to a sign that told us we needed a guide to take us round the caves. i told the girls that the lonely planet said that we could get around the caves ourselves. in the end we agreed to take a guide and i'm glad we did because there were some hairy moments. in one of the caves there was big drop into a black hole and you couldn't see the bottom. after the caves we headed home and chilled out, met up with the boys for dinner and had an early night.

(21st jan) the girls left early to fly to krabi and i moved to a single room as the room us girls were in someone had booked it. i spent the day chilling out, researching what i was going to do next and trying to plan the rest of my trip right up to the end of february. after a few hours reading about the north of thailand and some of laos, i decided to head to the internet cafe to upload photos. i was there 4 hours uploading photos it was so slow...good job the internet was cheap. that night i decide to get a massage and treated my feet to a pedicure. i got talking to a swedish guy who told me about a reggae festival that was going on in pai at the weekend. so after my treatments i looked at my plans to see if i could fit it in.

(22nd jan) again i had another day uploading photos, chilling out and planning. after talking to the swedish guy the night before, i decided to go to pai just to check out a thai reggae festival. later in the evening i bumped into a dutch guy and we had dinner together and went for a drink. after an hour the little girl i saw a few nights before saw me so we ended up playing in the bar. i was planning on a quiet night as i had booked an earlish bus to pai, that didn't happen i think i got to bed about 3am ish.