Hey everybody!!! SO........we arrived safely on sunday afternoon, all pretty awake and raring to go considering the 10 hour flight!!!! Went straight out for dinner that night where we all got to taste the local cuisine.....and ella even found the courage to eat some CHICKEN!!!! even after her bird flu fears!! We were all stuffed for a mere £2 each!! crazy! Our new found love has been to sit in the back of Gina's brothers pick up truck! so much fun............especially zooming down the ramkhanghaeng.....the equivalent to our A10 or north circular!! get loadsa looks from everyone.....but its funny all the same! Even had the police drive past us...they gave us some weird looks and we all thought they were gonna be like the english police and pull us over for sitting in the boot....but instead they started waving....tickled us all! Second day was spent lazing around the pool in the sunshine......sunbathing!!! Buff weather! Went out for dinner again that night....beautiful food yet again!.....we're all starting to think we are gonna put on weight rather than loose it coz we all love the food so much! Then today we decided it was time to venture out on our own! We took the MRT (equivalent of the tube....but spotlessly clean!) into town where we booked our train tickets to Chiang Mai (northern Thailand) for Thursday evening!.......but turned out all the trains were booked except for one which meant that we only had one choice.........to get the 15 hour train with no bed or air conditioning...just a seat and fan!!!!......gonna be interesting to say the least! Then we met a crazy tuk-tuk driver who drove us to the Grand Palace (Thai's Buckingham Palace)....used to be where the king lived ages ago but now just houses the emerald buddha....very important to the buddhists-even thou its tiny! All the buildings were amazing and well pretty....all made out of these tiny jewels that glistened in the sun!!!!.................which woz so hot by the way! we were all flaking after only 5 minutes in it!!! Then we had a lunch break before making our way down to the river where we caught a taxi boat along Bangkok river that took us to Sapan Taksin where we caught the BTS (the skytrain)! Anyway, the boat woz a laugh! we were the only ones stupid enough to be on it and were sped down the river.....the water was worse than the Thames and we were all paranoid about gettin some disease from all the splashing water!......Ella had to take it one step further of course by wearing a sleeping mask over her mouth to make sure that there was absolutely no chance of any water getting in!!!.........but was quite an experience-saw loads of shanty towns...people living in huts made out of corragated iron and just random things they've obviously found along the street. but worst of all was the floating, dead dog we sped past further down the river!!! and then about 2 metres down from this there were little kids swimming and washing in the river....which just seemed so wrong!!!! So the boat dropped us off at the BTS station where we caught a sky train to a shopping market.....where we bought 10 watt speakers for £7......haha emelia!!! The skytrain buzzes all round bangkok up in the sky with all the tall buildings! On our way home we got on at our stop and started looking at our newly purchased speakers! before we knew it ella realised that we had missed our stop as we were supposed to change! so we quickly jumped up and Gina ran out the doors before ella and sally had a chance to get out! speedy gonzalez! not a great way for our first travelling day! Gina was stranded at saladaeng luckily we kept calm and collected and sally and ella shouted at gina to stay where she was and we would get off the next stop and come and get her! as we were on our way to the next stop we were in hysterics but no one else on the train seemed to find it funny and gina was on her own laughing on the platform getting some very strange looks..probably didnt do much for the reputation of the dumb english! anyway we reunited and after an eventful...well... long... cab journey we got back to ginas brothers and ahd alovely dinner and some wine! hope everyone is ok make sure u email us regualrly and dont expect such detailed updates all the time! cos were leaving this free internet access on thursday for chiang mai! love u all Gina, Ella and Sally p.s look a the pics! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx