November 6th

The bus picked us up at 9:30am and we were on our way to Bangkok for only $8 each.....Bargain. Very little to say about the journey, it was just the same as any other bus journey. The stories that we had heard about the roads in Cambodia being crap turned out not to be true, so we were at Poipet in a couple of ours. We waited in line to be stamped out of Cambodia, and strolled across the bridge (past a few casinos) to the Thai side where we were stamped into Thailand without any problems. We had to wait that side of the border for a little while as there were some problems with a couple of Vietnamese people who were on our bus. We waited for them for an hour or two, then ditched them and left without them....suckers (the bus driver told us there were getting another bus instead so we weren't being that harsh!).

A couple hours later and we were in Bangkok. The bus dropped us right at the end of Kho San Road, and we had found our hotel on Rambuttri road within a few minutes. The room here was 15 pound a night, so was more expensive than most of the places we have been staying, but they have a rooftop pool, so it was worth it!

After a quick nap we headed off to Kho San Road to see what all the fuss is about. It's pretty crazy, there's so much going on! Hundreds of street sellers, food outlets, shops, market stools and loads of bars, oh and plenty of lady-boys. Laura was in her element with all the shops, but I managed to drag her away for a beer or two.

November 7th

We took a taxi across central Bangkok to go to the immigration office. We needed to get a 30-60 day visa sorted out as we only had 15 day visas due to travelling into the country overland. When we arrived at the office we found a sign saying they had been relocated to another office completely over the other side of Bangkok, so wrote that off. Instead we decided to walk around slowly in the general direction of our hotel. We had a nice stroll through Lumphini Park which was very nice. We walked in between the lakes and rivers, and even came across a massive dragon like lizard. Seriously it was huge, and I have no idea what it was. It didn't seem to like us though, as when we approached it to take a photo it sloped off back into the water. It tried getting out the other side, but NO, we were there waiting for him, so he quickly turned round and crawled back to the water. This continued for a little while until all three of us got bored, and we gave up and left him to it!

Next stop on our tour was Central World, solely because Laura had found out there was a topshop inside. Luckily we didn't have to stay long (because she found out there are topshops in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore too!) and after a quick walk around some of the other shops we were back out on to the street. Next came another huge shopping mall....in a turn of events I was the only one to buy anything here.....a nice pair of new swimming shorts, as I've had my other pair for about 15 years!

Then we found the MBK centre. This is like all the worlds markets crammed into this huge building, only bigger than you can imagine. There are about 6 floors of all the worlds tatt sold under one roof, and is my idea of hell. I didn't mind one of the floors though which sold all electrical goods. That was pretty cool. There were fake iphones, laptops, pirate software, computers, blackberrys, everything, and all going for pretty cheap. That was this markets only saving grace (that and the fact I got a mcflurry in the McDonalds on the bottom floor!). Even Laura gave up after about 3 floors which must be saying something.

After leaving the MBK centre we did some hard bargaining with a tuk tuk driver for a lift back to the hotel. He tried to make us stop off enroute (a scam we had read about where they get commission from shops for bringing tourists, or take you to a fake gem sale etc etc) but we were having none of this and told him straight to either take us to the hotel or get no money. He didn't seem to take this too well as he drove us about 50mph through central Bangkok traffic back to our area, but we got there safe and sound.

After grabbing some food we headed off to Kho San road again to watch the rugby. We watched the England game in bar 999 which was nice, then headed to Mulligan's, an Irish bar I had already found out would be showing the Wales game. Needless to say all the shouting at the tv was for nothing as we lost :(

November 8th

Today we went to visit the Grand Palace. Some guy came up to us telling us it was closed to the public today bla bla bla and to go see something else instead in a tuk tuk he called over. This had scam written all over it, so we ignored him and went straight into the Palace. We got in no problem. We were deemed to be wearing "inappropriate" clothing, so we had to rent some clothes (for free). There were no shorts allowed, so I had a rather attractive pair of purple baggy trousers, and Laura was made to wear (much to her annoyance, which was pretty funny) a lovely big beige coloured shirt! She argued with the staff for a while insisting that what she was wearing was fine, but eventually gave in.

It took us a good couple of hours to walk around the whole place, and it was very impressive. Lots of gold and mosaics and wall paintings etc (see pictures). After handing back our rented clothes (I had become quite attached to my purple MC hammer pants, Laura hadn't formed such a bond with her shirt) we left and headed back to Kho San to chill out.

November 9th

Had a quick dip in the pool, followed by a lazy morning. After our 3rd fully cooked breakfast (a place called Oh My Cod....a British restaurant right next to our hotel, the budget special was superb!) in as many days we went for another wander around.

We took a taxi to the train station around 5 o'clock where we had some dinner. In the eating area there was a squirrel dressed in a jumper (health and safety would have had a field day!) that was running around on its owners back, and jumping back and forth with the other people who worked there....that was pretty cool.

With that it was time to board the train. The sleeper trains in Thailand are a bit different to the others we had taken. The beds seem to be a bit bigger and we even had a reading light on these, so time went pretty quick. Woke up the next morning just as we were getting into Chaing Mai. The scenery was incredible. The train was weaving through the jungle, then a few minutes later we had arrived in Chiang Mai!