In which we arrive, fail to acclimatisem and fulfil most stereotypes of gappers...

Hello everyone!

We have been in sunny, glorious thailand for two interesting nights so far. Needless to say it's been full of adventure, mishaps and uh.. baked beans on toast.

The flight was awful, we watched shutter island on the premise that it would be, y'know, interesting - and not mess with our minds significantly enough to prevent sleep for most of the trip. Alas, that was not the case and we were stuck wide awake on a cramped, long flight. When we got to mumbai (it turns out india looks -just- like heathrow airport, only more cell-like) it turned out our flight was delayed, and that when we sacrificed our bedseats to go to our gate, it had been for nothing. Cue sleeping in public places.. something I think we'll be doing a lot of this holiday.

We were fortunate to be seated next to a consummate traveler who had absolutely no qualms about informing us everything we should and should not do in thailand, and then pushed the idea of going to Bali on us, something we briefly considered - only to have Kemi suddenly develop a reaction to her airline food and excuse herself from the (fascinating) conversation to swiftly and expertly epi-pen herself. Seriously, she was excellent, if I was worried before, I definitely am not now.

Upon arrival in Bangkok, we followed the guidebook's directions and made our own way to the bus.. why we had people asking us if we were lost is beyond me! We experienced the charms of escalators that slope downwards, then veer to a horizontal postition, then back downwards again - truly the sign of a different culture! And despite the fact that almost everyone was predominantly english or american, it felt kind of exciting and new.

The efficiency of the bus's airconditioning was truly a marvel, who would have thought it was possibly to freeze in 34 degree weather - and certainly, providing a off switch seemed a step too far for the airshuttle service... nonetheless, it was exciting when we experienced our first tropical storm, literally nothing like we have ever had in england - it's sudden, torrential and lightning fills the sky every couple of minutes. |

The rain was still forthcoming when we arrived at KhaoSan road, and immediately, Kemi and I were targeted as newcomers and kind people (or so we thought) helped us work out where we were supposed to be going, and against kemi's better opinion and all advice we had received to the contrary, I opted to get a tuktuk, if only to get out of the rain. I remember thinking, right, work out a price beforehand, don't get scammed.. so we settle for 100 baht (about two pounds) and I was feeling pretty smug as the TukTuk left.. in the wrong direction..

I spluttered in protest and pointed him out on his mistake, suddenly imagining waking up in a dumpster without a kidney... fortunately, they have one way systems too in thailand - who knew! But we literally travelled round the block, and were dropped off less than 20 metres from where we were picked up. Ouch.

Having checked in, refreshed ourselves and made a giant mess of our room, we decided to explore. Our adventures took us all of 6 metres up the road to the vibrant, english language thai restaurant and bar next door to us. We had the most amazing food, and then discovered Mai Tais in thailand are really the loveliest things in the world. We were on our third, I think, when two american guys introduced themselves to us - Travis and Tyler, because, as Travis put it "Travellers just.. like.. get on, y'know?" and we debated everything from our collective failure at the worldcup, and real estate in orange county. We then met an english couple, carmel and will, and we decided to go to Patpong Market. It was fairly seedy, i'm not going to lie, with short thai men approaching us with lists of 'shows' that we could go and see. Nonetheless, there were significantly less english people here, so despite the griminess of it all, at least we could maybe claim to have seen a portion of the real thailand... though I doubt it so far..

We ended up in a couple of bars with thai bands playing excellent covers of what sounded like to be mostly the black eyed peas. Tyler tried to bribe them with 1000 baht to play the Spice Girls, but they were having none of it! Time had marched determinedly onwards, and it was approaching 3am - 9pm in english time, but we were shattered! We said our goodbyes to the guys (who were off to cambodia tomorrow) and rocked up to bed. The efficiency of the airconditioning was again, noted, and much of the night was spent in a silent cold war as Kemi and I woke up at different times in the night to variously turn it off and on.

The next morning, disgracefully, we slept in til 1. We had determined to 'be cultural' today and visit the temples, so naturally, hours were spent trying to find appropriate clothing. We managed to leave at about three, and, fruit smoothy in hand, but thoroughly mapless, we resolved to make our way to the temple of the emerald buddha. We had a vague sense of direction, but Kemi had resolved herself against taxis and tuktuks, and so we ended up standing at what we thought was a busstop, trying to decipher the bus routes. Eventually, we turned to the first caucasian person we could find (it's fairly safe to assume they're european) and begged for help. She told us it was only a few minutes in that direction, so we korp khun ka-ed her (thank you in thai, we're learning fast!) and hurried in that direction. We made it as far as the city shrine, before realising that all the temples would be shut as they close at 3.30. So while we admired the shrine, we decided to just explore.

We ended up wandering down small markets in alleyways near the river, they're fantastic. Each stall sells a wonderful variety of things, and sometimes you think that it's just where they live. There was one man, sitting on a cracked leather seat, with a mickey mouse parasol over his head, watching a black and white film on a tiny tiny television in intense silence, with absolutely no regard for everyone around him. We lost ourselves about six times that afternoon, but always eventually managed to make it back to a place we recognised.

We had to book our train tickets to nong khai, and - again mapless - chose to pick a direction and walk in it, hoping that eventually we'd reach hualamphong train station. It took all my efforts to convince kemi that bangkok is HUGE and we'd be better off with a taxi, and in the end, it took a frenchman deriding our attempts for us to shamefacedly crawl into the nearest air-con'd taxi and drive the half an hour to the station.

After we booked our tickets, we decided to explore chinatown (because apparently we had bored of thai culture already..) and we wandered around, trying to find the golden buddha. We noted a temple and beelined for it, only to have a thai man tell us it was a chinese temple, and not the right thai one. However! A stroke of luck had ocurred! This man was a thai english teacher, and he recommended to us the Domestic Reservation Office, a government organisation that basically plans out your trip for you. He got us a tuktuk there for 20 baht (this is when we realised how much we'd been overpaying..) and a lovely man named Del Ninho planned every last detail for us. Therefore, this is what we will be doing

Saturday: train to Nong Khai (twelve hours!)
Sunday: Bus to Vientiane, one night there
Monday: Bus to ViangViene, three nights there
thursday: Back down to Nongkhai
..
Then we'll be doing trekking and high wires in chiang mai, flying down to Phuket and spending three nights in Ko Phi Phi, then three nights in Ko Pha Ngan and then three nights in Koh Tao, before training it back up to Bangkok where we'll spend our last night in absolute luxury and come home to miserable england.

My time is out! Will update you more soon!