We took a car across the border to Canada, where we stayed in a very nice hotel suite for a few days. There’s a great mountain range just outside the city, so we took the cable car up and had a spot of lunch and did went ice skating on a frozen pond.

Vancouver also ‘boasts’ the worlds highest suspension bridge. It doesn’t seem quite as high as the one in the Wookey Hole Caves in Somerset, but we went over it none the less. Tabi’s mum collected all her stamps, and got a certificate from the gift shop for her efforts.

We also found an outlet centre, so we’ve been having fun spending money we don’t have. I did manage to find a leather jacket for 40quid, which seems a pretty good deal.

We’re all back in Seattle now, where we (Tabi and I) fly onto New York, and Tabi’s mum flies back to London.

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After another crummy flight with Air New Zealand we touched down in LA in the early afternoon, and set about finding our hostel. Although our hostel had a great location in the centre of Hollywood, it was a dirty ramshackle old place that we were pleased to leave.

Hollywood is probably the most over rated town on earth. Most people are either crack-whores or hookers, and those that aren’t are vain and stupid. We used to tell people that Tabi was from London, but I was from England, and people assumed that they were two different countries.

We spent the day trying to find the set of Scrubs, and in the evening we went to see a comedy show being filmed, after being accosted in the street by one of the crew who promised us free drinks if we showed up. In the end, the show was too full of ‘VIPs’ so they ended up paying us $10 each to go away.

The next few days were spent in Disneyland and Disney’s Californian Adventure parks, which was entertaining, but much what you’d expect. There were one or two rides that we hadn’t been on, including a vertical drop rollercoaster. When at the top, if you drop a penny just as the coaster falls, it’ll float in front of you for the entire ride.

San Francisco

We spent our few days in San Francisco with people Tabi (sort of) knows, Steve and Cindy. They were excellent hosts, which made for a very relaxing time.

We ate the local specialty, Dungeness Crab and visited the famous Pier as well as getting a look at the Golden Gate Bridge, on our second day went driving around the Napa Valley vineyards, quaffing back $100 bottles of wine as we went.

Steve has a huge collection of wine, so on our final day, we cracked a few more bottles open, smoked our cigars and got pleasantly drunk (again).

Seattle

Seattle is bloody freezing, as we got off the plane the only thing that stood between us and freezing to death in our summer clothes was the jumpers Steve and Cindy very kindly lent us. We had a hostel pre-booked for the first night, which was good as our flight was a few hours ‘re-scheduled’, which seems to be another word for ‘late’.

For our second night on Valentines Day we found an excellent package online, staying in a suite at the crown plaza with dinner, breakfast and champagne for $100. We spent most of the actual day shopping for warmer clothes.

Tabi’s mum has now arrived in town for a bit of a holiday and to drive us up to Vancouver.

I found the world's first Starbucks, which has a lot more character than any of the others.

There’s lots more to say, but we’ve only got an hour on these computers, so hopefully I’ll do a better update next time.

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Our first island, Kuata, is only half an hour away from the mainland, but it seems a lot more remote as it has no electricity for most of the day, and broadly speaking if the local’s can’t acquire something they need from the island, then they make do without it.

We hopped on a little boat to visit a nearby village. In Fiji, it’s customary to ask permission to visit from the village chief before setting foot inside – though that’s easier said than done when there’s no phone. Permission granted, we went for a wander around the local school and church, before chatting with the locals and heading home.

Fiji Villiage

In the evening we sat around drinking and talking long into the night. Cups of kava, a local drink that looks and tastes like muddy water, are passed around from a bowl in the middle of the floor. Kava contains some kind of sedative that puts your mouth to sleep before starting on the rest of your body.

Sitting around the kava bowl. A very enjoyable evening.

Some time early in the morning, much worse for wear, we retired to our bure.

Our bure

Next we headed to Naviti island, which apart from being slightly bigger and further north, is the place where Britney Spears had her honeymoon, and Tom Hanks filmed castaway. In reality, he wasn’t so much a castaway, as 15 minutes walk from the nearest village.

Landing beach

Naviti is such a good place to relax, that we didn’t manage to do much else before heading back to the mainland. We did take a jungle walk to ‘Honeymoon beach’ but that was about as much physical execution as we could manage in the humidity.

This little 'refugee boat' took us to the main catamaran that we took around the islands. Getting off one and onto the other was made no easier by the captain shouting at us 'this is very dangerous'

Some other photos

There's more in the gallery, but here are a few favourites:

Welcome to Vietnam!

Sandsledding in Vietnam

Feeding a Kangaroo, Australia

Parasailing, Malaysia

Street in Cambodia

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We've spent the last few days island hopping, visiting Naviti and Kuata, up to the North West of the mainland. There's been no electricity for most of the time, but we had a fantastic time, probably the best of the trip so far.

I've got lots to say on Fijian history, and about our time on the islands, which will come later....stay tuned

We plan to get our photos copied to CD tomorrow before we head to the US as it'll be cheaper, so we'll probably put some photos online tomorrow too.

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We've just got up and headed to an internet cafe to find out what there is to do on the island, so it's a little early to give anything more than first impressions.

The locals all seem extremely friendly, and everything's much cheaper than in Australia and New Zealand, so it's nice to not have to watch the pennies.

We're thinking of booking ourselves onto an island cruise where we'll get to see Robinson Crusoe island, and the island where they filmed Castaway.

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Early on we took a trip up the Sky Tower, which is apparently the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, where we had lunch and took some wonderful photos. We considered base jumping down, which is like bunji jumping, but as we'd just had lunch decided it probably wasn't a good idea.

We tried again to go swimming with dolphins. The seas were incredibly rough and everyone ended up being sick, one of the engines exploded, and we didn't even get to see any dolphins. Not the best way to spend $100, but we'll be trying again in Fiji.

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We had a fantastic time in our hotel in Sydney, and spent a few days taking in sights like the opera house and Captain Cook's ship, the first ship from England to 'discover' Australia.

Unfortunately, when we visited an Air New Zealand shop to re-route our ticket out of Melbourne the price had doubled, so we ended up booking a flight from Melbourne back to Sydney with Virgin Blue this morning.

We managed to blag a free over night train ride down to Melbourne. Karma punished us by sitting us next to people who were sick, and then wouldn't stop talking about how they were sick.

In Melbourne we visited our Mecca, the street where they film Neighbours (photos to come), it's a lot smaller than you'd imagine. We got some photos outside Harold's house and some grass from Susan's lawn to sell on eBay when we get home.

Today's flights were okay, although the Virgin Blue was at 6am. Although a 'no frills' airline, the literature was keen to boast about their extras such as a 'pressurised cabin, for our comfort'. It's always disappointing when travelling on a Virgin train or plane that they don't name First and Economy class something a little more creative like promiscuous and prude.

The Air NZ flight was particularly crappy, carrying on their fine tradition. The check in lady, a failed stewardess by mine and Tabi's reckoning barked at us because we didn't have business class tickets, and the cabin crew seemed to resent everyone on the flight. The air conditioning above my seat was dripping, and the kid in front kept slamming his chair into my knees.

We've arrived in Auckland now, and into our pre booked hostel. Tabi doesn't like it much, so is on the PC next to me trying to find somewhere else.

I'm sure there's more news, but I've forgotten most of it.

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We’re staying in a 4.5 star hotel for about 50p less than two hostel beds would have cost, thanks to a brilliant deal on lastminute.com. As we’ve just arrived, we’re still planning what to do for my birthday.

There’s probably more news that I meant to share with you all, but having just woken up, I’m too sleepy to remember any of it.

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We've been in Port Macquarie, which is a bit further south, for the past few days. Tomorrow we're off to Sydney for my birthday.

Speaking of presents, I had a very nice email the other day from a long time blog reader who lives in Chicago. He offered to take me out for a beer if we're heading that way. We're not, but it did get me thinking - this blog's had nearly 3000 individual visitors, how can I turn this traffic into a way to get free stuff? You’re probably reading this blog at work, in which case you’re being paid to read it, so if there was no blog, you wouldn’t get paid (work with me here), so you owe me.

I realise people might want to give free stuff to more needy causes, like starving children in Africa*, or helping save the environment – but I only worry about my own problems, I guess I’m lucky that way.

So – how can you avail yourself of this fine service? Well, I take Visa, Mastercard, Discovery and Diners Club (really, no kidding). Just click here to give – and remember, it’s better to give than receive, so keep in the forefront of your mind how selfless I’m being.

I'm banking on the fact that many of you are cheapskates, and will not donate a penny, but have some vague feeling that you'd like to help, if only there was a way for you to help that didn't cost you any money. Fear not. Next time you make a search on the web, instead of using Google, use this page instead, it's exactly the same as Google, except I get to keep some of the money. You could even tell your friends about that page to help further (if you're the typical blog reader as I imagine you, you can skip that bit).

Who said e-Commerce was dead.

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We planned to book ahead but didn’t through lazyness, so set about looking for a hotel room as soon as we arrived in town at about 7pm. We must have wandered into just about every hostel, hotel, motel and caravan park in town only to be greeted by ‘no vancancy’ signs. We were starting to get desperate enough to consider camping on the beach, but camping without a tent isn’t much different to living like a tramp, so we were very relieved to find a flyer advertising a ‘studio’. We gave the number a ring and set about trekking across the other side of town. It turns out that ‘studio’ is an aussie word for ‘shed in the back garden’, but as we’d spent all day with walking with our backpacks and it was now getting dark we decided to stay for the night.

The owner tried to charge us either $100 for the night, or $420 for a week, which was no good as we only have 4 days here, so we had to clear out early this morning and begin the whole process of trekking around again. Fortunatly on our third attempt we found a cabin really close to the beach in a campsite with cooking facilities. We’re going to do a bit of self catering to save a few quid – although we tried that last night and it didn’t work out much cheaper than going to a restrauant – 16p for a can of spaghetti, 35p for a loaf of bread and $15.00 for a bottle of vodka.

Although quite touristy, Byron’s got quite a nice vibe to it and a picture postcard beach. We haven’t really decided what we’re going to do while we’re here since we’ve both decided that we’re not really beach people…

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Today we took a trip to a Koala sanctuary, which was lots of fun. We got some good pictures of us having a cuddle with them, which we’ll post up soon. We also had a go at feeding the kangaroos. It touched 40 degrees here at one point, so we’re both feeling pretty lazy (which is why this post is so short).

I know I keep saying it, but we’re going to really really really try and put up some pictures as we have some really good ones that I’d like to share.

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My bag got searched by customs, who were suspicious of my "coffee mate". Thank god that didn't happen in Thailand or somewhere similar, my Thai wouldn't be up to explaining away a suspicious white substance.

We've got a pre-booked hostel that we've checked into. There's no air conditioning and it's the middle of summer here so it's not easy to sleep. I gave up and decided to come downstairs and write the blog, but Tabi's still napping. Tabi knows some people who live nearby so we're going to stay there tomorrow night and over New Year's, which sounds nice.

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We've been staying in a huge suite in an excellent four star hotel that's right on the beach, but miles from anywhere else, so we've been lumbered with some hefty taxi fares.

On Christmas eve we had a fantastic Christmas dinner at a local restaurant, but our 'Christmas Day Dinner' at the hotel was less successful, turning out to be a (cold) Chinese buffet.

On boxing day we went parasailing, which is where a speedboat drags you along in the air, with a parachute. It's great fun, and well worth trying if you ever get the chance. We also rented a jetski, which was great, although we got completely soaked. Tabi was obviously expecting a very different experience, as she’d hoped to bring along a picnic and a book to read during the ride.

Tomorrow we’re off to Brisbane, via Singapore. It’s an 8 hour flight, which makes it our second longest, so I’m going to try and call the airline and get a reserved seat with extra legroom as we won’t be able to check-in in advance.

We’ve been very lax with getting photos onto the blog, hopefully there will be somewhere at Singapore airport to do this tomorrow as we’ve got some great ones.

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Not much else to report.

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Mui Ne is a very quiet little fishing village about 200km from HCMC, where there isn’t much to do and no tuk tuks or public transport so we rented a motorbike after being approached by a moto driver. He agreed to rent us his personal bike for just $5 and didn’t ask for any security, which shows the Vietnamese are much more hospitable and trusting than the guidebooks make out. It seemed a little harsh to be renting his entire livelihood for just $5 so we made sure to return it with a full tank of petrol.

We took the bike to sand dunes where I had a go at sand sledding. It’s like tobogganing, but with a lot more sand in your eyes. Tabi didn’t participate due to an altercation with our 11 year old guide. I wasn’t very good at it, so two days later, I’m still getting sand out of various nooks and crannies.

We’re now in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as they call it in the South. We decided that as this was our last inexpensive country we’d push the boat out a little, so have got a suite in a hotel, with PC and hot water for just 7 pounds. We’ve just come back from a supermarket where we managed to spend $40 on cereals and cheese. So much for self catering being cheap!

We’ve got until the morning of the 22nd in HCMC, so have a few days just to relax, which will be nice after quite a hectic pace.

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As soon as the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh, they started a program of mass evacuations. Within 3 days the city streets were cleared and the entire population, including the hospitals' sick and dying, were making their way into the countryside. 2 million Cambodians gave up everything, traveling to far distant provinces to play their part in the 'agrarian utopia'. In a country that grows 30% of what it consumes the consequences are obvious - mass starvation. As one Cambodian put it "Where there were streets without people, houses without people and men fought over a grain of rice stuck to the tail of a dog".

An old school house in Phnom Penh stands as a museum to the cruelty and inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge. It was in this French colonial school, in the heart of an empty city, that 20,000 political prisoners were detained, questioned, tortured and raped. Security Office 21, or S21, was just one of many interrogation centres run by the Khmer Rouge. Here confessions and accusations were extracted under such duress that they couldn't be considered valid. For most, it ended at the killing fields – only 7 people of the 20,000 survived.

Amongst the cruellest of guards were the 12-16 year old wardens. Prisoners were regularly questioned and tortured with a variety of techniques, from fingernails being pulled out to electrification and suffocation. Important political prisoners were kept in their own 2 1/2 foot by 6 foot cell, feet shackled to an 2 foot iron bar. As horrible as this sounds it was infinitely preferable to the treatment of the bulk of S21’s residents. They were kept 60 to room, that in a different time taught classes of 25. Here there were just two iron bars, each the length of the room. 30 people would be shackled alternatively to each bar, feet touching feet. No bedding, sound or movement was allowed.

Killing Fields

After interrogation at S21, prisoners were taken 14km down the road to the killing fields, where, as the name suggests, they were killed. To save 'wasting' bullets, prisoners were beaten to death with bamboo, or had their necks sawn using branches from palm trees.

There isn't much to see now, only small dips in the ground that mark out where the mass graves once were. Scattered all across the ground underneath our feet were fragments of teeth, bones and clothing. In the centre is what looks like an ordinary monument, but as you get closer you can see it's a perspex tower, 17 storeys high, of skulls arranged by age and gender.

Other stuff...

Phnom Penh doesn't seem to be as dangerous as everyone makes out, although having said that we took the guide book's advice and stayed indoors after dark. Fortunately there was a fantastic French restaurant just a few meters away, where we had most of our meals.

We've taken a coach to Vietnam, and are now in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). We're waiting to take another bus to a little fishing village called Mui Ne. We'll be returning to HCMC in a few days time though.

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Angkor Wat is a world heritage site, one of the wonders of the world, and apparently, the biggest religious building ever constructed. It’s all that Cambodia seems to have going for it, and pictures of Angkor are on everything from the flag to beer and cigarettes – the message being that Cambodia might be in a bit of a state now, but the Cambodians built Angkor Wat, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

There are two war museums in Siem Reap, and they are themselves at war. The owner of the one we chose to visit was arrested when a former army general decided to open a competing museum. Strangely, to secure his release, he’s scrapped the admission charge (so that his museum is no longer classified as such) but this has only increased its popularity. Lots of photos of the museum and Wat to follow.

Keen to avoid the Cambodian roads, we booked a flight to take us to Phnom Penh. The flight was smooth and only 40 minutes. There was just enough time to take off, throw some food at us, and then land again. We took a taxi to a hotel that we’d pre-booked only to find that the price had gone up 50% overnight. Neither of us felt like being ripped off again so we took a tuk tuk and fortunately managed to find a reasonable hotel on the other side of town.

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The first half of the journey, from Ko Chang to the Cambodian border
was reasonable, although the driver thought he was Michael Schumacher
and had a right to drive on which ever side of the road he chose –
beeping and cursing furiously at oncoming traffic for being in his
way.

We got dropped off at a roadside café, which doubled as a place where
we got our Cambodian visa, and boarded a second bus, which, we
assumed, would take us all the way to Siem Reap. The bus took us about 200m to the immigration point, where we waited for almost two hours in the mid afternoon sun to be allowed out of Thailand.

Once though immigration, our guide informed us that it was best to
change our money now and then promptly took us to a bureau de change
that offered incredibly bad exchange rates – so we've decided to stick with our dollars, which seems to be the first currency anyway.

We were then taken to an incredibly shabby bus, which was absolutely
packed full with luggage lining the gangways and virtually no legroom
at all. This was not the air-conditioned 'VIP' bus we had been
promised. 'Sorry, you have been cheated' was the refreshingly blunt
opening line of our guide's speech. He continued 'Hotels in Siem Reap
cost from between 100 and 1000USD'; we waited for the inevitable story of how he just happened to have a good friend who knew where we could get a room for 50.

He then told us how the journey from the border to Siem Reap is about
60 miles, but would take us about 5 hours – It's true that Cambodia's
roads are in a very poor state of repair, but I was skeptical that
this was the fastest the coach could manage, thinking the idea was
probably to get us to a hotel that the guide was on commission for so
late at night that it would be too dangerous for us to trek the
streets looking for a new one. Not being very happy with the
situation I decided to ask where we were going to be dropped off 'I
can't tell you; if I tell you, I have to tell everyone" was the
response, so I waited for a toilet stop to ask him again, this time he
gave away a little more 'very central, a guest house' and how much
would this guest house cost? 'very reasonable price'. For sure we were about to be shafted, again.

In the end, we arrived at a little guesthouse about 6km away from town at 10:30; the rooms are fairly over priced at 10USD per night. The hotel was entirely empty, confirming that our entire coach had
probably been sold to the guesthouse in advance, and our extremely
long coach journey was probably unnecessary.

Despite the poor transport, we're pleased to be here. Cambodia is a
very interesting place: it was a French colony up until the end of
WW2, but was largely ignored, and had only one high school and no
universities by the time the French left and installed Prince Sihanok
on the throne. He was overthrown in 1953 by the national army in a
coup. In 1969 the United States carpet bombed large parts of the
country, the effects of which can still be seen thanks to 'Landmine:
Keep Out' signs scattered across the country. In 1970 the US invaded
in an attempt to eradicate Vietnamese communist forces based here.
They failed, but they gave rise to the Khmer Rouge, who took the
capital, Phnom Penh just a few months later.

Over the next four years the Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot's leadership,
systematically killed an estimated two million Cambodians (targeting
the educated in particular) in a brutal bid to turn Cambodia into a
Maoist, peasant-dominated agrarian cooperative. Currency was
abolished, postal services were halted, the population became a work
force of slave labourers and the country was almost entirely cut off
from the outside world. Responding to armed incursions into their
borders, Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978, forcing the Khmer Rouge to
flee to the relative sanctuary of the jungles along the Thai border.
From there, they conducted a guerilla war against the
Vietnamese-backed government throughout the late 1970s and 80s, funded by the US. 1993, UN administered elections took place and once again King Sihanok was returned to the throne as head of state.

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Today is Tabi's birthday (she sends her thanks to all those who wished her happy birthday via the blog, or at least she would,if I had remembered to tell her), so we had a fun day on quad bikes followed by Thai massage. Tabi envisaged the quad bikes as being 'something like lego land' so was a little shocked when we were driving around at breakneck speeds on one of the toughest offroad tracks I've ever seen. It wasn't so much a track as a mud path through the jungle. To add excitement, my quad would accelerate constantly, and the brake would only slow the acceleration, rather than slow the quad.

Most massages here in Thailand are the naughty sort, but we managed to find a genuine one on the beach. The main aim of Thai massage does not seem to be to relax, but rather to prod and poke you in as many intimate places as possible. Just as my massage was finishing, I turned over to see Tabi's masseuse lying underneath Tabi... thinking about it, maybe it was the naughty kind.

In the evening, we went to a fantastic Italian restaurant that even Momma would have traveled east for, and had a fantastic three course meal, and lots of wine for just a few pounds.

We've also been planning the next leg of the journey, to Cambodia. Cambodia doesn't have any cashpoints at all, so we decided to stock up on dollars while we were in Ko Chang. We visited the banks, and totally cleared them of all their dollars (230 in total). They arrange two night tours to Cambodia from Ko Chang, and we've managed to tag along with one of these tours on a 'transport only' basis - that is to say, they'll get us to Siem Reap, and then we're on our own.

In other news, the blog counter just notched up it's 2,000th visitor, each one of you is so bright that your leading cause of death is moth related injuries.

It's nearly midnight here, and we have to be up very early for Cambodia tomorrow. I'm also a little worried I might have a hang over... ho hum, best go to bed.

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Cute Monkey!

A stream running through the rainforest

Where we had our lunch today while out trekking

Yay! It's the motorbike we've been riding on!

We left for our trek at 9am this morning, and got back about 3pm. Our guide was very nice, and spoke near perfect English, which is very rare out here. On the one hand, he seemed to hate tourists – telling us how since their arrival the island has been ruined, but as he made his living from selling trekking to tourists and was recently married to an English lady who came here as a tourist herself, he couldn’t have hated our presence that much.

The trek itself was exhausting and pretty scary; at several places we were clambering around without any safety equipment in front of huge drops, but the scenery was breathtaking and we learnt a lot (did you know loofahs grow on trees?).

Later in the afternoon we took the bike on a nice long ride around the island, stopping off on a mini trek of our own through the national park to take another couple of pics that finished off the memory card.

We’re going to stay here another couple of nights at least, deciding that there probably isn’t time to visit any where else in Thailand, given that we’d have to head back to Bangkok first, and we don’t want to be traveling on Tabi’s birthday.

PS – There are two Thai girls next to me in the internet café, who seem to be writing love letters to men somewhere in the West. They’re copying from what looks like a very well worn ‘template’ letter. They've obviously been trying to get their green card for quite some time!

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We were dropped off in the centre of town, and had to make our own way to the hotel. Our guidebook is pretty light on information about Ko Chang, so the first thing we did was try and get a map. The only one we could find was the ‘Ko Chang Treasure Trail Map’ which isn’t exactly ordinance survey standard so we ended up walking for about 2-3 km with our backpacks when the place we were trying to get was just around the corner. We’re staying in a little bungalow (or bung-low as the BBC spell it) on the beach which has lots of character, although is a little noisy at night.

There are no rickshaws or taxis on Ko Chang, so we’ve rented a little motorbike. We took it out for a spin today and covered about 80km or so visiting various places on the island. It only came with 1l of petrol, so we set off straight away to look for a filling station. Expecting to see a Shell or Esso that never materialised, we ran out and broke down on a steep hill and ended up having to push the bike until a nice Thai lady stopped and gave us some gas (and refused payment). It turns out they don't have petrol stations here and instead sell petrol by the coke bottle load from roadside shacks.

Tomorrow we’re going on a trek into the rainforest, which sounds great, but means getting up very early.

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On the coach, we heard reports of a coup taking place in Fiji, but can’t find anything on the internet about it – has anything been on the news? We’ve found a bargain way to travel round our next stop, Cambodia. Apparently, it’s completely free to travel in the front carriage of any train there – the only slight downside is that the front carriage doubles as a minesweeper.

Ko Chang looks absolutly idillic, so you can look forward to some nice pictures when we get back to the mainland!

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Last night we left our safe haven of the Siam Dang district and took the efficient skytrain downtown for a river cruise. Security chased us onto the train, and we were pretty relieved to learn that it was just because I was carrying a drink.

The taxis here are generally very good, and all use the meter which prevents drivers from ripping people off (although it does encourage them to take creative routes to places). We have had one bad experience though, when trying to get to a restaurant for dinner the driver told us he knew where we wanted to go, but instead took us somewhere different. They do this because they get commission from the owner, but it means vastly inflated bills for us, so we refused to get out and demanded he take us to the correct restaurant. Firstly, he tried to talk us out of it by saying it was over an hour away, which was silly as he already knew we had a map. When we said we wanted to go anyway, he wasn’t very happy and started shouting high-pitched Thai obscenities at us, speeding around the city and banging on the steering wheel. Eventually we got out of the taxi around the station area, with the driver shouting ‘fook you’ as we left. Eventually, we found our way and had the best meal we've had in ages.

Still in Bangkok remains copyright of the author roblist, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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If you’ve been reading the blog for long, you’ll know that we found Delhi about as much fun as using a rabid porcupine to loofah, so when we left the airport and saw the clean streets and skyscrapers of Bangkok for the first time we had to check we’d flown into the right city. Given that the city looked so western I started to feel nervous about the quality of our seven pound a night hotel, so we felt absolutely elated when we saw our hotel for the first time, it’s almost as good as the Orchid hotel in Mumbai.

By the time we’d checked in it was 10am, and all we wanted to do was sleep. We woke up at about 3pm and had some ‘breakfast’. We were feeling smug about booking this hotel so cheaply, but then realised we’ve only got the room for one night. We’re going to try and extend our booking, but apparently the hotel is full. We’re hoping that there’s going to be a cancellation tonight, but we won’t find out until tomorrow.

We ventured into town to do some shopping. The Thais don’t appreciate it if you’re not dressed reasonably smartly (or at least not in a T-shirt with food stains on it), so I wanted to pick up some new clothes. In a department store we found a Marks and Spencer food section with loads of yummy stuff from back home.

We’re in an internet/gaming café now, trying to arrange backup accommodation for tomorrow and a route from here to Ho Chi Min. I might stop here a while and play some computer games with the locals (if Tabi lets me).

Arrived in Thailand! remains copyright of the author roblist, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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