The time had finally come to begin our travels! I met Heidi, Josie and Nathan at Heathrow. In 24 hours we’d be in Asia with Bangkok being our first destination (a stopover in Dubai on the way.. will be adding that to the list of countries I’ve been to!). This whole travelling thing was finally a reality!

So, after two long haul flights (including me and Heidi being asked by an air steward if we were on our honeymoon… of course we are), copious amounts of food, alcohol, movies and Josie managing to spill at least a bit of every drink she had on the plane,  we landed bright and early in a humid Bangkok.

*insert classic airport stuff here* and voila, we were in the first place of our itinerary!! We grabbed our bags (our heavy,  heavy bags) and got the train into Bangkok for about 40p. We had about 4hours to spare before we could check in to our hostel. Oh and having time to kill whilst carrying 13kg of baggage is sweaty work. Very, very sweaty work. We did however explore parts of Bangkok and their train system here is so easy to use and extremely cheap.. and the trains have air con (life savers). We also found the Thai people to be very friendly… any time we’d stop for a breather or to navigate the map, someone would want to talk to us (not too sure if they could smell our sweat through all the over-powering aromas of the food stalls nearby). They were all very helpful and would always finish their conversations with “where are you from?” … “England” … “welcome to Thailand”. Why thank you.

After finally getting to our hostel around 1pm, we collapsed in the foyer dripping in sweat (for once it wasn’t just me that was hot… okay, it may have just been me practically dripping but the others were also very sweaty!!). We paid a fee of £3.90 per night and finally dumped our bags, headed to the pool and relaxed (traveling can be hard work :P). We experienced our first Panang chicken curry and had a relaxing first night ready to visit the temples of Chinatown the following day.

We arrived in Chinatown around midday and once again the locals offered their help on where to go. After not accepting tuk tuk offers from other drivers (because we wanted to walk for a bit and were unsure of where we definitley wanted to go) we finally settled for one which was 10 baht more than one offered to us down the road and a driver who claimed he was half asleep.. good choice ey? And in fact it was. He took us to a really nice temple where we were taught how to meditate by a man who was very proud to be working for the King! He told us all about praying to Buddha’s and how today was a national Buddhist day and so it came at no cost to visit this temple.

We experienced a fair few heavy downpours (which often come as quite a relief) during our visit to Chinatown. Including one on a tuk tuk. Now these tuk tuk drivers are crazy. They’ll drive anywhere they can fit, including pavements. They are a lot of fun though and crazily cheap! One tuk tuk driver took us to two temples and it only cost is 20 baht each which is 40p!!

The temples are beautiful here. We visited the Golden Mount which gave amazing views of the city and was an amazing piece of architecture. Our final temple was the biggest we’d seen and again was an amazing experience. We prayed whilst burning incense sticks, a candle and holding a flower and also found out our fortune by shaking a pot of sticks each with a different number on them corresponding to a different day of the month (of course though Josie’s was the only one without an English translation so who knows what her fortune is?!).
We ended the day with a traditional McThai… which, to be fair, was not our first choice and because a lot of restaurants near our hostel shut at 9pm, we had no choice (okay it was probably the wine we drank at our hostel which made us late going out but it’s all part of the fun). I tried the Chicken teriyaki with rice so it was at least Thai McDonald’s food!!

We then discovered a bar hidden in an area full of food market stalls. They even had a live band playing! We grabbed four beers and within two minutes of sitting down Nathan was being hit on by the male saxophone player in the band who claimed that “he wasn’t gay but his boyfriend was” and Josie was being harassed by a Thai man selling nuts who was practically shoving them in her mouth (she is severely allergic to nuts). Maybe that was her fortune that she couldn’t decipher?!?

Thursday (26th) saw us having a lazy morning by the roof pool overlooking a bustling Bangkok. In the afternoon we ventured into the city via the BST trainline stopping off at a few places such as a Japanese mall called the Gateway. It was exactly as you’d imagine a Japanese mall to be. Waving cats, anime, a Hello Kitty dolls house and sushi restaturants everywhere. And it was masssive! We continued our journey to Chid Lom, Bangkok’s very own Times Square with skyscrapers, massive malls and advertisements. We stopped off for a Pad Thai noodle dish in Asok and decided to wander round to find a bar. In the distance Heidi and Nathan spotted a street full of lights. Brilliant, a club strip we could grab a drink at! Oh, wait.. no this is definitely a brothel street. We ended up at the other end shocked at what we had stumbled upon. We knew of this stuff happening in Thailand but didn’t expect to see it in such a bright, loud and weird setting (there was a one-legged guy dragging himself down the middle begging for money, quite a contrast to the half naked thai women (or men) waiting for men to come in to their club).

In the next few days we’ll be doing more exploring of Bangkok, visiting a floating market on the river and making our journey to Pattaya (a 2hour bus journey costing us about £4!). We’ve also decided to stay in this hostel for an extra few nights because it is a bargain (6 nights here has cost us about £23!), in a good location and close to the bus terminal needed for our next destination in Thailand.

BFN!! xxx