A new adventure!!!

---

So my journey began at half 4 in the morning after not a lot of sleep with a trip to Gatwick airport. Jamie dropped me off. Was a lot harder to say goodbye this time than when he dropped me off for Australia. 😞
Got on the plane ok, flight had a lot of turbulence but otherwise was fine. Managed a little sleep. Next flight was better, the promise of WiFi cheered me up, but I soon realised that you only got 10mb free and then had to pay.. Boo. However I got chatting to the guy next to me. Never did find out his name. But he was a retired police officer who used to work in forensics. He has visited all the places I am going to and told me a few tips for getting by. He also told me about a fab place to stay on Koh Samui, some a-framed beach huts right on the beach. Going to look into it when I get the Internet..
(WiFi is not very readily available here, so please don't expect to hear from me very often! I'm writing the blog posts on my phone and then uploading them when I get Internet. So the whole post will be a bit stop start. A bit like a constant status update!)
Had to hang around Bangkok airport for Sally. So boring!! But she got to me at about half 2. We then got a taxi to the hotel. Hotel was better then I expected if I'm honest. Although the area it was in was pretty awful. Loads of homeless people and run down houses. They have pictures of the king and queen everywhere. They also fly flags in their honour, yellow flags for the king and blue flags for the queen. The traffic is mad too, no pedestrian crossings, so you just have to go for it.. I hate crossing roads at the best of times. So we swiftly abandoned our walk and went back to the hotel for a beer. Standard.
We then met the rest of our group for a meeting to tell us about the trip.. Isn't it funny how there are loads of extra charges that they didn't tell you about until now.. We also have to pay the mafia more money to get across the border. Everyone has to do it, even the locals. It's so corrupt. Ho hum. At the meeting me and Sally couldn't keep our eyes open. We were doing the nodding dog.. The rest of the group went out for dinner, me and Sally went to bed.. It was 8pm... We had to be up at half 5 to get the bus to the Cambodian border. Had some breakfast at the hotel. Ate some identifiable items covered in sweet chilli sauce.
I am currently writing this bit on the bus, listening to the driver's mixed tape. An odd selection of country and western mainly, with the odd Carpenters song thrown in. Had my first experience of a squat toilet. It went well luckily. The roads are mental here. 4 people on one motorbike.. People in the back of pick ups. Children sitting on the side of motorcycle sidecars. People going the wrong way on the main roads.
Tonight we stay at a Cambodian family's house. Hope they don't try to feed me the head of a goat.
We've just stopped for lunch, me and Sally shared two different dishes in case we didn't like one. But both were amazing! We had beef lok lak and pork am ok. The beef lok lak was beef stirfried in a soy and tomato sauce. The pork am ok was a bit like thai green curry. Now back on the bus for two hours until we get to Siem Reap.
There are some good people in our group. Our tour guide is a Thai guy called Lop, or Robbie, whichever you can say! He's funny.
TTFN.

---