Bangkok

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we arrived in Bangkok about about 7ish from our flight from Hong Kong. we headed straight to the centre to find accomadation so that we could be near to most of the important parts. stayed at a place called mango lagoon, was very nice, had en-suite shower, tv and air con. much nicer than the last place in HK. the first nite we just went out locally, got some munch (green thai curry) and a few beers, nothing to streneous.

the next day, we went to visit the kings palace. this place was absolutely awesome, its immaculate, as a kings palace should be really! everythings gold, for those people into their bling, this is one place you should see. at the heart of the palace is the emerald buddah, this goes back many moons and has a lot of history in thailand. not only is the buddah very impressive, but so is the temple that it sits in,I was quiete taken back by the amount of gold and emeralds etc that were all under one roof! unfortunatly no cameras permitted in this room (but il have some pics for rest of the palace in near future).

After the palace we took a tuk-tuk (basically 2 seats on the back of a motorbike) around some of the other sights, including another massive buddah and the central pillar! The tuk tuk drivers (and traffic) in bangkok are absolutely mental, especially coming over from hong kong where a) there arent that many cars and b) people are told when to cross on sophisticated crossings. Not in bangkok, its every person for themselves! also, the pollution during the day is pretty bad, i dont think many of the Tuk-Tuk drivers will recieve their free buss pass!

Although a little crazy, we did manage to meet an absolutely wicked tuk tuk driver, really helped us out. He directed us to a TAT shop. These people are government based tourist operators. We went there and sorted out a whole monts worth of entertainment, including, elephant trekking, white water rafting, trips to Laos and a full moon partyt among other things!

Anyway, that eve we decided to head into town...visited some very interesting bars (for those who have been to bangkok, you wil know what i mean).

The next two days were spent just going round various markets and eating from various food carts, looking at all the counterfit goods availabe. the evenings were cool, found some nice places to eat and have a few beers...even managed to catch the England V Brazil game at wembley!

On the 3rd, we left to head for Chaing Mai to go elephant trekking etc! first we had to get a train to Ayutthaya.....

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