Bangkok

Darwin to Bangkok via Singapore isn't the worst journey you could undertake. The flights are only two and a half hours long and you get a nice wee break in Singapore to have a look around the airport. If you're flying with Tiger Airways however, you get probably the plane with the least amount of leg room ever built. In Singapore too, you also get your own special terminal. You see, all the people who have a bit of cash and fly Thai or Singapore Airlines, companies with a bit of clout land at the normal airport terminals. Tiger Airways passengers land at The Budget Terminal. It's a seperate part of the airport that might as well say "Poor People's Terminal", they even make it stand out by painting it this off-yellow colour with red writing accross the front. Makes you feel really welcome.

Bangkok is absolute, unadulterated chaos. The drive from the airport to our first hotel was pure terror on a stick, I'm sure our driver had never actually been to Bangkok before and it took him a good half an hour to find the street where we were staying. Our hotel was around the corner from where everyone else was staying so eventually we get shown to our rooms. Tell you what, fair play to the photographer who made this place look like you would want to stay there. They'd shoe-horned a massive bed into this wee room which meant you couldn't move around the room without stepping on the bed and smacking your head off the TV in the corner of the room. We dumped our bags and headed round the corner to see what the other guys hotel was like, took one look around and moved our stuff out of the Amarin Inn and into the nice cool surroundings of the Rambuttri Village Inn. Air-con, TV, swimming pool and all for about 12 pounds a night, lovely jubbly.

The street we were on was pretty chaotic, it looks pedestrianised but it isn't so cars, tuk tuks and motorbikes all make their way along the road beeping at all the foot traffic, all while stall holders try to sell you food, jewellery and clothing as you walk past. To get from our hotel you had to run a gauntlet of tailors all offering to make you a suit there and then, and they would throw in a shirt and tie as well. At fist all you can do is politley decline but after a while it gets pretty frustrating and you kind of want to slap them, so self-restraint is called for at all times in bangkok.

The main area in Bangkok for backpackers is the Kao San Road. It's about 250 metres long and is home to hundreds and hundreds of bars, hotels, stalls, brothels, bars and a couple of bars thrown in for good measure. It's one of the most mental places I've ever seen but it's brilliant. You walk down the place, haggling and bartering for everything and anything, picking up the odd bargain here and there and also getting ripped off in equal measure. You can then stop for a drink and then move on. Its even more nuts at night as well, it's like the Las Vegas strip has been crammed into one wee space, all you can see is neon and all you can here is music, absolutely mental.

We'd met up with everyone and so it was off to Kao San Road that night for a few drinky-poos, an evening spent in an Irish theme pub above a restaurant with buckets of Thai Whisky and coke and a Thai band that covered almost every single rock tune ever made. We made it up the next day and we all took off to see The Grand Palace, one of the most revered and holy palces in Thailand. When you get there, you are struck by the size of the place straight away, the walls just go on for miles and apparently the site of the palace is about 90 hectares and there are over 100 buildings and temples within the walls so it takes a fair bit of time to get round the place, to be honest, you can't in a day. At the gate you pay your money and then have to go into a wee office and they give you long clothes to wear as women are not allowed bare legs or any of their shoulders showing. Men are also required to wear long trousers. The temples themselves are spectacular, each individually tiled with hundreds of thousands of little coloured tiles, mostly gold I might add and there are Buddahs everywhere you walk. The temples and palace buildings are maintained all the time and it's an operation a bit like painting the Forth Bridge, it never stops. The history in the place in just unbelievable, with all the battles and myths displayed on enormous murals all around the various buildings, painted in such a way that it looks like 3D, and when you bear in mind that these were all done thousands of years ago, you can get some kind of idea of the talent it would take to complete this.

Not for the first time though, our sense of timing had deserted us and we had decided to visit the palace at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. It. Was. Roastin'. Byraway. We managed about 3 hours in the place before we stopped sweating as there was no fluid left in bodies so we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel.

When we got back it was decided that we would take a trip the next day, a trip to a floating market, the Bridge on The River Kwai and Tiger Temple.

Blog to follow.

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