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Hey Everyone!!

Well after a tearful goodvye to our families in Dublin Airport, a flight to London, a very LONG flight to Bangkok and a taxi ride we finally made it to our hotel (Rambuttri Village Inn Plaza) which is located just off Khoa San Road. We were pleasantly surprised with our hotel, its very clean, has a fridge, free wifi, rooftop pool and right outside there are many lovely restaurants and markets, plus its only 2 mins away from Khoa San Road (which is just like any Spanish Holiday Resort...a strip of bars, markets and food stalls).

We were both very surprised at how many families where on our flight to Bangkok and when we got here we were even more surprised to see so many young families here on holiday even staying in our "backpacker" hotel lol (it is just very different from what we pictured...but in a good way!!)

On our first night it was lashing rain so we ran into a bar which locked fairly busy called O! Hungry it had free wifi so we could let our families know we arrived safe and we ordered our first meal...Ian had stir fried beef and veg with rice, Laura had Spag Bol!!

Our first day was spent trekking across the city looking for the Vietnamese Embassy to get our visas sorted. (By trekking we mean an air conditioned taxi ride...but hey it was a LONG way!!) When we arrived at the embassy Laura realised she had forgotten her passport photgraphs (so much for her being sooo organised lol) thankfully they were able to take some there for her. Once we had handed in our applications and passports we had a very adventureous Burger King for lunch, we then went strolling around the city and stumbled upon a huge shopping centre called Centre World which had everything from Hello Kitty Golf Clubs to an Ice rink, was nice to be inside in the aircon as it was very hot outside. On our way back we took our first TUK TUK this was very exciting, we bargained a very good price and then held on t=for dear life as our driver (who was know more than 14) zipped in and out of the crazy traffic at top speed!!!

That night we had dinner in a restaurant outside our hotel and hit Khoa San Road for the first time, we didnt know what to expect but we loved it!! We found Mulligans Irish bar sat at the front and just took everything in as it passed us by lol!!!

On our second day here we went walking to find one of the Temples and the Grand Palace, today many people tried to scam us!! Any time Ian took out the map there was someone asking where we wanted to go, telling us it was a Buddist Holiday etc etc thankfully we had read up about all of these scams so we knew to just keep walking. We got to see the Reclining Buddha, the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace, all where beautiful. But it was very tiring walking around in the heat. Laura's face looked like a puffy tomato after!!

Then we jumped in a taxi to trek back across the city to the embassy again to collect our visas, we had to be there by 4pm (it was closing at 4.30) we had given ourselves plenty of time but then our taxi driver got lost (even though he swore to us he knew where it was when we got in) Ian had to shop him the way using his map hahaha!! We eventually got there at 4.20pm lol

Then we strolled through Lumphini Park where we stumpled across about 100 people doing an outdoor aerobics class and groups of cheerleaders practicing routines, the park had a huge lake with a floating island and you could rent pedal boats it was beautiful.

We then walked up to Patpong for the night markets...now that was an experience!! As we walked along the centre we were surrounded by very good copy designer sunglasses, handbags etc BUT if we looked to our left or right we were also surrounded by ladies dancing on bars in their underwear in the many GO-GO bars and we were approached by many men asking if we wanted to go see the ping pong show!! We also had our first experience of "ladyboys" lol they were everywhere!!

We were supposed to head to Kanchanaburi today for 2 days but we are enjoying Bangkok so much we decided to stay here for 2 nights. We chilled by the pool this morning and were hitting china town tonight. Tomorrow we have booked a day trip to Kanchanaburi and we have our over night train to Chiang Mai booked for Friday night.

So far we are having a ball...hope you enjoy our first entry many more to come!!!

Bye for now, Ian & Laura (",)

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