Er..a red dress is probably not a wise thing to be wearing

---

We arrived back in Bangkok in the morning and went straight back to the same place as last time. It was relatively cheap and we knew where we stood with it.

And it had HBO

By this point the riots with the red shirts were getting worse and had moved from up by khao San road to the finance district and the paragon shopping centre. After a fairly tame view of them last time we had heard from people in Yangon that it had escalated and was now a bit more gritty.

We had no real plans and our next deadline wasn't for almost 2 weeks when we flew from Singapore. Everything we had read about the city was expensive and so we aimed to spend as little time there as possible and just be efficient with the 2 or 3 days planned - a shared dormitory for the two of us would cost us half our daily budget.

We ate around our accomodation sticking to street stalls mainly. We found one with boiled pork and roast duck for under a quid and tried out plenty of pad Thais and spicy basil and rice. For breakfast we started by having museli fruit and yoghurt but soon moved onto to sandwiches or omlettes. Emma continued this healthy eating regime with regular purchases of 711 hotdogs that had been cooking in the store all day and sever in a microwaved bun - haute cuisine indeed.

I had a problem - (one that resulted in me putting on about a stone in a week. ) I eventually managed to kick the habit with much help and support from Andy. I had my last 7 11 hotdog and started on the road to recovery by going cold turkey (well, meat of a unidentifiable nature).

We also had some odd foods from the street stalls finding that the spicy pork lady (everytime we walked too and from our hotel we would shout 'pork lady!', but always out of ear shot because what ever context you take it in 'pork lady' is not a flattering nickname.) was not there every night. oh the horror! Her replacement had sausages on sticks and egg on a stick. You'll have to see the photo to get the full impact. They were cooked on a BBQ and upon shelling the egg we found it was green ........ Enough said.

Whilst on the food subject there was one eatery we discovered that we may bring back to England and setup as a rival to mcdonalds. It was called santas as it's masco. Was the fat man himself. It sold the usual fair of burgers and chicken but also offered baked potatoes stuffed with cheese and your choice of the following - broccoli, corn, bacon or more cheese. If I never try one of these i will not have lived a full life. I had a regrettable chicken and rice and emma had a heart attack burger.

My friend from uni - Bowe - was due in Bangkok but thanks to an ash cloud from Iceland, wasn't it better when they just gave the world prawn rings and microwave meals, he was now delayed indefinately.

That's a bad dad Joke

We did some retail therapy over the next few days getting essentials like memory cards and conditioner - this was more expensive than my sugestion of a skinhead but whoever listens to me. We went to the IMAX but as it was in the paragon soon found it closed up. Settling for the cheaper cinema over the road we wasted an afternoon watching clash of the titans (don't go and see it if you liked the old version).

We had a quick foray into the riots but decided to come back and devote a whole day to it. We made full use of the pubs just round the corner from our hotel that showed fake DVDs of films making a bottle of water and shared burger and chips last the full length.

We also bumped into a guy I worked with from carphone who had been travelling for almost a year with his girlfriend. We set a meeting spot for that night and went to give the protestors a quick look. Or hotel had told us which public bus to get and so we got there for a fraction of the cost in a taxi.

Now the key thing to note about these protests is that it's bein run by the RED shirts. They have taken over a large part of the city and decorated it with RED banners and are all wearing RED shirts or RED scarves and have RED clappers and flags. Basically it's like a football club in so much as if you wear there colour you support them and don't support their opponents. I wonder if anyone can guess where this is going.

On the morning of us leaving to go there emma had been looking through her backpack fed up with her limited wardrobe and gone for a dress she hadn't worn in a while. We got in the bus that expressly heads towards the protestors and past all the police and army with their riot shields and mixture of shotguns and machine guns. We got all the way past this and it was only when we stepped up to the bamboo spear lined tyre barricades that we realised emma was wearing a bright red dress.

We carried on regardless and once on that side of the barricade got a really good response from the protestors many waving and some even taking photos of us. Of course natural instinct was screaming that we didn't want to draw attention to ourselves (as there were snipers on the roofs of nearby buildings) but that is difficult when your face is now red thanks to the 35 degree heat and you match your dress.

After standing and watching a band on stage and realising that unless we wanted to buy red clothing there was nothing more to do or see we sought out some shade. This came in the form of a shopping mall full of clothes. The choice was wide and we decided that rather than torment ourselves with things we couldn't buy at this time due to weight restrictions on our luggage we went next door instead. This turned out to be largely pointless as it was an electrical mall. All of his had however succeeded in cooling us down and we decided to cut our losses and get home for a shower.

We met up with Phil and Erica that night and spent it swapping travel stories and drinking loads. As you may remember I have not had great experiences with this up until now as Thailands local beer - Chang kept giving me nights I couldn't remember and hangovers I could never forget. Despite all this I managed a repeat of our excursion almost a month previous and will have to let Emma fill in the blanks.

Again it ended up with Andy getting in a sulk and having to be lured home with the promise of a 7 11 cheese toasties (which I ate as he fell asleep).

The next day was we discovered after speaking to Phil and Erica our 100th day of traveling. We had a few beers Andy had one very reluctantly, and recounted the highs and lows so far. We decided against anything flash or expensive as it wouldn't be in line with everything else so far.

We spent a lot of the time catching up on news and events as communication and most websites had been blocked in Burma. We monitored the ash cloud and kept hoping it would bugger off. We watched for news on the red shirts and hoped we might crop up in the background of a BBC photo. We even stayed up to watch one of the election debates and see what all the fuss about Nick Clegg was. In my defense this was emmas idea and we lasted about 10 minutes before deciding 3 am was not the best time to try and understand foreign policy.

One bit of good news we did learn from the BBC was that flights were back on and a facebook message from bowe confirmed he was in his way. Emma quickly replied asking if he could smuggle her something she had been craving from home - cheese and onion sandwich filler from Tesco's. We setup a meeting time and place all done by yours truly so there was no way the plan could fail.

It did fail. Emma rightfully pointed out that we hadn't checked the times very accurately and my map had no landmarks on it that a stranger in Bangkok would recognise - it was along the lines of that place we ate once rather than the big yellow bank. We waited in key points that we felt sure Bowe would find and nursed a beer between us. After an hour and a half of this we went to the Internet cafe and found message from him saying my map was rubbish and that he was staying in a place he didn't know the name of and would be wandering around Khao San for a bit.

Luck was smiling on us and we bumped into him almost straight away wandering down the road with a chang in his hand. It was his 3rd or 4th one and this mixed with jetlag looked like it was taking effect. We wandered up to buy a few cheap beers and sat down to catch up. The sensible thing would have been to call it a night and meet up the next day. Instead we hit Khao San and drank a good few buckets ending up in a club called lava with an Irishman called James.

My Khao San debt must have been in credit as I spent that night drinking as much as possible but stayed fairly sober. Enough so that I could reassure bowe that the girl dancing him with him was not a ladyboy and whisk him away from he angry guy who's fez he knocked off. We parted at around 4 am arranging to meet up at 11 the next day to check into a place we had found that was 4 pound a night. Our reasoning being this meant more money for drink.

It was however my turn to get blind drunk on Kho San but since I had carried Andy home a few times now (no easy feat considering our apparent size difference (I say apparent because I am 6ft 3 really, I just slouch and I do not have small dog syndrome)) I didn't feel guilty...just awful the next day. Chang is the drink of the devil.

We checked out and in to the new place throwing ourselves onto the bed to get some more rest. Big mistake. It was only now we realised why the room was so cheap. It was air conditioned and fairly clean. The paper thin walls were reminiscent of the bit with Robert Carlyle in the beach but it wasn't bad. Until you used the beds. Forgoing the traditional mattress the owners had instead stacked flattened cardboard boxes inside covers. In all honesty what did we expect for so cheap.

We made peace with the beds and as Bowes room only had a fan and it was really hot all hunkered down for some shuteye in our room. We woke up properly at around 5 and went for something to eat and watched a bit of a film. We had vodka and rum from Burma back in our room so grabbed a bottle of coke to sit outside where there was a pool table and bar.

After a few games of cards we brought out another souvenir from Burma - the huge cigar given as a present from the old lady. We broke it in half (no way could we smoke all of it) and lit up. It was passed hurriedly from one hand to the next as each person coughed up a lung full. The contents if it quickly came flooding back - it was 90% wood-chip with a sprinkling of tobacco. Never the less we did smoke it all and once you adjusted it was smoke-able - not pleasant still - but a few of the locals including the bar owner did join in. We made sure he took the lions share.

As midnight approached and the rum ran out a pot of chicken and rice soup was offered around and we filled our boots before retiring to our hobo beds.

The next day me an Bowe felt awful. This was at first put down to rum but eventually, as Emma pointed out, to the toxic fumes we had inhaled which were probably equal to spending 10 minutes in a burning house. In my case this sick feeling would last the whole day and result in plenty of whinging and moaning.

Im not a boy, therefore not bloody stupid enough to smoke wood-chippings.

We took Bowe on the bus to see the red shirts and around the MBK (a shopping centre yet to be closed by the protesters). We left without buying anything and proceeded into the throng of red. Me and Emma had to get to the train station before too late to try and book tickets to Malaysia in the next two days so we veered right in that general direction.

It was on the whole uneventful. I bought some sunglasses and me and bowe got a really spicy rice dish that almost finished both of us off. There was definitely a larger presence of the army as we passed many guards with rifles and shotguns but even their attitude seemed to suggest they were there to be seen and nothing more. We also got given a free DVD detailing what people were fighting about. When we got to the skytrain we couldn't work out how to get to the train station and so instead walked Bowe back to the bus stop and carried on on foot.

It was longer than we thought to the train station and when we did get there we were told by the touts (they said they were official tourist helpers) that all the trains were sold out for the next few days. Panicking we checked an this appeared to be correct. We paid he extortionate cost for the Internet terminal there and checked flights instead. These were not cheap but we found ones that were doable with some scrimping elsewhere and missing out Singapore.

I had seen a sign about refunding tickets 24 hours before a train leaves and decided before we booked anything we should go down on the day of the train and see if the touts had returned their tickets. We left getting a bit lost and distracted in China town and after a tasty noodle soup outside a 711 we got a taxi back to our room so as to bypass any trouble.

That night we played cards and drank 'moonshine' (rice wine) brewed by the bar below us. We awoke early to get a few errands completed before going to setup camp in the train station. We exchanged some books and dropped things off in storage and even used the boots to resupply on plasters and paracetamol. Waving goodbye to Bowe and his friend tom who arrived from England that morning we got a bus to the station to chance our luck.

---

Photos

16 - Looking up egg on a stick....
its wasn't there