Bangkok

After a couple of flights we touched down in Bangkok at 12pm local time. We caught a taxi into town and found some accommodation that was rather ghetto but the best we could manage for 7am NZ time.

After a pretty rough night sleep (we didn't see the aircon machine and relied on the ceiling fan..) we were both in positive moods and went out exploring. The street we've been staying on is packed with sweaty tourists who look completely overwhelmed by their current situation. It's rather amusing and we're both in agreement that there is no way we look like the other tourists, hah.

We started with the intention of buying backpacks as we only had two very basic travel bags. Instead of this we ended up catching a tuktuk and visiting a government administered travel agent. One thing led to another and we signed up for 14 nights on the islands of the South East coast (we're leaving for this later this afternoon).

The tuktuk also took us around a few buddhist temples before making an unrequested stop at a suit store. The suit salesman took it pretty hard when after ten minutes we told him we didn't want his suits. I'm sure he'll get over it.

That evening we went for a walk down by the river and took in some sights and generally chilled out. It's school holidays over here until the end of the month so there were lots of families doing similar things.

The next day we set out and achieved our original intent of buying backpacks. They are a bit larger than we require as we are travelling light however it's nice to have some spare room and be able to find things quickly. We might even be able to increase the warddrobe to 4 tshirts each.

Later that day, after picking up some rather nice singlets, we set out Khou San Rd which is tourist central. We settled down for a couple of quiet beers and exchanged some banter with various people that we happened to meet.

Today we've been killing time waiting for our bus to come and take us to the islands. It's going to be really nice to get out of the city and get to some beaches where we can laze about.

Highlights:
- Mr Yim's restaurant
- Thai singer singing western songs without knowing how to speaka the English
- The sheer amount of scrawny and pasty looking Englishmen who only appear after sundown
- The lady that did our washing in an alleyway yesterday for a $1.50 NZD
- The Turner look alike that was de-fleaing his dog
- A missing cat flyer with photos

Lessons Learned:
- Other tourists aren't really interested in talking and meeting people during the day. At night time on the other hand most people are pretty friendly
-Locals are relentless at pestering you, during the day it is "Mr, Mr, where you go? Tuktuk? Where you from Mr?" At night time it is replaced with tattoo's and pingpong shows.