6th Nov - 16th Nov

Bangkok

The day we flew to Bangkok I decided to throw away my trekking shoes. Me and those £22.99 Hi-tek`s had been through a lot. But they`d never been, well, smelt the same since getting soaked during rafting. So as sad as it was, it was time for them to go. We got to the airport and I found out I had to fly to Bangkok on my own for some reason, which at first sounded a bit crap. But the flight was actually alright. Even the waiting around for the girls wasn`t too bad, I just made them the smallest name card thing I could to greet them, which kept me entertained!

It took ages to get to our hostel as it wasn’t in the centre of Bangkok, and the traffic was mental. But when we finally got there we decided to go on a bit of a walk, which predictably ended with me and Teresa going to a few bars, which were actually more expensive than we thought Thailand would be. Apparently we were in the posher end of the city.

We went to the cinema to see Bond the morning after, which was pretty crap to be honest. The best thing about it was at the start of the film, after the trailers, they show this 5 minute film about how great the king is, and everyone has to stand up and respect him. We were trying so hard not to crack up to be honest, and I can`t imagine anything like that going on in England! Then we went to get Vicky (Teresa`s best mate) from the airport, she`s out here for 6 weeks or so.

We booked our trip north to Chiang Mai the day after and went to a bar to celebrate. A girl who Tally knows just happened to walk in. This girl does live in Pattaya to be fair, which is about an hour away from Bangkok, but it was still pretty crazy. So we spent the night with her and her mates. Had a really good night, and managed to avoid the thousands of drunken English skinheads in football shirts all night. Which ain`t easy in Bangkok!

The day after was all about food. We went to an Israeli restaurant, we`d learnt the ways of Israel during our time in Nepal! They never do anything, unless it’s been recommended by someone else! We thought that’d make this place good and we weren’t disappointed. We had some awesome food, called Shakshuka or something like that, tomatoes and eggs type thing. The restaurant was so good that I had 2 mains and 2 desserts. You can`t argue with that!

Ayatthua/Chiang Mai

We got picked up at 6am to go to Ayatthua, god knows why 6am seems to be the prime time to pick people up in Asia! No one seems to have a lie in! Anyway, we thought the mini bus was gonna take us to our hostel, how wrong we were! The dude we booked our trip with had kindly booked us on a group tour... Of temples!!! It was not a good day, I`ve seen enough temples to last me a life time and these ones mainly turned out to be piles of bricks!

We went out to a bar called Tony`s place that night which was really cool. And continued our love affair with the Thai Whiskey called Sangsom, which is actually Rum! We got back to the hotel and got dragged into the bar by the lady that worked there and a group of other "travellers"… These lot were the sort of people I expected to meet more of travelling the world. Basically, idiots. I was chatting to a guy from Croatia about hip hop, trying to educate him basically as his tastes revolved around gangster rap from 1992. He was a lost cause. Vicky then had a rap battle with some Canadian guy to the soundtrack of Wildlife on One. Which was one of the funniest things I`ve seen. It all came out of nowhere, and the Canadian boy was destroyed. And that was pretty much that, I left when they all started talking about politics and America`s foreign policy. It was like being back at uni again... But worse. Everyone thinks they could run the world, but everyone sits on their arse drinking beer. You get the idea.

Met a couple of guys the day after who came from Cannock, right near Rugeley!! Then the owner of the hotel gave us a lift to the train station in the back of her pick up truck. It seems pick ups are the car of choice for Thailand. And riding in the back is the thing to do. Then we caught the night train to Chiang Mai. It was a hell of a lot less eventful than the night train we took in India! But I think that was a good thing.

The day we got to Chiang Mai we basically just chilled and walked round a bit. Then went for our talk about the trek we were doing. Having just thrown away my trekking shoes, it was time to go shopping! So I went to the Night Bazaar and bought my self some lovely DsDiel [Diesel] trekking sandals for 4 hundred baht. Bargain.

It was a huge festival that night, so we went for some food and drinks at a place called Regina`s. The food was pretty crap but the atmosphere was really good. There were loads of people about, loads of fireworks going off, and loads of these floating lantern things being set off. We bought one to let off after dinner. It wasn`t the greatest success as we somehow managed to set it on fire! Then a nice Canadian guy donated his spare one to us, which we managed to crash! But it eventually got going and everyone gave us a big cheer.

Vicky was ill so her and Tally went home. And feeling the pain from our lantern affair, me and Teresa decided to stay out for a few drinks. We walked over the main bridge which had since been turned into a war zone. There were people letting off fireworks everywhere, some people were even just lighting them and dropping them to try and hit people. One firework exploded on a combo of my foot and Teresa’s leg!

We went and played some pool in a few bars. And it seems that a bar in Thailand quite often doubles as a whorehouse. The last bar we went in, because it was the only one open still, was run by 2 guys from Wolverhampton, who also knew where Rugeley was! That wasn`t enough to get me free drinks though. It kicked off a bit outside when some guy started beating up this girl. We all went outside to try and calm it down. I shouted something about not hitting women, when a guy said "It`s alright, she`s a ladyboy" I still wasn`t sure if that made it alright or not. But decided to leave it at that.

The police then turned up to sort it all out, and once they`d gone, a huge gang of ladyboys turned up to kick off. Luckily the owners managed to calm it all down. In the mean time we`d met a group of Americans who were going back to there hotel for a few drinks so we went along. Bearing in mind it was nearly 5am that was probably a bad move. We had a pretty cool end to the night though, just went back to theirs and drank some wine and chatted. At about 7 we realised we`d better head off back home as our trek started today!

So with no sleep we started our 3 day trek. We had a 4 ish hour walk, which actually wasn`t too bad at all bearing in mind the condition we were in. Had a cool group of people with us too. When we finally got to camp me and Teresa basically just slept straight away, needed to recover for tomorrow. Had another 4 hour walk the day after up to another hill tribe camp, and had a pretty good night, playing games and learning Thai from a crazy little hill tribe man. The last day of the trek was cool, we rode elephants and did bamboo rafting and pretty much nothing else. Nice and easy.

A few of the trekking crew went out that night. We got involved in a game of creating drinks using rum and different flavour Bacardi Breezers which pretty much set us up for the night. Most of the town was shut down because a member of the royal family had died. So after playing a bit of pool we went back to the hotel. Ended up staying up most of the night trying to learn guitar from Aussie Tim. Sangsom rum is one of the best drinks you`ll come across, it even mixes well with red Fanta!

We woke up at 10am wondering where we were, turns out it was Tim`s room and we`d ended up crashing there. Tim and Tally were off to Laos today, so we left him to get ready and went for some breakfast. Tally got the bus fine, Tim never showed up! And 15 minutes later he came casually strolling out looking rough and a bit too relaxed for someone who`d missed their bus. He still managed to keep the same look about him when I told him he`d missed his bus, but it was all sorted, they were still picking people from other hotels up, so they were on their way back for him.

Tim ordered breakfast and sat looking at a piece of watermelon for half hour until his bus turned up, and then set off for Laos. We were all up for a quiet one tonight, so just went to a restaurant opposite "The Smallest Bar In The World" which had THE most amazing food I`ve ever eaten. It`s pretty easy getting into a life that just revolves around food to be honest, I`m getting used to this. The "Smallest Bar" turned out to have an extension when it got busy, which seemed to blow their claims out of the water to be honest. We booked our trip to Laos on the slow boat for tomorrow so we`re on the same one as the Coventry girls.

We set off for the Laos border the day after, and the journey was horrible. We were told 3 hours, it took 8! We rocked up to Chiang Khong really late ate dinner and went to bed. We had to be up at 7am tomorrow to cross into Laos...