We arrived in Bangkok at around 5am, and felt like we were home. Even at that time it was all there, the neon signs, the stinky food stalls, the tramps, and the people just gagging to rip us off some more! Ahhhhh a big breathe in, and we were off into the morning air. Thailand is such a strange country, mainly for the fact that you can walk down the same street 5 or 6 times in a day and it will look totally different each time. One time it will just be a street, another time it`ll lined with cheap t-shirt and dvd shops, and another it`ll be overtaken by crazy makeshift bars offering slightly cheaper drinks than the bars who`s pavement space they`re taking up. Brilliant....

Anyway, we got our flea pit of a home for tonight, slept, and then headed excitedly to the Thai boxing arena!  All the tuk tuk drivers did their usual try to charge you more than you should pay tactic, we`d learnt now the best way to deal with this was walk on to the next one. We finally got one guy down to a pretty cheap price to take us there. And it turns out he was in the middle of some sort of manic episode, maybe his wife had left him, or the dog died or something. Either way, it appeared our canny negotiating down to 60 baht was tipping him over the edge. We luckily, after much ranting and pointing of an imaginary gun to his head from our driver, made it to the arena in plenty of time, or so we thought.

We were told there were 2 shows on tonight and we`d missed the first, so there was a bit of time to kill until the next. Trying to find a bar, restaurant, or even anything open in this part of town was fun to say the least. But we managed to find a "restaurant" cum karaoke pub... Success. I put restaurant in those little inverted comma things because anywhere that`s speciality is fish`s heads and pig entrails cannot be rightly called a restaurant in my opinion. Anyway, we settled in for a few beers. A nice Thai bloke who could speak English started chatting to us, informing us we were the only foreigners ever in there, and also of how the karaoke worked. Each table had to sing 2 songs... Vicky was up for our table.

After much confusion, a Beatles song was selected, as that`s all they really understood, and the singing commenced. I hate karaoke, but this place was BRILLIANT! The locals there lapped us up, each table has flowers with money clips, so you`re meant to clip some money on, and give the flower to the singer if you like the song. They then give it as a tip to the dj. That dj made a killing that night! We also chatted to a man, a mate of the other guy, who looked like the grandad with no eyes in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory. Who was apparently 76 years old, he seemed a bit of a playboy for his age! The lady in red who seemed to be the owner was priceless, at one point she got up to with a tambourine to accompany our English speaking friend, all the while keeping her vague bewildered expression. To say this place was amazing is an understatement, we were only in there for an hour or two but we could have happily sat in there all night. Everyone gave us a big wave when we left, and the lady in red even came out to see us off.

Thai boxing was sadly a huge let down, we paid ฃ20 for the cheap seats, and the fights were really boring. Horrendous music played during each round, and the only move that seemed to get any credit was a weak knee to the ribs. We left after 6 of the 10 fights. Then headed to Khoasan Road for a drink. This is "Backpacker Central" in Bangkok, but they may as well have called it "That street in England where all the arseholes hang out and get far more drunk than they need to" as you can tell, it wasn`t really my favourite place. And I can see why people who just end up stuck around this area don`t like Bangkok too much. It wasn`t gonna put me off though, Bangkok`s awesome, and I`m sad I won`t be going back anymore. Lunatic gunmen and not enough money have ended that little plan.

We left Bangkok just in time, the day before all the trouble and headed to Phuket, on yet again, a VIP bus. We obviously got a little ripped off again, when our bus dropped us off miles from the destination and we were told we had a 3 hour wait for a scummy local bus, or could pay a few extra quid to get a mini bus... now... straight to our hostel! Wowee! Getting a little tired of all this I decided to go and speak to the rather hefty, charmless lady about a more amicable end to the situation, as I`d already spent a fair wedge of cash on my VIP bus down there.

One girl we`d met there had just been told if she wanted to complain to go back to Bangkok and do it there. Ah ha I thought, we`re doing just that as it happens. After a rather long winded chat about why I was paying some more money I gave into the urge to just get to our hostel, handed over the money and asked for a receipt. When I told the lady it was so I could go back to Bangkok to complain, she went bezerk, well as bezerk as a lazy horrible fat lady can without leaving her chair. And told me I couldn`t have one as I wasn`t allowed to complain. I soon realised my chat about rights, and receipts being a legal requirement were lost on her, and gave in.

Teresa didn`t however, and stole back our money demanding a receipt, this produced the funniest, and laziest performance I`ve ever seen. The fat lady couldn`t be bothered to get out of her chair, So just sort of whined and whinged until some of her mates came to see what was going on. After a bit more talking and after still getting no receipt we gave up.

We were staying in Phuket town, away from all the tourists, the Lonely Planet reliably informed us. What they failed to inform us was that it was away from anything else too, or at least anything that was open! We tried in vain to find a bar, restaurant or anything, and all we found was a dingy little cafe, straight from the M6 in the 80`s! We had a bit more luck that night when we went out for a few drinks with a couple we`d met called Rad & Linda. Although Linda didn`t have such great luck, she was bitten by a stray dog on the street! Since she`d not had her Rabies jab we packed her off to the hospital and called it a night. We were also informed that somehow our room for tomorrow had been given away, so that was that, tomorrow we decided we`d head to Koh Phi Phi. Bring on the beach!!!

Phi Phi was a really nice little place. We had a fairly chilled time there, just lazed about on the beach, went to see the sights and ate really. We did the usual see where The Beach was filmed and all that. And ironically I think the film The Beach has had exactly the bad affect that the film itself talks about. Phi Phi is now all a bit 18-30, there`s Beckham tattoo`s and buckets of booze all over the shop. One guy even had his passport tattooed on his back! Unreal. But all in all Phi Phi was wicked, and after a few relaxed days we decided to head off to Krabi before we got stuck in Phi Phi forever.

And that`s where I am now, sat by the beach in Krabi, which to be honest is even more relaxing than Phi Phi. Just checked my money situation, which isn`t so rosy... And my camera has decided to break! Which is even more annoying. So there might be no pictures for a while from me, I`m just soaking it in water now, which is my last hope of fixing it... We`ll see!