Ah Thailand, land of smiles. And the lower echelons of the British social underbelly.

Bangkok, an unplanned stop on our trip, but it made flights a lot cheaper. Ironically however, the unplanned stop theme continued; we hadn't planned to spend a couple of hours outside the airport waiting for the 'express shuttle' into town, and we certainly hadn't counted on the bus, when it did turn up, crashing. But no matter, we're resourceful travellers so we just flagged down a taxi. Which would be ideal - we had the address of our hostel written in Thai after all - but we hadn't reckoned on that being about as much use as our Spanish... if you're a literate Bangkokian, you don't drive a cab. Ah. Still no matter, we got there eventually, albeit not before our taxi driver being so chuffed to have found the road that he gently cupped my right buttock whilst we retrieved our bags. We got to the hostel, let's focus on the positives.

After that, we set about tucking in to the Thai capital. The Grand Palace is truly stunning, there are more temples than you can shake a stick at and for that something a little bit different, you can read all about how the king pretty much single handedly invented photography in his own museum.

The Koh San road is a little different. It sort of resembles the contents of a Mancunian Walkabout on Saturday night, emptied into the middle of a market full of fakes, considerately held in the middle of the A3. You can play spot the tramp stamp, buy a kilo of pad thai for under a dollar plus get run over by a scooter, a tuk tuk and a Geordie in less than 30 seconds, all bathed in glorious neon. Which might suggest we didn't like it, but in fact it was ruddy great - the food was seriously plentiful, cheap and good; the spice only joined in with the heat in justifying another beer and there was a hell of a lot to do in a very small area.

Less ideal was the Thai's determination to rip you off. And not just a casual tourist vs locals' price. Half the time you agree a deal, you end up having to walk away when a bunch of sudden extras or an unannounced stop at this or that shop materialises. Which is fine when you can walk away, but getting charged more than double the real price of a Cambodian visa at the border, with the only alternative being the bus you've paid for driving away, leaves a bit of a sour taste. Definitely not the end of the world, but there's a distinct lack of that warm fuzzy feeling you get from your dealings with say most Guatemalans and a real hint of what uber-tourism has done to Costa Rica. Shame, because it marred the experience a bit. Suppose we'll just have to come back in a few weeks and test other areas. Tsk, more hardships.