First impressions of Bangkok were pretty good inside the airport - very shiney, new and swanky complete with a Boots! My excitement reached ridiculous levels at being reunited with hair products and face wipes and other such necessities until I saw the prices, about at least twice that of the UK and even in his still slightly delirious state Dan was coherent enough to put his foot down at 9 quid for Toni and Guy shampoo! :o( Stepped outside and humidity hit, a recurrent theme of our stay here, we thought we were prepared but even at half 7 in the evening it was ridiculously sweaty. Arrived at the hostel, a place near Khao San Rd but far enough away to escape called Roof View Place. Really nice rooms with a/c and colour TVs (Star Movies and CNN again lol) and very helpful and friendly staff. Dan ate some crisps for dinner and promptly fell asleep....so I spent my first evening in Bangkok 5 mins from Khao San and all the "action" on Facebook eating caramel coated yams from the newsagent opposite!! ;o)

Thankfully the following day he felt much better so after depositing half a ton of laundry on the hostel staff and eating lots of toast and bananas for free breakfast we went exploring. Not wise at 11am.... walked the very short journey to Khao San and nearly melted in the humidity, even I was properly sweating and Dan looked like he had had a bucket of water thrown over him ;o) Checked out the market and finally replaced my sunglasses (watery death in the Ganges) with some of Dolce's finest. The heat/humidity was too much to bear so jumped into an air conditioned taxi to Siam Square and ended up in the MBK centre, Jo's heaven! Managed all 5 shopping floors and lunch at the food court (that puts County Mall to serious shame). Bought quite abit but considering the scale of the place, I was very restrained ;o) An amazing place just to window shop though, the whole floor dedicated to electronics is awesome. Finally ventured back outside about 5, still seriously sweaty and got the Sky Train to Mo Chit in the North of Bangkok to check out bus tickets to Chiang Mai. No success. The few counters that did have english speaking attendents were completely sold out - apparently, thinking we could get tickets to Chiang Mai three days before hand when it is THE place to celebrate Songkran was a bit of an oversight on our behalf. Went back to the hostel to check out trains/planes but thankfully one of the receptionists had a contact she called and we managed to get the 2 last bus tickets out of Bangkok on Friday (10th). Tom and Beth arrived from Kathmandu so caught up with them and then went out for dinner around Khao San...managed to resist the whiskey coke buckets and tuk tuk/ping pong/tailor/gem store packages though settling instead for a trip to the 7/11, proper chocolate (M&Ms!) and American telly!

Wednesday (8th) turned out to be a bit of a wipeout.... we had grand plans to be cultural and spend the day sightseeing but instead overslept, missed breakfast, made it to Khao San to get a taxi to a temple, we got in and I decided to nearly pass out/just about restrain myself from vomming all over the place! Bim got the very confused thai taxi man to turn around after having got us 9/10ths of the way there and I spent the afternoon sound asleep, near the toilet! Poor Dan got a day of Solitaire on the ipod/reading the guide book cover to cover and lots of TV! Woke up about 6 feeling a bit better so to make it up to Dan we ended up in Burger King.... What a day.

Actually managed some sightseeing the following day, second time lucky ;o) Were at Wat Po for 9.30am and so checked out the massive reclining Buddha and the surrounding scenery (lots of bell shaped pretty statue things that I don't know the official word for!!) before heading to the Grand Palace. Nearly died by this point, despite drinking about a litre and a half of water in about an hour it was mega hot and humid. Just missing the English speaking tour turned out to be a good thing as the brochures were really informative anyway and we could just mooch round at our own speed, taking photos and stopping every 10 mins for a sit down! Spent to rest of the day out of the sun and later went back out to Sukhumvit, the main road in the city centre to meet Dan's friend Andy (Tapping) for drinks on Soi 11. We went to a very english pub and wandered around the markets before hitting Cabbages and Condoms (!) for dinner. I had been here before on a family holiday in Dec 2004 and thought it was fab so hoped the guys would agree :o) Really yummy, reasonably priced Thai food in a cool setting, lots of fairy lights...and condoms lol. The reason being that the profits from the restaurant go towards safe sex education and AIDS projects in Thailand, quite a novel approach! Took some silly pictures before heading back as had to be at the bus station fairly early in the morning for Chiang Mai road trip!

Check out the pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/daniel.bimson/Bangkok?authkey=Gv1sRgCNSu0qKKtZ2X9AE&feat=directlink