Thailand – we arrived at Bangkok for our first stop, were we stayed at a place called the Vengtai hotel. First impressions of Bangkok was that the humidity was ridiculously high and the streets smelt like s***! However I grew to adapt to these cultural differences and the smell of the roadside stalls soon became as recognisable to me as that of a Happy Valley sausage supper. Another thing that hit us hard (especially Jeffery) were the number of guys trying to pull you off the streets and into their tailor shops. Mr McNairs little visit came as something of a shock to me not least of all because it interrupted me from a gripping chapter of my Marcus Trescothick autobiography. To be honest that was the closest I will ever come to being speechless, something of a shock indeed (my mate suprised me with a couple of days in Bangkok when i thought he was in Spain!) Overall though I would have no particular desire to stay their for more than a couple of days however I was quick to realise that everything was ridiculously cheap and that shopping was very easy and all without burning any hole of significance in your wallet.

Chiang Mai – after meeting up with our group (of which me and kirk were 2 of the only 3 guys ) we headed to chaing Mai on a sleeper train. Jeffery's preconceptions of the train was that it would be like something out of a harry potter movie, however I had to remind him that this was an economy ticket from Bangkok and not a magic train to Hogwarts. The trains did the job and time was spent playing the name game, Chinese whispers and of course sleeping. We had no right to complain anyway as 3rd class had no air conditioning and fourth class had to stand in a crowded carriage for 13 hours with no beds or air con! Things we did in Chiang Mai – im sure you have seen the pics of the tigers which were pretty cool, saw soo many temples that by the end I intend on never entering one again and then of course we did our hill tribe trek. The trek itself was pretty tough even for a guy like me with impeccable fitness standards (sniff), weather was great which obviously made it tougher and quite a lot of it was up hill, I don't think I have ever sweated more in my life. Our sleeping quarters differed every night but were similar in the fact that we slept on wooden floors in a cabin outside, meals were real good though – curry's, spring rolls, rice, all of which jeffery ate none as he was holding out for his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in that of his burger king. We did have 2 legends in our tour guides nong and tong! One night nong laughed for an hour straight when jeffery hit his head of a beam in a rush to grab his camera! Elephant riding was cool (scary at first as they are massive!) as was bamboo rafting. We ended our stay in Chiang Mai with a night out were we ended up going to an empty Chaing Mai hells angels type of bar. We were the only ones in it but soon were joined by about 10 bikes with these nerdy looking bikers with fake tattoos (lol) and immaculately dressed in double denim. It was a good night which resulted in a very drunk jeffery demanding cheesy music constantly, I remind you that this was in a biker bar! The sleeper train back to Bangkok ended part 1 of our Thai adventure.

We stayed in Bangkok for another night before heading off to Khao Sok, this so happened to be Halloween as well so we decided to head to the Khao San road for the night. As we arrived I swear I have never seen a street more busy lol excuse me for the interruption in this sentence but as I am writing this the girl next to me is talking in her sleep. Anyway as I was saying............ in my life! Another good nights craic and jeffery was introduced to buckets, basically buckets filled with b**** pops. So, khao Sok was our first stop on the southern tour, I cannot really look back on this part of the trip with too many fond memories, infact the highlight was probably playing Jenga and cards in the evenings as the daytime trips ultimately disappointed. The rooms were awful *refer back to facebook for picture of ants. At this point I would have payed to have been sleeping on the floors of the cabins in Chaing Mai! At the end of khao Sok we did have ko Samui to look forward to although it just so happened to rain on our first day of paradise and it rained hard! Our one night in kho Samui did however bring out the same Craig who believes that Jeffery's dad is very religious and the same Craig that thinks he is the master of the worm. Long story short I drank a lot fast and before I knew it I was trying to get a lady-boy in a headlock and nearly getting my s*** kicked in by 2 ozzys behind us, lucky I was with a group or I may have been tying this with a stick in my mouth. Our trip to Ko Thao was just s*** on a stick, not only was I hungover but we were being thrown about in the sea on the dodgiest ferry I think I will ever ride, proof of this was the lady next to us having a panic attack and sounding as if she was giving birth and the multiple puke bags being filled on board, you knew it was bad whenever crew members were heading to the toilets! In the end it was all worth it though as Ko Thao failed to dissapoint, with its sandy beaches awsome hotel and swimming pool which I was so grateful for after countless days sweating my balls of with nothing more than a bottle of water to cool me down. The pool did prove to be the contributing factor to me and jeffery getting the worst sunburn of our lives though. 3 to 4 nights of painful sleep were to follow before the peeling process would kick in. We did also get our first experience of Thai Boxing, with the warm up fights consisting of kids as young as 8 or 9 kicking the s*** out of each other with no protective helmets either all while a chubby cockney commentated his way through the night which of course added to the Thai experience! This would be the end of our trip with most of the group and it was sad to leave them as it had been such an awesome 2 weeks. So we finished were we started in the great city of Bangkok all set to continue our travels In the land of Oz after a class 2 weeks were we saw some great sights had some great nights and met some cool people.

Some of the things I learnt in Thailand -

Do not get pissed off your t*** at a ladyboy show!
Jeffrey is an absolute wizzard on the keyboard
4 people in a tuk tuk in heavy rain may be pushing it!