Am currently in Bnagkok, Thailand. We flew in yesterday evening and are staying in a very lucious hostel in the centre of old Bangkok. The dorm is a 6 bed dormw with bunks, fairly standard for a hostel, apart from the fact that everything is brand new, amazing air con and bathrooms, and individual 7 inch tvs with each bed!!! so cool!

Bangkok so far has made good impression on all of us. When we arrived the airport was so clean and massive and well designed (in my opinion!). Its much more developed here than in India or Nepal, which feels all a bit strange. Am going to miss being in Nepal as we spent almost a month there and had a great time. The people were friendly and very laid back. Everything was easy going. I plan on going back to Nepal at some point in my life and do another trek. The rest of the time we spent in Nepal from my last entry we spent generally just chilling out in Pokhara. Charlotte and I spent about 2 days recovering from the massage. I have got finger bruises from the masseuses where she was massging me so hard. Also loss of brain cells from being hit around the head means I am generally bit slower than before. Therefore, I can now blame any poor english/grammer and spelling errors on the masseuse! A couple of days after this we went on a pony trek for the morning. Orginally the tourist guide who we booked the pony trek through had said it was horse riding, but the day before we found out it was ponies! They day came and there were two ponies waiting in the street, one little and one big. Charlotte and I were debating which one we were going to get and came to the conclusion that me being the tallest would be getting the bigger pony...hoe wrong we were!! I got little pony! Not sure the pony was actually big enough for me, but trying to explain this to the rather enthusiatic nepalise guy who was going with us was no go. If you have a look when the photos go up, you will see that I am the same size as the pony and look rediculous sitting on it!We trekked on the ponies up one of the hills outside of pokhara. At the top of the hill was small Gurung (village) where some little girls who lived there took us up to the highest point so we could see the views over Pokhara and the lake. It was a clear day so we could see for miles, and even some of the mountains.

The little girls lived in the gurung at the top of the hill all their lives. Everyday (apart from saturday) they walk for an hour to school in Pokhara. Their English was brilliant given their ages (9,,11 and 12). They explained that their mother and father had lived in the gurung all their lives, but that their father had to move out of Nepal to Dubai to earn money as they would not earn enough in Nepal to support their family. They hadnt seen their father for about a year. The money that he made was sent to Nepal to send the girls to school. Their mother stayed in the Gurung and farmed the land they owned and milked the buffalos and sold it in Pokhara. The girls were well trained at asking for money from travellers though, telling their story and how little they have to live on. You could tell that most of what they were saying was true and common to the way many of the people in Nepal live. Most gurung families live on Daal Bhat, the national dish, eating just biscuits and milk in the morning then Daal Bhat for lunch and dinner. Charlotte and I gave the girls a little bit of money for their schooling and then carried on back down the hill.

Had a few hair raising moments whilst pony trekking. There are buffalos everywhere in Nepal. They just wonder around the countryside and the streets of the towns/cities as they please. Quite often they wondered down to the lake side had a great big poo (right where the children play) before getting in the water and having mud bath. The ponies and buffalos however, do not get on to the point that they charge with their horns at the ponies! Was so scary as we passed a group of them and they starting getting their backs up at the ponies with us on, until our trek giude starte throwing rocks at the buffalos!I dont mean little stones, but big rocks! The buffalos are tough though, esp their horns. One of the rocks split in half as it struck the buffalos horns, but the buffalo didnt bat an eyelid. We made a quick move on. Even the locals come and throw rocks at them too if they dont shift!very saddle sore after.

The following day to add to the sadlle soreness we went and hired bike (30p/hour) to cycle out of Pokhara and up to the top of the lake. Was a nice cycle, however, as Charlotte believes there is a vengance against her doing any exercise, she of course had an incident. We were comming around a hill corner when one of the overloaded buses honking its horn like crazy came haring around the corner,s o to avoid it we pulled into the side, but as Charlotte did so she cycled stright through fresh buffalo poo. It went all up her legs and over the sandles everywhere!!!

The rest of the time we chilled out, reading like little library geeks, swapping and battering for goods in the local stores! My bartering skillls have come on a long way and am going to strugle to restrain them in some countries where the price is fixed. Will try bartering anyway!Ed returned on day 9 in Pokhara, having been up to Annapurna base camp. He mearly glimpsed at it as due to altitude sickness, but all the same he got up there and back down again! He seemed to enjoy it. We spent the last evening in Pokhara havingn a meal with a culture show of local dance and music, then met up with the trekking guides and had drinks and many rounds of pool!

We had quite a bit of rain, mostly in the afternoon or evening, as they were expecting the start of the monsoon in the first week of June.One of the nights we had a massive thunder storm. It lasted about 3 hours. The lightening was going every 2 seconds from all directions, the whole sky just looked electric blue. There was so much rain that within 5 mins the garden part of the hotel we stayed in looked like a pond of water. The thunder was constant rumbling with occasional massic claps! Not my idea of fun or a good nights sleep. Was not impressed by that, no was I with charlotte who slept talked her way through the storm!

We then had a long 7 hour coah trip back to Kathmandu. charlotte and I were prepared this time, we had our sports bras on! Fortunately though it was actually a mini bus that took us to Kathmand. Slightly better tyre pressure, but still the roads being as bad as they are in some parts of the trip, its impossible to avoid some bumby parts. We arrived back in the crazy Kathmandu. Didnt do all that much in Kathmandu as we had to pack etc. We had dinner in a great Tibetan place that we discovered when we were in Kathmandu before, which serves momos and is super cheap! The dinner left us in histerics though. A couple of tables behind us was a Nepalise guy who was on the phone to someone. However, his voice was really strange and we couldt understand anything he was saying, I mean sound wise (we dont understand Nepalise!). It didnt sound like he was making words, just noises. He sounded like the eggs Weeble and bob online, exactly the same tone of voice. We couldn manage our dinner and were getting strange looks from the cafe workers, so we had to leave after a while as there was no letting up in the mans phone convo!

The next day (yesterday) we flew into Bangkok from Kathmandu. We are staying in a hostel just by Khao San road, in the Banglampoo area of Bangkok. The hostel is very nice. There were no problems getting from the airport into town and everything is very calm around this area, no evidence of riots etc! There are no reports of having to avoid any parts of Bangkok which is good. Bangkok is nice. Busy, but not as many people as Kathmandu or Delhi. It was weird landing in Bangkok as everything here is much more buillt up/developed than India or Nepal. The airport in Bangkok is amazing. So clean and bright and massive. We took an airport express bus into the town centre, and the driving here is totally different. They all drive in lanes, follow the traffic lights and dont honk their horns all the time. There are also no power cuts, which happen daily for hours in Nepal!Charlotte is trying to get us into doing a Thai boxing class..not going to happen! We are looking at going to watch a Thai boxing match though.

From bangkok we will be joining a tour group. This is instead of the tour we were supposed to be doing much earlier in May in northern Thailand. The tour is called Roam Cambodia, starting on the 6th June from Bangkok and finishes on the 15th June in Ho Chi Ming City, Vietnam, which ties in nicely with our visas for Vietnam. From there we will make our way up Vietnam and into Hong Kong independently where we join the China tour. We are spending 5 nights in the hostel here and meandering around Bangkok until the tour starts.

thats all from me for now!