Moved to a new guesthouse closer to where our trek would leave from and waited an hour for breakfast...ah Thai time. Spent the day wondering around the Old Town and took in a few more temples. Also spent a good 15 minutes marvelling at the considerable concentration of an old Monk meditating in one of the temples...then read the sign in front of him explaining that this was a fibre glass replica of the longest serving monk who had recently passed away. Could have...

Okay woke up far too late to change guesthouses and instead went with plan b...beer in the old town whilst negotiating the price of a jungle trek. Both were achieved so we celebrated with more Chang in a local bar with a pool table...I can hear alarm bells ringing with all the lads at home. No Bill didn't kick ass and make back any beer money from his considerable skill with the stick. Quite the contrary the resident lady boy wiped the floor with him followed by...

12 hours 15 hours, what's the difference? Anyway the romance lies in having a whole day of a/c and smoking death defying cigarettes between one carriage and the next with nothing to keep you onboard apart from a chain. Now that's living! Well? assuming you don't fall off. Pretty interesting sights on the way out of Bangkok. It seems all the country's hard up people congregate on the tracks to dry washing and take shelter from the sun. For some reason there were ...