Journey & Accommodation

Our longest flight ever, 11hours and 30mins, and sods law I was sat next door to a sweaty man on his way out to the far east for a little "8$ me love you long time" Getting off the plane we were hit by heat, amazing warmth that wrapped around us, our Hotel the "Bangkok Central" was nice, almost like a classier version of a premier inn back home in the UK.

What we did

After meeting our group at 6pm we chilled out with a glass, doing the meet and greet while filling in the usual documents, insurance, who to ring if we ended up in a Bangkok jail, and who was going where. There were 6 of us on the first leg of the tour, Bangkok to Hanoi, Lou and myself, Andrew, Johnnie, Isabeland Celine. And not forgetting our guide for the month Mr Pongsiri Kilnbua, known to all as the legend that is Pong!!

We spent our first evening, at a Thai restaurant before heading off to Khaosan Road, the party area where we experienced rats the size of cats, people pushing around trolleys laden with grilled locust, the offer of `Bangkok Ping-Pong girls` at every doorway "hey mister, come see ping pong, bring wife, she learn new tricks... " and a blind man busking, nothing unusual about that other than this one was mobile, cane in one hand, microphone in the other, and amplifier on his back, walking down a street as populated as Oxford Street on Xmas Eve. Mayhem!!

We then headed back to the hotel for an early night, for the Journey had started

Food

We went off to a local Thai restaurant just 10mins walk from the hotel, we were sat outside, undercover of some crazy rain, but it was hot so we didn't care (we were in Bangkok, the world could have stopped for all I cared). I had my first taste of authentic Thai Green Curry, not in the sauce; the rice was seasoned with it. To accompany that I had salted quails egg, (dark orange with a green yolk, very bloody salty, to finish we had pancake with egg and melted banana, made in front of us by a street vendor. Lovely....