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Managed to get bus into town from airport which proved fun quite late at night and still had to get taxi to hotel but very cheap as the whole place turned out to be. Hotel is nice but right in Chinatown - bloody typical. Weather is absolutely roasting and very humid so making things difficult for us as we like to walk everywhere. Place is as busy as we had been told even worse than China which is saying something. We bumped into a so called information guide who just took us to a tour operator and offered us a price for everything we wanted to do but didn't feel too comfortable with this and seemed expensive. Kept meeting people offering this kind of service and just generally being pestered which took us a long time to get used to. Did too much shopping as everything is dirt cheap including an extra suitcase to put it all in. Got to meet Andy Birch for the day although not his other half, which was great to see somebody from back home and be able to learn about the country with his experience of the place.
Looked into going up to Chang Mai but turned out the trip would cost a lot more than stated even without flights because there was a festival on at the time and we had very limited options on where we could stay. So decided this was not worth it unfortunately as we had heard some good things about the place. Managed to sort something out for going down to Phuket though and even stayed longer than originally planned due to not being able to go North. This turned out to be a great decision. Stayed in a quiet part of Phuket although they even had an Elvis impersonator on the night we arrived. Place was nice and small and quiet and we were able to book some time on Phi Phi Island as recommended by Andy Birch amongst others. Boy were we glad we did that. We stayed in a really nice hut (if you could call it that it was so nice) right on the beach front and again away from the main bay where most people stayed. This was definately a brilliant choice and had a really relaxing couple of days where I even managed to get Susan swimming in the sea the water was that clear.
Returned to Bangkok to stay in an even better hotel and pick up our gear before we left Thailand. Thoroughly enjoyed our time here especially the islands but don't think could stay here for too much longer in Bangkok as we both found it difficult to deal with people trying to constantly get us to buy things or go in their shop etc. Didn't help when you didn't trust some of them as they appeared prepared to say anything. Heat was as difficult as expected with the humidity. Hate to say this and I'm sure Lorraine and a few others will disagree but although the Buddha's and the temples we saw were out of this world we did get a bit fed up after seeing a lot of similar stuff in China. Must admit for all the moaning it was an amazing experience which we won't forget and am not surprised this place is getting more popular. After my bad memories of Singapore, Thailand has helped make my views on Asia a lot better.
Unfortunately as people will realise we don't have any photos here for Thailand and that will stay that way as we had our camera stolen in Australia not long after leaving Sydney.
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