Andy, Charl and I arrived in Bangkok about 7 hours later than expected in the early hours of the morning. We had a stopover in Muscat where our second flight was delayed. Luckily Oman Air put us up in a hotel for the day so we could catch up on some sleep and freshen up.

We arrived on the Khoa San Road at about 4am. The Khoa San Road is the main hub of backpacker's Bangkok and the majority of tourists visiting south east asia have to go through here at some point. There were lots of people still out and as we walked through the streets a girl, clearly highly intoxicated, grabbed my shoulders and shook me shouting 'it's only just begun'. How right could she be, as I write this first entry retrospectively I can assure you the best is yet to come.

We were completely confused as to where our hostel was. We had a road name but even that wasn't much use so Andy decided to face the hideous charges of calling abroad and asked Bryony to come and meet us, who had checked in the day before.

We got into our hostel, it was called rainbow hostel but there were no multicoloured walls. We were absolutely exhausted and bryony showed us to our rooms and how to put the aircon on. As I was getting ready for bed I saw my first tropical creature, a gecko. Me and Charl were sharing our room and as I reminded her of the lizard incident in parent trap, where it ended up in the gold digging step mums mouth, we decided our only option was to sleep with our sleeping bag liners over our faces.

An early morning wake up was painful but we had to check out at 10am. We then went and sampled breakfast Thai style. I decided to play it safe and order some toast, it definitely turned up as bread after waiting about 40 minutes. What is also hilarious about eating out in Thailand is that you all order at the same time yet your food always arrives at completely different times. After a bit of breakfast we ended up sampling Thailand's finest beer, Chang! Much nicer than English beers! After 2 beers and a game of uno we booked our transport to koh phangan. We were a little drunk and worried about whether to book for Kel and Sean who were arriving in Bangkok that evening. In the end we had to book without them. A bit of pitta and hoummus later we were collecting our rucksacks, Charl had become hungover off the 2 changs and 7 11 (Thai supermarket chain) had been rinsed of its water supplies ready for our journey to koh phangan.

All in all, Bangkok was an ok place with good shopping, if you're after cheap vests and fake raybans but the humidity was pretty bad and I couldn't wait to move to the islands where it would be less clammy.