Welcome.

So I'm sitting in Bangkok, in a little Airconditioned Thai Internet cafe. Before you ask, the flight was average, I was stuck next to a nice German family with a teen who couldn't seem to understand the concept of sharing an arm rest, or foot space - he seemed to absorb the space he was in. Sleep was average, and woke a couple times rather disorientated.Emirates food was great though, so it kinda balanced out.

Finally arrived at my hotel at around 2.30-2.45, after an hour shuttle from the massive Airport to the city with a very informative driver. In the hotel I was 'looked after' by a bellhop who did the smallest amount of work possible and demanded a tip. I was too tired to disagree, and gave him about $3.00 USD or about 90 Baht.

Today we had a very interesting day so far - I've already met a guy (at breakfast) who is rockin' it out on the same tour, Dave from Canada. He's pretty cool, which is good since we found out we're bunking together for a while too!

We were assaulted by people wanting to take us in their tuk tuks. They offered about $60-80 Baht for a tour around the city. We soon found out why when, about 15 mins down the road, another guy offered us a ride for 20 Baht, and he'd wait for us. That was 20 together! (about $0.80c USD or $1.00 NZD). Turns out today is the last of a week of Buddha days, in which the King / Government offers free petrol.

So every Tuk Tuk driver gets paid in petrol, which means that the money they get paid by us willing tourists, goes straight to them for food etc. Awesome for us! I'll be asking our tour guide how much it ACTUALLY costs for a Tuk Tuk on a normal day sometime.

Anyway we managed to see a few sights and ended up having a driver via Tuk Tuk for about 3 hours or so. Traffic was some semblance of organised chaos, which made no sense to me but the horn seemed to be the universal language all drivers spoke. People were weaving in and out, and narrow misses everywhere. Still, noone seemed angry.

We discovered after a while that something funny was happening... the second buddhist temple we saw, the security guard mentioned to us a Suit store which was offering discounted tailor-made suits/shirts, the whole package. We went there, and for $380 USD I purchased a tailor-made Suit with vest, cashmere/cotton blend shirt and a tie. Awesome. The driver patiently waited outside. The next temple, a guy outside made us wait for 5 mins for it to re-open and proceeded to tell us about purchasing jewelry here (Tax Free, due to the same week discounts), and to sell it for twice or even thrice the cost price. Then we were told the temple was ACTUALLY closed for an hour. And this guy trying to sell us the Jewellry, also asked us HOW MANY suits did we buy? Not IF we bought any... this was getting curiouser and curiouser...

We then were asked by the Tuk Tuk driver if we wanted to go to the Jewellery shop. We obliged, and but I didn't want to go in. We walked around the shop once, then popped back on to head to China Town. Just before China Town he stopped the Tuk Tuk and said he'd make "just one more stop" - another Jewellery store. We vervently protested, and in the end he dropped us on the street at the start of Chinatown. Some sort of collaboration going on, for sure!

We've been lost in Chinatown for the last 1 1/2 hours or so, and now we're slowly making our way back to the Hotel. I'll keep you all updated. I'm joining the tour tonight so the real adventure begins then!

Peace