Bangkok & Koh Samui

Bangkok - We arrived in Bangkok on 07/12 and after a fab flight with Cathay Pacific(such a good airline) We got through immigration but with a delay they were up dating there systems, anyway got the bags and went to change some money. Al managed to change his no problem but me (of course) had abit of trouble. I made the mistake of standing beside Al at the counter and signing my Cheques like i always did while he was cashing his, so i handed mine over to be told that i couldn't cash them, i was like "WHY" apparently it was because i was standing not directly in front of the hole thingy, So i had a hissy fit those of you whom know me, know what that is like.... i ended up going to another place and begging the girl to change them which she did, thank god. So we got a taxi to our hotel "The Discovery Lodge" which was a palace compared to the dump in Hong Kong. So we kinda crashed out for awhile as we had been up since 5.00am that morning.

Next day we decided to go and investigate the place, I have been to Bangkok before so i was keen to see it all over again. We got the subway from where we were staying right out to the river and got a river taxi to "WAT ARUN" Temple of dawn, now the temples in Thailand are very different to those we saw in Japan, i think to the relief of Al.

We decided to get brunch in this litte food shack place across from Wat Arun, the food was excellent, although the mental owner took a real shine to Al and was somewhat overbearing to be honest, she was practical feeding Alan and then decided to smoke his fag then help herself to one, she also took his camera off the table and started taking pictures of us and of a little dog that was walking around (o yeah the amount of cats and dogs that roam around here is crazy, there are always animals in restaurants, gross, i try not to think about it too much)

Anyway then we went to "WAT PHO" this is the giant reclining buddha and there is also lots of jewel encrusted temples around the place. We then headed into the famous "Ko San Road", it's really not that cool but i thought Al should at least see it for himself, it's just full of backpackers and westes. So we had a look around the stalls and then had a few jugs of beer at a lovely place called the "Mango Lagoon", we tried to get a river taxi home but they were shut so then we had to barter for a taxi, we discovered that most of the taxi drivers can't read and we only had thai directions to our hotel, so finally we found a nice taxi driver who didn't rip us off, we sobered up pretty quickly do.

Al has also got ravaged by mozzies and his foot has swollen up to about 2 times it's size, it doesn't look good, he must be sweet cause they love him.

We took a recommendation from Al's friend Steve, who said we must go to this restaurant called "Cabbages and Condoms" it did take us awhile to get there and find it but it was worth it (CHEERS Steve) we had a fab meal in a fab surrounding. It is charity run and they promote safe sex and educate thai people about the spread of hiv and aids. It was a fantastic place.
Al also managed to get some dodgy DVD's aswell....

We decided it was time to leave Bangkok behind and head to the islands, so we headed to the train station to get a train to "Surat Thani" however we did not know that 10/12 was constitution day in Thailand and the trains were fully booked and then not running for about 3 days. So we ended up having to book a bus instead.

The bus took 11 hours to get to "Surat Thani" then we had to board a ferry to "Koh Samui" which took us 3 hours then we had to get a taxi from the ferry port to the hotel so from the time we left Bangkok to the time we got to Koh Samui it had taken us over 20 hours, so as expected when we arrived we slept, not a very pleasant journey but Al wanted to do it, i wanted to fly having done that trip on my first RTW trip :-{

So our second day in "Koh Samui" it rained and rained and rained for the whole day .. not a good start to our sunshine filled hols eh ? but today was great and we finally got to get some beach time, Al is a lovely shade of red and i am a little on the pink side but all is good. The food here is fab and the beer even better. The one thing that is annoying is the touts on the beach trying to sell you stuff and you have to say no every single time they pass, it's really frustrating.

The last time i was here was in 1999 and i have to say the place has changed alot there are so many westerners here, i think they just get direct flights and come here on holidays, so there is no kind of authentic feeling around the place, in the place we are staying which is "chewang" there is a "McDonald's" and a "burger king" I will be glad to leave here in the next few days. We might aswell be in main land spain or cyprus :{

O by the way, Al has his foot back now, the swelling has gone ! ! The fox generously pointed out that he should "Piss" on it to take the swelling down, Erm dunno if that works or not but thanks for the advice .....