Dec 2007

Saigon is a bit mental. Really bustling big city. There are so many motorbikes here. Crossing the road is an absolute joke. There are few traffic lights, and even where there are ones, none of the bikes take any notice.

They clearly are taking notice of what's going on around though, and so it is possible to cross with caution going very slowly and letting them weave behind and in front of you. Very dangerous though. There are apparently 8 million people and 3 million motorbikes in the city. They're just everywhere, and the rules of the
road don't seem to apply. They drive the wrong way down main streets and even drive about the pavements which means really there is no escape. They passed a law, only 5 days ago, meaning that they all must wear helmets. So they're all wearing really new shiny colourful helmets which is quite funny.

We've done quite a bit of wandering round the city. It's a really busy place, and tere are lots of tourists. There seem to be predominantly US tourists which I suppose makes sense. The area of the city that we're staying in is a bit of a mecca for tourists, and consequently it's a bit crap, but the centre is quite nice, and the shopping is pretty good. Not that I'm particularly interested in that. We spent most of our first few days just trying to get across the roads. The food here has been really good.

They do a soup called Pho Bo, that is a clear broth with noodles, beef, beansprouts, chili, aniseedy leaves which seems to be the staple for the locals. It's magic. Been getting a bit sick of it recently though because we've eaten so much of it.

They also have the cheapest draft beer in the world here. We sat at a little street bar that was full of both tourists and locals all tucking into the stuf. IT came in a plastic jug, about a litre big, and cost 20p, which is pretty good. Supposedly it gets cheaper further north, so very much looking forward to that.

We went on a tour of the famous Viet Cong tunnels at CuChi the other day. The site is about 1 hour drive out of the city, to the North West. We booked up with one of the many tour agencies, and went on one of the 30 or so bus loads of people that go there every day. Apparently they get 1000 visitors a day, which is pretty crazy. Our tour guide was pretty crazy as well. He (allegedly) was part of the US lead South Vietnamese army that fought the Viet Cong around Cu Chi. He gave an amazingly detailed account of the history of the war, and indeed the preceeding wars that Vietnam have been involved in. He was a fountain of knowledge. Not only that he was a veteran of the American War who had fought for the US collecting injured soldiers and returning them to the base. At the end of the war, even though he had lived in New York for a time prior to the war, and was invited by his comrades to return, decided to stay in his homeland. He was captured by the Northern Communist forces and spent 4 years after the war in a reeducation camp. So he said anyway. Even if it wasn't true it was a really good story. He certainly knew his stuff.

I was a bit sceptical about the tour, but the fact that the tour guide was so good made it so much more interesting. The Viet Cong were clearly extremely ingenious and skilled in the art of war, which makes sense as they had spent the 20 years prior to the American invasion fighting off the French on their own soil. They accepted that they didn't have the immense fire power of either the French or the US, but used their knowledge of the countryside to defeat both. The Cu Chi tunnels are an intricate system of tiny tunnels - 1.3m high and 60cm wide - built on three levels, 3m, 6m and 8-10m, running for over 250km along the cu chi river and into the jungle. They had been building them for the 20 years preceeding the US occupation. In fact the US built a base right on top of the network. So at night the Viet cong would emerge and steal weapons, etc anything they could get their hands on. Even when the US eventually discovered the tunnels, they tried everything from Napalm, Tear gas, Grenades, Smoke Bombs, even sending men called 'tunnel rats' or sniffer dogs down into the tunnels. Despite the masive casualties they remained in the tunnels until the US withdrawal.

They had boobytraps all over the shop, and were clever enough to smoke american brand cigarettes and use US soap to confuse the dogs that were used to try and trace them. All amazing stuff. I was hanging on every word the guy was telling us. It was great. Even Jenny was pretty interested in the stuff we were shown. Not so much the hour lecture on the bus. She slept and listened to her ipod instead.

We were taken round various bunkers, and shown an abandonned m41 tank. The highlight of the tour was the tunnels themselves. We were able to crawl through 100m of the tunnels. There were escape routes every 30m which you could get out of if you were so inclined. Many were. It was absolutley stifling, and really really cramped. Quite difficult to move.

It was also pitch black at some points and we decended twice, to 8 or so metres. Was very claustrophobic. We both made it to the end with another few, dripping with sweat. Quite a lot of people bailed out early. It just reaffirmed how incredible the Viet Cong were, as I think the tunnel we crawled along had been heightened to allow us to get through, and it was absolutley tiny, even for Jenny who's a midget. Was a really great experience.

The next place of interest that we went to was the War remnants Museum. This is dedicated to the American war. I thought it was really interesting. Jenny didn't.

They had various tanks, and other equipment that the US abandonned when they withdrew from Vietnam. One of the bombs was ridiculously big, about 3 times the size of me. It was used to wipe out areas 100m in diametre. Absoultely ridiculous. The main body of the musem is a gallery of photography of various aspects of the war. Some really amazing pictures. There was a lot of emphasis on the terrible after effects of the chemical weapons used by the US - agent orange and napalm. There were a lot of gory pictures of children born with deformities as a result of the effects of these, and terrible skin burns suffered by those who were subjected to napalm. There were a few really horrendous shots of American GI's involved in the Mai Lai massacre, where the US 'search and destroyed' a village, executing 504 civilians in the process, many of them women, children and elderly. The place is a really good exhibition of all that was wrong with the Vietnam/American war, and war in general.

After exhausting all of Jenny's patience with musems and war, we booked ourselves onto a 2 day tour of the Mekong Delta. Probably the less said about this the better. It was absolutely crap. Both Jenny and I were as bored as each other with this. The Mekong River and the floating market thereon were quite interesting. Unfortunately we only spent about 2 hours doing this. The rest of the time was spent on the boiling hot bus, or on boats. Not boats on the Mekong, but ones ferrying us to crappy factories making crap - coconut candy factory, rice factory, fruit orchard, rice krispie factory!?! It wasn't their fault obviously, but it wan't really what we'd gone to see.

We spent ages at each of these extremely uninteresting places where they tried to sell us the stuff they were making before getting back on the bus/boat for another 2/3 hours. Complete waste of time and money. What made matters worse was that we had to get up at 6.30am both mornings to go see these places. So we were both really tired and crabbit. The Mekong itself was pretty cool though, having slagged off the rest of it. We took a boat that weaved in and out of the women all selling their goods to other passing vessels.

It was massive. We also went to see another market where they were selling snakes and other interesting animals.

The Vietnamese seem to eat anything. We've seen snake on the menu already, and snake wine so hopefully will get to try that at some point. Then as we get further North supposedly dog may start appearing on the menu. Think Jenny may draw the line with that, I'm not decided yet........

Sihanoukville is a town down in the South of Cambodia, about 4 hours by bus.

The buses deserve a quick mention. The drivers are literally constantly on the horn. Every person they pass is given several loud blasts of the horn. In between the horn you have to suffer the blaring Khmer Karaoke that emits from the TVs, that most of the tone deaf locals enjoy droning along to. If it's not the music then they have weird pantomimes playing on the TV where they all the characters have Hitler moustaches. All very bizarre, but seem to be hilarious to the locals who piss themselves laughing every couple of minutes.

Sihanoukville itself is a bit of a dump, however a short moto ride away is Serendipity beach which was where we were headed. We hadn't used any motos up til this point, but we couldn't see any tuk tuks so just had to go for it. Motos are just guys on motorbikes whose bikes you jump on the back of to get lifted around he place. Not particularly exciting, although pretty dangerous considering we had our massive rucksacks with us. We took one each and they balanced the bags on their fronts and we hopped on the back with our daysacks. Was a bit concerned that we weren't offered helmets, but they were wearing them. Especially as hardly any of the moto drivers wear helmets. We made it to our destination unscathed though, so it was all good.

Serendipity beach wasn't much to look at as beaches go. Very dirty both on the beach and in the water. Was pretty cool at night though, as all the restaurants that the beach backs onto put big comfy wicker seats an low tables on the sand right in front of the sea, and at night you couldn't really make out the plastic bags and chip boxes floating on the surface of the sea.

It was a pretty lively place, which might have had something to do with the fact that the cheapest beer in Cambodia can be found here, as it is brewed in Sihanoukville. 50 cents a glass of draught, which was well received.

There were quite a number of children patroling the beach at night selling various things, and lots of people missing arms and legs crawling along the sand begging for money. There was more begging here than we've experienced anywhere we've been in South East Asia. Literally every couple of minutes from the moment you sit down. Quite difficult to deal with. Lots of the children had sticks that were filled with fireworks that they set off every night on the beach. This was a bit disconcerting given children that could barely walk semed to be allowed to have them. There were also a few twats firing them at each other and waving them about right next to where we were eating that wasn't funny.

We managed to find a better beach without as much litter and free from rivers of vile smelling rivers connecting the restaurants to the sea. It was much quieter. We spent a few days chilling there, before taking a boat to Bamboo Island an hour off the coast.

This was much more secluded, and we stayed the night in a very basic A-frame bungalow right on the beach. Was really tranquil, and there were cows and chickens roaming about the place and on the beach. There was one big bull that clearly wasn't to be messed with. We watched as a little 5 year old local got a bit too close and was met with a full butt to the face. Apparently it had split his nose open, and there was a bit of comotion as the locals all gathered round to see if he was ok. We were a bit further away, and it was quite funny from our vantage point, because the bull just stood staring at them as if asking 'does anyone else want a go?' It was punished by having a rock thrown at it. Think the boy was ok. Didn't get much sleep on the island as there was no fan in our room. Aboslutely baking hot. I got up in the middle of the night for a pee in the sea, and was greeted by loads of tiny twinkling white lights flashing in the water. They were amazing. Like little underwater fireflies. Thought I'd maybe overdosed a little too much on the cheap beer and was seeing things but Jenny said they were some kind of shrimp. They were pretty cool though.

We returned to the mainland and spent another couple of days dossing about before returning to Phnom Penh for a night, rising the next day to catch a bus to Saigon. We took a trip to the central market on our free afternoon in the Cambodian capital. It had all the usual stuff, and some very unusual stuff. There were women sitting selling all sorts of insects to eat. Big insects.....and spiders.

Tarantulas are a delicacy in Cambodia. I took a few pictures of them, and was asked for a dollar, so I told her just to give me one. She gave us one and a big cricket for good measure. We took them back to the hotel to try. We each ate a leg of the tarantula.

It was pretty manky. It had quite a lot of hair on it. Having been the big man and bought the thing at the market, I wasn't quite so brave about it when it was out of the bag. It was a bit big for my liking even dead. We both ate quite a bit of the cricket, but it wasn't great either. Thy both just tasty really salty, crunchy and a bit like they'd been kicked about the floor a bit. Try everything once though.

The next day we got up and headed for the bus station an travelled the 6 hours over the border to Saigon - officially called Ho Chi Minh although nobody here actually calls it that. The border crossing between Cambodia was remarkably smoothe as it was all taken out of our hands by the posh bus company that we went with. It was also quicker as we had already purchased our Visa in Cambodia which is a requirement of entry to Vietnam.

From Siem Reap we took a bus South 4 hours to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We stopped off for a bite to eat in a tiny little place where Jenny had her best opportunity yet to prove that her pre-trip boasts of wanting to eat crickets and insects, weren't just hot air.

But once again she bottled out by developing a mystery stomach ache at the crucial moment. When we arrived in Phnom Penh there were about a million tuk tuk drivers ready to pounce as soon as we got off the bus, in fact one drove along side the bus before it had even stopped and Jenny agreed through sign language to go with him. We ended up with him as our tour guide for the various sights of interest around the city the next day. We met up with him the next morning and were taken about half an hour out of town to the shooting range. This was an extremely bizarre experience. We drove down a little track off the main road and turned into a completely unmarked drive where a gate was opened and shut very quickly behind us. We were ushered to a table in what was a bit like a little cafe. We were gawking at all the various guns adorning the far wall when the guy who seemed to run the place brought us over a menu each with lists of various prices for various different weapons that we could have a go at. He recommended the AK-47 Kalashnikov for me with 25 bullet magazine, and for Jenny an M16 semi automatic with 15 bullet magazine. There were various other weapons from handguns to tommy guns you could choose from. You could also shoot a bazuka at the mountain, or throw a hand grenade into a duck pond. These were all a bit out of our price range however. So we went with our hosts recommendations and donned camouflage jackets then were taken into a long darkened room with a seat at one end and a target about 50 yards away at the other end. Jenny was sat in the seat first, the guy loaded it up, then the gun was put in front of her, and off she went.

Same drill for both of us. He let us have a few goes on semi-automatic, then flicked a switch to automatic for the second half. Was pretty exhilerating, especially as mine jammed twice, which was a bit disconcerting. When he flicked it to automatic it was really kicking back into the shoulder. It was also mental how many bullets came out and how fast they did with one squeeze of the trigger.

All good fun. Expensive fun though, $30 each for the 5 minutes that we spent there.

After the shooting range we went to see the killing fields at Choeung Ek, on the outskirts of the city.

This place was really depressing. The area was used to execute and dispose of Cambodians in mass graves during the Khmer Rouge's regime from 1975-79. Very very sobering. Felt very guilty about firing the weapon just before going there. There's not a lot to see, however the history of the place and the huge gaping holes in the ground where mass graves have been disinterred, make it a pretty thought provoking site. At the peak of the Khmer Rouge's ethnic cleansing process, they were executing 100 people a day at the site. One of the graves had 450 bodies found in it.

There is a stupa - memorial - to those who died which is a tower that contains some of their clothes and several hundred skulls. I think all in all 14,000 bodies were discovered at the site, many of them women and children. All very chilling.

It only got more horrifying when we went to visit the prison at Tuol Seng in the centre of the city. This place is probably the creepyiest place I've ever been.

It's an old school that was transformed into a prison where thousands of Cambodians were brought to be interrogated and tortured by the Khmer Rouge, before eventually being driven to the killing fields to be executed.

The classrooms had all been transformed into various types of prison cell and they have room after room of black and white photos of those who ended up in the prison.

The sheer number is astonishing. There were also many women with very young children in some of the photos. They have also preserved some of the torture devices including amongst other things a box that housed various scorpions, venemous spiders and centipedes that was put on the victims'heads. There are also various extremely disturbing photos of people who have been tortured to death thrown in for good measure. Whilst the list of Pol Pot's security regulations are a window into how paranoid and ridiculous the Khmer Rouge was.

The place is just sickening. But it is a testament to one of the most barbarous genocides in recent history, so I don't suppose that's very surprising. We both left feeling pretty shellshocked by what we'd seen.

We spent a couple of days recovering and dossing about Phnom Penh. It's not a very nice city so far as places to see, however there is so much going on, that it was great to just sit and watch locals going through their everyday lives, markets etc.

The number of children begging and selling books is a bit depressing, and you can't go 5 minutes sitting in a restaurant without being mobbed by them. We got chatting to one of the booksellers who had amazingly good English. He looked about 12 but said he was 16. He told us that he sold the books to pay for school, and that he got to keep any money that he made from it. He said that it cost $7 a month to go to school. So we bought a couple of books off him. Unfortunately he borrowed a book off one of his less friendly colleagues who found this out and came and pestered us to buy his books, which ended in him threatening to kill me......which was nice. Turns out the books are pretty crap. I've got half way through my one only to find that there are about 25 pages missing. Bit annoying.

The food in Cambodia has been pretty good. Quite like Thai, but the curries are thicker. All good. We went to a weird little restaurant where their speciality is a soup that you make yourself called chnnang dei. They're supposed to bring the raw ingredients over and a big clay pot is put on a stove and you just mix it all in however you like. We obviously looked like a couple of clowns that that was going to be beyond, so all the staff came and watched as one of the girls made it for us while we sat and watched. They were all pissing themselves. Was quite funny.

From Phnom Penh we travelled to the south coast of Cambodia and Sihanoukville, where we've been relaxing by the sea on the beach for the past week. Don't have time to update about that but will in due course. We are heading back to Phnom Penh tomorrow for a night before venturing over the border to Vietnam.....

From Bangkok we started off our mission to get to Cambodia. According to all the literature this is one of the most complicated border crossings that you can encounter anywhere in the world, mainly because everyone and anyone is trying to scam you along the way. We were warned off taking tourist buses which can take 20 hours, deliberately so, in order that you arrive at Siem Reap at 5 am and go for whatever overpriced accommodation they drop you at. So in order to avoid this we did it all oursleves. We had a few adventures on the way as expected. We took a local bus to the border town of Aranyaprathet on the Thai side.

From there we took a tuk tuk to the border, and had to stop the driver taking us to a travel agent instead of the border. In fact he didn't take us right to the border. He dropped us short of it at a group of touts who offered to do our Visa's for us, and told us that we wouldn't be able to get a Cambodian Visa at the border. Bollocks. We managed to avoid them and headed to the border control. Departing Thailand was all very straightforward. We then walked across nomans land - which is a case of dodging all of the begging children before going to the Cambodian Visa office. I lost the rag a bit here.

We filled out our applications and took them to the counter - above which there is a large sign requesting $20 for a tourist visa. We were served by a very officious looking character in a military uniform. I had calculated $20 as being about 800 baht each so passed this over to him with the applications. He flatly refused the 1600 baht, saying that it would be 2000 baht. I in turn refused and told him that it was 1600 baht. He sat down and read his paper and ignored me, which got me a bit angry. He kept saying it was 1000 baht. I kept telling him he was a liar and that I knew it was only 800. After a bit of more of that, I then went into my rucksack and produced $20 each for the visa. His response to this was that it was $25 each, despite the clear sign above his head stating $20. I did a bit of pointing at the sign and shouting at him, but he wouldn't budge. Then he shouted at me that it was only $20 if you prearranged the Visa in Bangkok, and if I wanted to do that then it would take 24hours! I was apoplectic by this stage and pulled out my mobile and shouted at him that I was going to phone my embassy, the British embassy, to find out what they had to say about that.......and he accepted the 800 baht each and gave us the Visas. Absolute joker. But I won. Just before I get criticised for being tight (as the difference between 1600 and 2000 baht is about 6 quid) it's the principal that really annoys me, that some fat twat who sits drinking coffee, reading the paper and smoking fags in his uniform can demand extra money (and get it most of the time), just because he's wearing a uniform, is just wrong. Especially when there are children begging in the streets outside his office. So corrupt it made me want to strangle the guy. Anyway, we then went to the next office to get a stamp and we were in Cambodia. No sooner had we stepped into the country than we were escorted to a free bus to the "bus station''. Turned out the ''bus station'' was 100 yards up the road and was a travel agent. We agreed with another couple who we met on the bus to share a taxi to Siem Reap. We went into the ''bus station'' and there was a guy with a piece of paper with various pricings for buses and taxis to Siem Reap. At the top of the paper, which was clearly something he had typed up himself was "Ministery of Transportation of Cambodia''. The prices were ridiculously overinflated and so we went outide into the street and got a guy off the street to drive us there for half the price.

The difference between Cambodia and Thailand is immediate. The tarmac road stops at the Thai side, and continues as a very dusty, pot-holed, dirt track all the way 160km to Siem Reap. The journey took us around 3.5 hours. The countryside is so beautiful though.

We drove past loads of little rural towns, with children playing in the paddies at the side of the road, animals roaming about the place, people living in little thatched houses on stilts, people fishing in the ponds beside the road. Very reminiscent of Central America. Unfortunately Siem Reap is a bit different. It's a bit of a sprawling mess of Massive Super Hotels for the wealthy. We got dropped on the outskirts of town and picked up by a tuk tuk. Turned out the reason for this is that they want to secure a fare for the day after to the Temples at Angkor, which are just outside the town. We went with our guy and arranged for him to collect us at 9 am the next morning. He dropped us at our hotel and we checked in. Crashing back to reality after our time in Bangkok. Nobody greeting us with jasmine garnets, no lifts for anyone to be waiting to press the button. Our room was sparse to say the least, and the warning on the back of the door was a bit of a shock.

Cambodia is clearly very poor. Everywhere we've been there are very young children begging, or selling books or trinkets. It's all a bit sad. There are also a lot of people begging missing limbs, presumably as a result of coming into contact with one of the hundreds of landmines that are still present in the countryside. We succumbed to one little boy, who couldn't have been older than about 8, who asked where we were from? We replied ''Scotland'' to which he immediately reeled off "Scotland. Capital Edinburgh. Population 5 million people. Minus two. You know why? Because you 2 are here''.

On our first night we went out for an amazing meal at a crazy little restaurant in town called the Dead Fish Tower. Not the most appealing name, but it is so unique. It is laid out on various different levels and has a really cool atmosphere. Coolest of all though is the pond and the crocodile pit that they have right down at the bottom. The food was really tasty and the beer really cheap (Cambodia is so cheap mug of draught beer for 40p). After our meal we ventured downstairs to see the crocodiles. First we stopped off at the pond.

There was a huge fish about a couple of feet long lurking about in there. I decided it would be funny to try and tease it by hanging my finger over the water above its face.

It looked like it was recoiling away, but it turned out to be readying itself to attack, as a second after this photo was taken it lunged right out of the water at me. I was just quick enough to get away, but screamed like a little girl, much to the amusement of all the staff who had gathered to watch. Jenny just about wet herself. After I'd calmed down we went to have a look at the crocodiles.

Turned out you could feed them dead fish which was good fun. Jenny enjoyed this a lot. There were loads of them all living under the floorboards. They all looked in pretty good nick as well.

The next morning we were rudely awoken at 7.30 by drilling and banging right outside our room, so we upped and left to go to a better place. We then hooked up with our driver - riding a motor bike pulling a carriage that we sat in. We negotiated $12 for the day and set off to Angkor. Angkor is a massive site of temples built during the Khmer empire that controlled Cambodia. The Khmers built a vast array of temples to worship their Gods and bury their kings. They were clearly an amazing bunch given how intricate the temples are.

The first temple we came to was Angkor Wat. This place is sijmply incredible. As far as temples go this one is mindblowing. The sheer scale of it is as impressive as the ornateness of its design. It was built in the 12th century which makes it even more special.

I'm not really that fussed by temples but this place is just magnificent. It has a moat all the way round it and ponds with pink and white lotus flowers floating on them. It's just an awesome sight. Jenny's perhaps not quite as enthusiastic as I am about it she said ''if it had been built by a monkey then I'd be impressed''. I think she was quite impressed though, and there were some monkeys stealing stuff from tourists, and some elephants roaming about the roads to keep her baredom levels down.

The next temple that we visited, Bayon, was really impressive too.

It has lots of faces carved into the rocks towering up the sides and the centre of the inner temple. Jenny was a bit more enthusiastic about this one, however that was tempered a bit by the fact that she had her bottom pinched by a Japanese tourist (of which there must have been several million in the entire complex). We went to see another couple of temples, one which you could climb right up to the very top of, on very narrow, shaky stairs.

There is another temple that has been made famous by the film Tomb Raider that was filmed there, and a final one where they have made no effort to protect the structure from nature, resulting in huge octopus-like tree roots strangling and warping the stone walls.

Both of these were pretty amazing also, however we ran out of camera battery unfortunately. We were supposed to hang around for a couple of hours longer to watch the sunset, but it was clouding over, and both of us were shattered, wo we gave that a miss and got our delighted driver to take us back.

We've just been taking it easy for today and are probably going to venture south to Phnom Phen.......

Stayed in Phuket for a couple of days. Phuket is crap. Full of fat families and Burger joints. From there we moved to Khao Lak a few hours up the coast. This place was a lot better. We stayed in the only cheap place, surrounded by big plush resorts, run by a giant weird Dutch guy. He was really helpful though. So far as the plush resorts go, our time would come in Bangkok anyway, so we were happy enough slumming it for a couple of nights more. Didn't do much whilst in Khao Lak other than lie on the beach. We did hire a moped so that we could get to beaches further afield which was good fun. The roads are mental in Thailand though. It's as though there's an unwritten rule that scooters aren't allowed to actually drive on the road, because everyone drives on the hard shoulder. Was pretty exciting stuff. Especially when Jenny decided she wanted a shot. That went fine. Then a shot with me on the back. That ended with us heading for a bush and Jenny gashing her toe quite badly. All good fun though. Refuelling the scooter was pretty unusual as there weren't any petrol stations, rather we found an old woman selling bottles of gasoline at the side of the road. 20baht (30p) for a litre, which she poured direct into the tank.

We also treated ourselves to a massage on the beach whilst we were staying here. This started off well, but it all got a bit violent and sore for me, especially on the legs. Left feeling a bit sore and with a slight limp. Not sure I'll be rushing to have another one anytime soon. When we left to get the bus to Bangkok, we got a lift up to the main road from our Dutch host who told us a bit about the Tsunami which raized his, and all of the other properties around his, to the ground. He said that he and his family had to clamber onto the roof of their place to survive, and that half of his residents didn't survive. His car had been washed 3 km inland, along with a police boat, which he pointed out, standing in a bit of waste land 3km inland at the mainroad. All very sobering.

We endured a 12 hour bus North to Bangkok, arriving there at 4.30am. We sat about for a few hours before heading to the Oriental hotel where we would be living it up for the next week, with the folks. The Oriental is mental. Fanciest hotel either of us have ever stayed at. We were greeted with somebody helping us with our bags and handing us a garnet of jasmine.

For the whole week we were treated like royalty. Was amazing. They have something ridiculous like 2 staff member for every guest, so everything is taken care of for you, almost as far as wiping your arse after using the toilet. They even had a guy whose sole job was to press the button to call the lift. Very oppulent. The rooms were unbelievable as well. Just having a room with running hot water and pillows that weren't made of wood was a bonus for us, but they provide you with fresh fruit every day, little posh snacks at night, and everytime you leave the room they sneak in and fold your clothes and tidy everything up. Superb. I ordered room service for the first time ever, turkey sandwich, which was brought in on a trolley and seved on a silver salver which was pretty cool.

Was good to meet up with the parents as well, and not to have to stress about anything for a whole week. We did quite a lot of different activities whilst we were in Bangkok.

Our first outing - me, mum and dad - wasn't quite as successful as it could have been. We attempted to go and see the grand palace, which is a series of temples and the previous royal residence, in the centre of Bangkok. We had been warned about people telling us that the place was closed, and not to listen to them. Unfortunately we couldn't find the entrance to the palace and wandered round the outside of it for a while eventually having to ask a few people where the entrance was. We were told 3 times that it was closed by different people. The last of whom was at what looked like an entrance, and was wearing what looked like a uniform. We were told it was closed til 1pm and gave us a map with a couple of other tourist attractions marked on it. Then from nowhere a tuk tuk driver appeared and told us he would take us around the sites for 30 baht (50p). This seemed to good to be true and was. Although he did take uas to the places that we wanted to go to, he also took us to a gem shop and a suit shop. After these two excursons we got fed up, and so did he, so he took us to some crappy temple that was like a building site and dumped us. We did eventually get to the grand palace after a lesson learned. The temples at the palace were pretty amazing. Really ornate and dripping in shiny things and gold. Unfortunately the Jade buddah - the most sacred Buddah in Thailand - was involved in a ceremony when we got there so we didn't get to see it.

I managed to get the three of us booted out of a taxi on our way back to the oriental from our meal on the second night. Taxi driver didn't put on his meter and I pointed this out and told him to put it on. He threw a figure at me, and I again ordered him to put the meter on. He pulled over and told us to get out. All a bit embarrassing, but we got a free fare near enough as the taxi that we flagged down literally took us round the corner and we were at the hotel.

All six of us went to the bridge on the Kwai, which was quite interesting, although we were only allowed 5 minutes there, due to tight time restrictions. Was quite impressive despite what I'd been lead to believe about it. It's not massive but it's some structure to have been built given the circumstances.

We took a walk across it which was pretty hairy, given that it's only really wide enough for single file and we met plenty of people coming the other way. There are several large gaps to the side of the railway that had to be carefully negotiated to let anyone past. There was a bit of a panic when we were heading back across when a train appeared, but it stopped to pickup tourists before getting onto the bridge so we survived.

Next stop on this combo tour was a trip to the tiger temple. This is a tiger sanctuary run by monks. Was pretty amazing to be able to interact with the tigers in the way that we did.

We all got a shot of touching their backs whilst they wnadered down to the canyon where there were more photo opportunities. Jenny got well involved (obviously) going for the head shot and pulling their tails etc.

It became apparent pretty early on that the tigers had been given some sort of sedative to calm them down enought to have sweaty tourists poke and prod them, as the first big one to appear was zigzagging its way down to the canyon as if it had had one too many. It was all good though, and at the same time amazing to be able to get so close to them. There was one very annoying greasy twat who wouldn't listen to any of the warnings that were being issued by the guide (eg keep away from the tiger's mouth) and kept straying off towards the tigers trying to get the perfect shot. I think I can speak for everyone else in that we all would have clubbed together to made a hefty donation to the monks if they'd fed him to the tigers. He was so annoying.

We went and had a scope about chinatown on another day which was interesting. Lots of weird things being sold on the streets. Lots of gold shops to catch my eye. These pailed into insignificance when we (eventually) got to the Golden Buddah which is a 13 foot high solid gold buddah.

Very shiny and impressive. We almost didn't make it to this site, as again we were helpfully told that it was closed that day by a taxi driver who was more interested in taking us on a canal tour. After the grand palace experience we'd wised up to this line though and did eventually find it.

We ended up on a canal tour a couple of days later which was interesting. Not least for the fact that the smaller tributary canals seemed to be teaming with massive water dragons. Wouldn't have wanted to have fallen in. We cruised along lookingat all the ramshackle houses built right over the edge of the Chao Phraya, the river running through Bangkok. We stopped briefly to feed the fish which was good fun.

The fish were massive (presumably the reason there were dnosaur sized water lizards in there too) and we were encouraged to throw whole rolls in for them which they gobbled up no problem. We stopped off at a "snake farm'' next. This turned out to be a very run down and pretty depressing zoo.

The star attractions were the snakes which took part in a show hosted by a creepy guy on a microphone, and involved various snakes being tormented for 10-15 minutes, culminating in them milking one of them. All quite entertaining, but not very educational or fair on the snakes it seemed. The other animals were all pretty unhappy looking in their tiny cages. Jenny and Wendy were particularly taken by a cute baby gibbon that was out and about. Just a shame that it'll ended up in one of the tiny cages that the others were kept in.

Whilst we were staying in Bangkok we went to some very smart restaurants. For Roddy's birthday we went to the Banyan Tree, which is a restaurant on the 61st floor of a skyscraper on the top and open to the elements. Was an amazing view and food.

Was pretty windy though. After that and as a treat for him we went to Patpong - the red light district. We had a couple of drinks in a dodgy little bar and spotted ladyboys going past and watched all the seedy old men with their thai prizes. Was interesting. Not quite as in-your-face as I'd thought it might be, although Roddy was given an impromptu, unwanted neck massage whilst he was in the toilet which is pretty in-your-face I suppose. We didn't go to see a ''ping-pong show" which all the bars were advertising as I don't think either me or Jenny could cope with the embarrassment of seeing something like that with mother/father respectively in tow.

We also ventured across the Chao Phraya on one of the complimentary Oriental boats to have a traditional Thai meal sitting on the floor at lowered tables. They put on some traditional Thai entertainment whilst we ate. They had traditional dance which was interesting.

Especially the girls' fingers which were all hyper extended which looked pretty uncomfortable. That was followed by quite an odd mini-play with people wearing masks, and then a mock fight.

We took a trip to the famous chatuchak market. The biggest market in the world. It was massive. Sold nearly everything you could imagine. We spent a good half day wandering about here looking at all the weird and wonderful things on sale. We probably spent half of that time in the pet section as Wnedy and Jenny got all doey eyed about the puppies on sale there. The market wasn't quite what I was expecting, and I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a bit more in your face, ramshackle. In actual fact it was very civilised, neat and clean! It was interesting all the same though.

In between all of our sightseeing we all did a bit of relaxing by the pool, and eating and drinking well. Was a really amazing setting with the hotel right on the edge of the Chao Phraya so you could watch the cargo boats and tourist boats chugging up and down all day. All in all we had a great time relaxing for the week. Was good to re-charge the batteries, fatten up on good food, before heading off to Cambodia. We were very grateful to our parents for putting us up in a hotel round the corner from the Oriental the night that they left, to ease us back into traveller mode. We said goodbye to them on Sunday night and got up early on Monday morning to catcha bus to Cambodia........