Lovers in Bangkok

The dancing road between Cambodia and Thailand
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Sunday

After leaving Cambodia on the 'dancing road' (so named because of the millions of pot holes and dirt track that leaves any vehicle and its occupants flying in the air) and taking 6  hours to reach the Thailand border, we walked for 10 mins through 'No man's land' which was basically a strip of road with casinos on both sides.  We arrived at the Thai side and had lunch before being taken on the next 6 hour leg of the journey to Bangkok.  This time we were in luxury Toyota people carriers.  It was great to get back to the familiarity and the hustle and bustle of Bangkok but more importantly I knew that Tom was waiting for me.

War cemetry
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It was great to see each other again after a month apart and he had the champagne on ice ready for my arrival.

Monday

I had told Tom to travel light and he really did take me literally so we went off to the MBK shopping mall and had a great time buying clothes for him.  Obviously we went on the sky train so I could enthuse about the trains here (he didn't really share the same enthusiasm!!)

Tuesday

One of many Jewish graves we found
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Culture day - Grand Palace.  Would have done more but I didn't feel too well so we came back early. Tom wanted to get a suit made in Bangkok and the hotel has its own tailor shop on site so we decided to go there and get measured up.  Hope the end result is good!

Wednesday

Bridge over the River Kwai.  Had to get up at the crack of dawn but it was worth it to see the famous bridge.  We organised the trip through the hotel and a bunch of sleepy travellers were collected and taken the 2 hours by minibus to the Kanchanaburi province where we visited the cemetry of the fallen soldiers, the Jeath museum (they don't like to say Death), down the river by speed boat (imagine  a canoe with a car engine and 6 occupants....), walked along the bridge (which we then discovered was not the actual wooden bridge that we thought we were coming to see like in the film.  It turns out that because of time restraints during the war, this bridge was iron and made by the POWs in 18 months as opposed to 3 years so the wooden bridge was only ever a temporary structure and only a tiny part still exists).  We then took a train journey for a couple of hours and part of that journey went across another part of an orginal wooden bridge.  After the train journey we had buffet lunch in an amazing restaurant and got to know some of the other travellers in our group.  There was a Kiwi couple who had just returned from an Intrepid trip to Vietnam (so I was able to reminisce with them about some of the brilliant places we had visited), an English family from Southend who's son was here in Bangkok representing Britain in a sports tournament, and various other nationalities.

On the bridge
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We had a mini bus trip back into Bangkok but suddenly we arrived at a Gemstone showroom where we were told this was the best place to buy precious gems.  The salespeople were very high pressure but what they didn't realise was that we had no money or credit cards on us!  We were plied with free drinks and admitedly egged them on a bit trying on different rings.  I liked a couple of rings but there was no way we were going to be pressured to buy stuff.  Came back to the hotel tired and hungry but fortunately not broke!

the train (doh!)
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Tom had a final fitting for his new suit and looked very smart and handsome.  Just needed a couple of tiny alternations but it looked great.

Thursday

More relaxing and wandering round the locality including Power King (offsite airport duty free gigantic complex, mainly filled with Japanese tourists)

Friday

Tom on the train
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Had to wake up at "stupid oclock" to get the the airport for our early morning departures.  Really weird to think that Tal, Tom and I were in the air at the same time going in different directions - Tal from UK to Tokyo, Tom from Bankgok to UK, me from Bangkok to Tokyo.

It was really hard to say goodbye to Tom but we know we will be meeting up again in about 5 weeks time in Oz.