Living it up in Bangkok

Gemma and Alison:  After a surprisingly comfortable, if a little dusty, 11 hour journey we arrived in Bangkok in the early evening just in time to see the nightlife of the Khao San Road getting into full swing.  Having experienced the somewhat 'limited' nightlife of Vietnam and Cambodia we felt it was about time we let our hair down a little.  Luckily, Bangkok was also the place where many of our travelling friends were converging so we had great company with whom to sample the many late-night bars, clubs, live music and...sex shows!

Before you get too excited, the sex show in Patpong did not live up to our expectations (and yes that was also the opinion of the male members of our group).  In our opinion the Thais are the king of scams and we had to give them credit for using the beautiful young Thai girls to entice customers in, when upstairs it is the old, overweight and frankly unattractive women/ladyboys who 'performed' the tricks!  We had all decided to go to watch the notorious 'ping pong in Patpong' however all nine of us emerged disappointed (and 300 baht lighter), the boys due to the fact that the ping pong hadn't quite 'pinged' as far as they had hoped it would, and Gemma because she'd missed this particular trick as she had her hands over her eyes!

We won't bore you with the details of our days in Bangkok (needless to say they were pretty short after our 'extended' evenings out and mainly included shopping - Gem's shopping talents came into their own when she managed to throw together an Audrey Hepburn-esque outfit for less than a tenner.)

After saying goodbye to the others we made the HUGE mistake of heading off to Pattaya - aka thai-girl-pickup-central - if you ever find yourself in Bangkok and wanting a few days at the beach DO NOT GO TO PATTAYA!  You've probably gathered that we hated it so after spending two days topping up our tans on a rather dirty beach we hot footed it back to Bangkok to hang out with people who sickened us slightly less.

Our return to Bangkok was welcomed by our favourite Thai locals, a mother and daughter who fed and watered us everyday, twice a day, at their fantastic street stall for a grand total of 50 baht (about 70p) each.  It sounds silly but they honestly made our stay in Bangkok so enjoyable and we loved seeing their smiling faces everyday - when we returned to Bangkok it was a little like going home.

During our second stay in Bangkok we decided to branch out and explore all that this fantastic city has to offer, outside of backpacker central.  We chose the perfect day to take in the impressive temples as it was a national holiday celebrating the birth and death of buddha, therefore these areas were full of local people making their offerings of food, money and flowers, the air thick with the smell of incense.  We hung out in a temple for a while with a local man who explained to us all about the significance of the day and came out feeling very Zen.

Our journeys around Bangkok allowed us to sample every means of transport available including the riverboat, tuk tuks, local buses, multi coloured taxis and the very cool skytrain that enables you to float silently above the bustling city streets.

We were very sad to leave Bangkok as we had had so much fun there but by now we were looking forward to the cooler climates of New Zealand and the next 'chunk' of our trip.