Den & Lou's Adventure

Cant believe its been only a week!! firstly thanks for the major send off and all the wonderful presents! much appreciated!

Well, Finally getting to update the blog now, internet connection and the adjusting to the hectic Thai and mainly bangkok way of life has taken almost a week. The flight over was very long, ended up watchng the rugby in the airport lounge while waiting for our flight to board. Landed in Bangkokat 4pm, the heat was something else, the sky was very dark and thunnderstorms weren't far away. We decided to give the many heckling taxi drivers a miss and try and find the local bus to Ko san road. It turned out to be a lot easier that expected. I ended up sitting beside a canadian who had been living in Bangkok for 21 years, I did my best to get as much infor from him in the 35 minute journey in. He seemed to be a quide for forgien reportes in the city, There was a japanise and german group of reportes with him who seemed to be doing some sort of political documentary and quote "we're being followed by under cover police or "dequihn". Louise had the pleasure of attempting to speak in sign language with a german traveller. We arrived in Ko San Road just as it started to get dark, the smell of the place is something else - rotten eggs is the closed thing I can descibe it as. We made our way round to the royal hotel, the junction took some manovering and we just managed to get in before the heavens opened. Our room was ok, 1700 bat per night, about 35 euro.(deserved some luxury to get over jet lag!) We headed downstair to go out but the rain sent us back. we did a little haggeling to buy an umbrella and headed out into the night. Lashing rain and 34 degrees... HOT and Wet! again alot of taxi and Tuc tuc men hasseling us with "where you go" etc. We walked down Ko san road. This place is Nutts! Its abit like a sunday market at home only everything is cheaper and dirtier. We headed back to the hotel to have something to eat but decided to have a Chang beer instead... phew thats stuff is strong. I also not totally with it from the flight proceeded to tip the waitress 20 bat thinking I was paying for the drinks. We headed to bed weary for travelling.

Next day we had a nice brekkie of fruit and pancakes in the hotel and headed and booked our overnight train tickets for chang mai in a "tourist information office". These places are total rip off merchants, we wanted to sort visa's for vietnam but they wanted 60 euro and also said we needed one form cambodia which was another 40 euro. We decided we would try sort it out ourselves as the markup was almost 300%. We left the office and heading walking, we wanted to see some of the Wats or temples of bangkok. Lots of taxi and tuc tuc hasseling again. Your supposed to just say no and walk away but for the first 20 or 30 times I felt it was rude to walk away without being polite. I soon changed this. We eventually got talked into a "government tuc tuc" Spent 4 hours looking at temples and didnt have to pay as it was a special holiday. There was of course a catch to getting a 50cent tuc tuc for the day. After every two temples we were brought to a "government shop" a tailor or jewelery shop. We finally bout a miniture tuc tuc for the fridge. When the driver asked what we bought, he was disappointed to find it cost 2euro. It turnes out that they get a cut of what we buy. He finally dropped us off when we wanted to go realising that we weren't going to buy big. We were finally at the great palace, the location of the emerald budda, but to our disappointment we couldnt go in. Not sure why, could havebeen our open sandals or the fact that we weren't thai - special day for thai buddists. Later that night we found a massive shopping centre where we tried some of the thai food as it looked alot cleaner than on the streets. Once we eat and bought somm knock off ralf shirts we went to hotel for some more chang beer and bed. Jet lag stilll with us.
Next day we took our luggage to the train station for storage as we were heaidng to chang mai on tha overnight train. We dropped or bags and took the metro to lumpini park. The metro and the underground was spotless, really clean with an armed solider at the entrance checking backpacks. Train was also spotless with english anouncements at each stop. We spent a while looking for the park, it turned to be at the other side of a crazy jucntion. We finally got into the park and spent the day chilling out by the water. We headed back and stopped for something to eat(starbucks) in a massive building devoted to plastic surgery and dental reallignment. Full of rich americans!! We headed back to the train station to wait for outr 7:30 train to chaingmai. The train was pretty dounting at first, we had the upper bunks(think submarine bunks) accross for each other with was good, but apparently the lower bunks were better. We met to english girls who had booked the lower seats below us. Had a quick chat with them, then the watched a DVD! Flashpackers! The sleep on the train we surprisingly good, the rocking of the carrage helped and the small space was enough to store our valuable in our sleeping bags. The flashpacker below me had her phone stolen when she went to the bathroom. All our stuff had been locked down or in our bags so we had no problem. The 10 hour journey had taken 16 hours but it did help us catch up on some sleep. We got a taxi (toyota hilux with two planks for seats to the guesthouse called "your guesthouse". 5 euro a night and was ok but the shower wasnt great. we decided to book or trek with them also as they didnt hassle us as some guesthouse reportidly do. Only 15 euro for 1 day trek also which was really good. We didnt fancy spending more time in the jungle just yet as it was still all abit strange and new. We headed to the (UN) Irish pub for some lunch, first real thing in almost 24hrs. Fisrt empressions of chaing mai are good, this place is alot more chilled out than Bangkok, even the tuc tuc men are polite. Later went to internet to catch up on bebo, but found it to be blocked in most places.
Next day went on our trek in the mountains, bus full of german and englsh girls and one strange either mexican or french old guy with very little english. Bus took an hour to get to the mountains, we passed a moped accident on the way, which put the idea of renting one for the day out of our minds. The first 20 mins of the trek where tretty touch, we lost two people who turned back. We crossed an old bridge across a massive river which was pretty hairy, it was a hot day and climbing was tough. We made it to the first hill tribe after about an hour. It was pretty commercial and a little dissapointing to find what was pretty much a shop at the top of the hill. We bought something and headed back, nect was the elephant rides, our driver looked like the guy out of Oung Back the movie. UIT was cool but we felt sorry for the elephants as they seemed to be a little pissed off that we were up there so long and just seemed to wanna eat the forest. We passed a massive spider hanging just over our heads. scary! We stopped for food in a dodgey looking shack before heading to another hill tribe. This time there was a road all the way to the tribe village or "Shops" This tribe were all about money so we didnt buy anything this time. We then went to an amazing waterfall and on to the bamboo rafting. We got our life jackets and headed off down the river on what was basically 5 bamboo trunks tied together. I was steering fromt he back(badly at that). We got truley soaked but had great fun doing it. We headed back and booked or flights for cambodia and back to bangkok, then and a beer to celebrate and went to bed happy that we could chill out for the rest of our stay up here.
moved hostels the next day and discoved that washed ur hands and wafter coming out of the bottom of the sink at your feet was not the norm!!!
new guest house is good! nice and clean and even has a balcony( only an extra 2euro)!
chilling out here for next day or 2 and then back to bangkok! will put up some pictures whenever we find a good internet connection!
hope all is well at home! keep the emails and the comments coming! laters