Hello all,

 

The last thing I ever thought would happen was that we would end up needing to extend our Thai visas but some how we have managed to spend more than the alloted two weeks in Thailand - let this be a lesson never to plan to far ahead and just go with the flow - this is of particular importance in the dry season where it is necessary to add at least 6 hours to ever lonely planet transport time because you will run aground in any boat you travel on. Tomorrow we go to Burma for a whole hour just to get a stamp.

 

What is sad is that after trawling for India for 6 weeks, I finally got ill - in Thailand of all places  - though we suspect I may have been poisoned weeks ago and it just came to the surface when whatever in my stomach found out we were in accommodation with shared bathroom (which was actually always busy despite the having a racist owner who was very selective about what nationalities were allowed to stay there).

 

Bangkok

OMG Khoa San Road is such a dive - its like the rough end of Coventry which has left me with the Black Eyed Peas constantly playing in my head (you got to listen to My Humps at least 10 times between the hours of 9pm and 1am which was then followed by the sound of breaking glass every night). You have to strong in Bangkok because they will try and take you for a ride/offer you drugs/or generally be really rude to you - i'm sure Mark will tell you how rude sunglasses sellers are. Skytrain is bloody nice though - wish the underground had air-con. We are going back on Tueday for a full day (we are starting the NR World Tour)- I really hope they will be playing something other than My Humps.

 

Chiang Mai

We are currently in Chiang Mai which is in northern Thailand which unlike the north of England seems to be no colder than the south, we came here for a hill tribe trek which turned out for me to be a major disappointment - we had booked the thing in England because I wanted structure for the trip and because LP alludes to the fact that no tour operator in Thailand can be trusted - so we end up paying 100 quid for something which others had paid 20 for, I would not have minded if the food has been ok and the guide had told us anything about hill tribe - which are tribes anymore more like thais living in the forest selling cans for coke for 30 baht. My worse nightmare had come true - i somehow had ended up repeating the home stay experience which after Peru (my father will understand) I never wanted to do again (have you ever experienced extreme cold?). However, I did get to see a 19 year old gap year student eat a bug a  la i'm a celebrity style.

 

I think my blog is boring - hopefully next one will be more "fun"

 

Vicki