Trip to South East Asia

THAILAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1. After 3 days in Siem Reap, Cambodia doing the Temples of Angkor Wat etc we bused back to Phnom Penh ready to fly out (yes for the love of god fly!!) to Bangkok, Thailand.

2. Our suitcases were hardly within the 15kg limit, so some hand luggage goods swapping was required. Hate to think what it's going to be like in a week to come home!!

3. Once in Bangkok our main goal was to get Emma on a flight home, cos we don't like her, nooo because she had unforeseen committments back home. So Thai Airways put her in transit for an 11.30pm flight, and we had the day to SHOP!

4. From the airport we had no idea where we wanted to stay so just picked a random hotel in the 'backpackers' area of Bangkok called Banglamphoo. This proved to be an excellent choice as it's a street filled with bars, market style shops selling t-shirts, bags, clothes etc and lots of guest houses to stay in and mainly foreigners. Em bought about 5kg worth and a bag to put everything in (as did the rest of us!) and we just chilled til after tea and got another taxi back to the airport.

5. There were about 5 people in transit all with their own sob story (ie. cash or VISA cards stolen) and things were looking grim. But in the end I looked over to Emma and her arms were in the air and a big smile on her face. A kiss and hug goodbye and she was off.

6. Michael and I then looked at each other and went shit. We don't know exactly where we're staying, the name of the hotel or any buildings around it and I left the lonely planet at home! We just got caught up in the emotion of getting Em out that we totally didn't plan our trip home! So Michael had the idea to look in a lonely planet at the book shop, only thing was they were all sealed in plastic, dang! Option 2 he bought a map of Bangkok, now all we had to do was find the area, which wasn't too hard but the street or hotel was aboslutely lost from our brains!!

7. The taxi home we kept looking for monuments or things that we may have passed, but were completely baffled! In the end the taxi driver took us to the backpackers area, and we just made him drive around saying "yeah keep going up here" with a small incling that we were close. In the end by sheer luck we found it and promised ourselves never to be that stupid again!

8. Next day we SHOPPED!

9. There's a mega weekend market that is the coolest. I bought lots of t-shirts, may have to cull some of the old stuff i brought over with me!

10. Backtracking just a bit, to get to the market we ran into a tuk tuk driver who conviced us we should see some Buddha statues, temples and then go to the market, all for 10Baht. This was too good to be true as 10Baht is about $3! Little did we know that at each designated tourist stop the tuk tuk driver gets a petrol token, so it's in his best interest to take you to as many places as possible for free petrol. Well not only did we go to the lucky buddha, the temple, the golden buddha, but also a suit store, a jewelry store, another suit store and finally the market!! Just another stooging to add to the list!

11. We thought about going to the Asia Cup as Australia were playing, but I won the battle to shop (hehe!) and we stayed at the market. Also we would of had to catch public transport and it was raining. Justifaction!

12. Next day we organised bus/boat/accom to Koh Phanang, island on the east coast for the next week. And now I'm in transit at a small pit stop (some persons front yard converted to an eatery/ticket place) and typing on a keyboard that has no english letters, but squiggley line things. Thank god for touch typing!

Love to you all xo