Bangkok

Alright alright?

The flight from Mumbai to Bangkok was uneventful, and I touched down in Thailand at about 6am. Took a bus into town from the very impressive airport (well, compared to Mumbai Airport anyway) and arrived just outside Khao San Road, the centre for backpackers not just in Bangkok or Thailand, but for all travellers in SE Asia. I was immediatly shocked by how clean and quiet the city was; after spending time in Mumbai (hectic), Delhi (noisy), Varanasi (dirty) and Kathmandu (a mixture of all 3) it was odd to be in a city where you weren't going to contract a lethal disease or get run over by a truck just by trying to walk down the mainstreet.

Despite guesthouses all vying for attention by butting larger and larger neon signs outside, it took me over an hour to find a room. This was not through lack of availability, but because I was still looking for the budget accomodation - all the guesthouses were well above the standards set by the Indian Subcontinents many hostel owners. Eventually it dawned on me that maybe I would have to adjust a bit, and found a guesthouse on Soi Rambutri (a road just off Khoa San0 with a swimming pool (!) for 6 quid. Having sorted that out, I wondered about, ate some pad thai from one of the many street stalls lining the pavement, before a wave of tiredness hit me (I hadn't managed to get to sleep on the plane) and I returned back to my room at 1pm. I woke up again the next morning, having succesfully slept for 19 hours.

The next day I met Steve, someone who was in Pokhara at the same time as me. He was leaving to go to the islands on the night bus that night, but we caught up over pad thai and iced coffee (which i was quickly becoming addicted to). Steve left to go pack, and I went shopping on Khao San, buying an awesome hippy band and a pair of plastic rimmed aviators to replace the destroyed ones I brought trekking (sunglass count = 4). That night was my first night out in Bangkok, and I cannot remember much of it. In SE Asia they sell alcohol not in glasses but in buckets that probably hold 3-4 pints. Into this they add LOTS of whisky, coke and thai red bull which is so strong its illiegal in all other countries. In hindsight, having 4 in an hour was not a good idea, but it seemed like a brilliant one at the time. I remember starting drinking with two dutch guys on there gap years, but could not remember what had happened to them.

I woke up with the worst hangover in the world. It was - if anyone had invented a machine to measure them, be assured that my face would have been in the Guiness world records book. I suffered on through the day, drinking a lot of iced coffee and water. I had an early night that night.

The next two days were an almost exact repeat of the previous 2.