One night in Bangkok..

... actually you better make that 3!

Well we are unexpectedly in Bangkok, we arrived at our lovely beach resort on the 27th only to find that there had been a mix up with our reservation and that there were no rooms left!! The rest of the resort was also busy as it is now a popular time for Thais to holiday, and the resort we had chosen was popular with Thais not Westerners. Anyway I'm not going to bore you with the whole fiasco, suffice to say it was just that.

We got on the bus for Bangkok yesterday, another 6 hours on top of the 14 hours we had done the day previously and we are now here until 1st January, when we will fly up to Chiang Mai for about 8-10 days. It is much cooler in Northern Thailand, which will be a welcome relief from this heat. Bangkok is as busy as you would be expect, we haven't seen too much yet as we only arrived late afternoon yesterday, but we are going to see some sights today, including The Grand Palace, so watch this space for an update and some pics.

We are staying in a lovely hotel, totally blown the budget, we seem to have forgotten that we're backpackers since we arrived in Thailand, oops!! I am loving the country so far, the only thing that annoys me about the Thai people is that they think Westerners have a licence to print money and try to rip us off at every opportunity. We are trying to stand firm but we have found ourselves in a situation that didn't leave us any room for bartering, or bantering for that matter and as a result we were taken to the cleaners!! It's a long story and one which I can't be bothered to go into, you will lose the will to live if I go into any kind of detail.

Food here has been superb, which we always knew it would be especially as it's my favourite cuisine anyway. When we get to Chiang Mai we will be both going on a 4-5 day cookery course, it is hosted by a top Thai chef who has been on lots of BBC cookery programmes!!! So no doubt our folks will be the first to sample our Thai culinary skills when we get back!!

We aren't going to Cambodia now, instead we will enjoy what time we have left in Thailand, Matt has a friend that he is due to meet in CM and we will also try and do some trekking, riding elephants and other Thai touristy nonsense before we fly home, date TBC!!

So that's it for now, just a short one, will update on Banging Bankok in a few days!