Hey there folks .... Well what can I say ....

I arrived in Bangkok a week ago and have been having loads of fun staying at Kate's place and generally occupying Kate's sofa and watchin telly !!! It's the creature comforts you miss the most !!!

I met up with Kate in the notorious and frankly quite bizarre freak show of a tourist/backpacker ghetto that is the Khaosan Road ... and what a hole it is !!! It's about as un "Thai" as it gets and full of dreadlocks, b.o. , and knock off gear .... those who have visited will know what I'm talking about..

Thankfully we bailed on there and headed off to some other bars to meet up with some of her work colleagues who are a fun bunch and then headed off to the riverside to a restaurant and got quite drunk!!! This may have had something to do with the amount of beer consumed and then busting into and nailing the duty free litre of Smirnoff Blue I had acquired en route from Vietnam ....

Next day Kate invited me to go to the school where she teaches and have a look around and meet some of the Thai kids she teaches .....little did I know of the trickery of it all and I got semi "roped" into one of her lessons teaching which was great fun and relaxed... I have to say I'm totally envious of her as it reminded of what a buzz you get from teaching and made me want to do it again (although the other half of my brain was screaming NNNOOOOOO!) I'm not entirely sure how Kate copes with teenage Thai boys whose minds' first priority certainly isn't learning English !!! However she does a great job and her students are amusing and all quite privileged .. anyway that was fun I can tell you with a hangover!!

Kate lives in Dusit in the north of Bangkok in Si Yan and it's a really funky kind of authentic stretch of the city near the river and at night it's bustling with food stalls and people milling around and there's a great market over the street from her apartment .... just a little way away from her place is all the usual food chains and stuff that you find in all major cities so she's kind of got the best of both world's... authentic Thai rubbing shoulders with Blockbuster Video rental!!! She's only about 5 mins walk from the river boat that is sooo cheap and a great way to amble on down to the "city" ....

Anyway I have to say that I have spent a large proportion of my time here going out boozing in the evenings and met some really cool characters ...Brendan (Aussie) who lives opposite Kate and also works with her is a really good singer and turned up one evening after a beer and vodka session with his guitar and sang us songs that he'd composed ....

On Saturday night we went with Kate's work buddies and their mates to an African bar near Nana plaza where all the guys assume the white women are Russian prostitutes so one or two of us got propositioned .. then we went to the club upstairs that entailed getting into a lift right inside a "massage parlour" (wink! wink!) and it was a kinda of hip hop place full of "strange" folk and so we bailed on there and took a stroll down Nana Plaza (full of "those" kind of bars another name for a "cat" ...) oh yeah and then we saw an elephant hanging out outside a shop as you do in the capital city of any country ...looked to be window shopping to us...we said hello and moved on...

Sunday night was spent much the same, kicking off meeting up with Kate's bro in Khaosan and then heading off to some random nightclub with Vee and Woody two of Kate's Thai mates ... Vee is best described as a sort of International Gigolo type and Woody works in the Bangkok Hilton !!!! Anyway between them they can knock back a fair amount of whisky and convince people (me) who hate the stuff (yuk) to actually acquire an appreciation for the stuff (now yummy!) by throwing it down your throat for you... I have to say though it is the first time I've been to a nightclub and got out of the car onto a red carpet and then some chap whisks away your car.. then we got shown to a table and had a bucket of ice and a litre of whisky put on a table next to us and waiter service topping up our glasses !!! Eh??? Not quite Folies then ??? Oh yeah and we also got given a revival kit for the next day!!! Anyway the club was packed and the music was shite with shite sauce and shite croutons on top (all techno banging nonsense - my pleas earlier for Ministry of Sound went unheard) The saving grace had to be the Lady Boy show that started up and was actually very entertaining and Vee took great delight in pointing out all the "ladies" around us !! Then some random Thai stud muffin pop star pitched up and sang a couple of songs which sent the Lady Boys mad and then back to more techno!!! Kate and I bailed in the wee hours safe in the knowledge that the hangover the next day would not equal the headache from the music!!

Monday was spent in the "city" shopping and chilling out and eating sushi ....

I also managed to meet up with David who I travelled in Vietnam with the other day but he had just come back from a Full Moon warm up party and was frankly still spinning from his mushroom shake so was completely cabbaged ...I also saw Harry and Tommy from Vietnam day before yesterday and they've gone home now.....

As for cultural experiences .... In between times I have been to the Grand Palace and checked out the Emerald Buddha whose a tiny little fella. The Grand Palace is awesome. It is highly ornately decorated in a baroque mosaic kind of fashion with plently of gold and bright colours...it really is stunning and it has these enormous statues guarding the entrances...photos will be on the site at some point soon! I've also visited Wat Po and the reclining Buddha who by contrast is an enormous fella .... all very impressive !!!! A ride on the river boats is also a pretty cool thing to do for an hour or so and for 8 baht ( pennies!) it's sooo cheap...What is also great fun is taking the motorbike taxis here too as it is sooo much quicker than a tuk tuk or cab as you can whizz through the traffic ...

I've also been to the Thai Massage school near Wat Po to have a thai massage which frankly was more of an hour's torture than anything else and certainly wouldn't recommend it. IT HURTS!!!! If my bones were meant to crack they would..... but having some butch Thai woman (who probably does shot put in her spare time) leaning all her body weight on you in the name of relaxation is not my idea of fun .... anyway it was an experience ... no wonder Kate opted for the foot massage instead ......

Kate has also intrdouced me to one of her weekly pastimes she shares with her work colleagues..It is called DETOX / RETOX It's a simple two stage process : 1) you go out in the evening get your hair "done" / cut / whatever (complete with head massage) then go for a facial and then a massage (hence Detox) then you go out and get absolutely wasted (retox!) How marvellous is that???? Try it it's fantastic fun ...

As for me I'm heading off up North tomorrow night on the bus to Chiang Mai where I'm gonna do a Thai cookery course thing, take in some trekking, rafting and elephant riding and then bail over the boarder into Laos and then on to Cambodia for a few weeks before heading back to Bangkok probably via Kho Chang to hopefully meet some buddies who are planning to come out for a visit in Autumn....then we'll be hitting the beaches !!!

Anyway time for me to head off now and leave you in peace...

Take care loadsa love Lisa / Lillie xxxx