Back to Thailand 2001                                           Back to Home Page

In chronological order:

Bangkok 1  -  Pictures of Bangkok   

Ko Samui  -  Pictures of Ko Samui

Ang Thong Marine Park  -  Pictures of Ang Thong                 

Ko Taen 1  -  Pictures of Ko Taen   

Ko Taen 2                                   

Chiang Mai  -  Pictures of Chiang Mai

Loy Krathong  -  Pictures of Loy Krathong

Bangkok 2                                   

Monday 22nd October 2001

Robs - 

The flight from Frankfurt was very easy, except I got a really sore coccyx and fidgeted for HOURS, fortunately John and Brett didn't notice. Then I discovered that if I rested my feet on something a couple of inches off the ground, the pain went away! It was because my legs are too short... :( 

We landed in the middle of a real tropical thunderstorm, reminded me of Namibia. Rain was torrential and we got soaked running 5 feet to the airport bus. But it was WARM rain, aaaaah... 

In Bangkok we found two really cheap guest houses next to each other and about half a mile from the Khao San Road, which was GREAT because the KS Road is very commercial and FULL of travellers, touts and scams. I stayed with Cobbs, Brett and Jim, the others stayed next door. Their guest house had a brilliant cafe and we scoffed for England, Thai curry, spring rolls, mmmmmm BELCH 

We had a few drinks on the Khao San Road and got introduced to the delights of little BUCKETS of whisky, ice and Coke. Oh dear.... We did a bar crawl back to the guest house and the next thing I remember is being shaken awake by Cobbs who demanded to know why I was sleeping on the cold, hard floor of Jim and Brett's room and not our bedroom. I had no idea. OUR bedroom door was locked. Turns out I had gone for a wee, locked myself out and decided to sleep in the corridor rather than wake anyone up, where Jim found me and dragged me into their room. So why wasn't Cobbs in our bedroom all this time????? Well..... Cobbs, Pablo and John had left the bar a few minutes before us. They watched Pablo skip up the street ("skylarking" Cobbs said), run behind a parked-up truck... and not come out. They ran round to see Pablo lying on the pavement with blood all over his shirt. He had tripped up, smashed his face on the truck and split his lip really badly. 

Cobbs took Pablo to hospital in a tuk-tuk (3-wheeler taxi) - on the way they were stopped and rigorously searched by the police who were convinced that drugs were involved. They had obviously never heard about Pablo... Cobbs was a real star and looked after Pablo, both of them sobered up very quickly by all accounts. The hospital sounded brilliant, they had lots of attention from not-at-all-bad-looking Thai nurses. In uniforms and everything. Cobbs wanted an injection too.... 

In England Pablo would have got a VERY hard time for injuring himself while drunk, but the staff just thought he was funny. Pablo now has 6 stitches and a fat lip, and has to hold his face together when he laughs to stop it from splitting again. Eeeeeeuuuuwwwwww!!! 

The next day we did a 2 hour tuk-tuk tour of our little bit of Bangkok, and visited 2 Buddhist temples including the highest Standing Buddha in Thailand. The temples are beautiful, and genuinely feel like spiritual places. The decorations are fantastic, carved multicoloured dragons, flaking gold leaf in the sun, statues of famous meditating monks, REAL meditating monks. You would love it. All Thai men become monks for a few months of their lives, in fact they get paid leave from work to study. Isn't that great? Paid leave to meditate. Then they have to do 2 years in the army, though! 

I'll send this one now and carry on...