Back in Bangkok...

Hello friends,

So I seem to have found myself back in Bangkok, which was definitely not part of the original plan. I had intended to travel up the east coast of Australia after my trip to Tasmania, but a yearning for Asia in all it's hot, cheap chaoticness combined with the persuasiveness of Tom, a friend I made in Melbourne, found me on a flight back here on 12th April. I arrived here with the intention of spending a couple of days in Bangkok whilst sorting out a visa before flying to Burma, but when I arrived I discovered that I had come in the middle of Songkran, the Thai New Year festival. I didn't have the best start to Bangkok round three, as not only did the taxi driver run over my foot as he was driving off, but I also found myself in the middle of a huge waterfight on Khao San road, which I had to push my way through loaded with all my bags to find Tom, trying desperately to keep my bags dry as people fired water pistols at me. I eventually made it to the end of Khao San road to where I was supposed to be meeting Tom, to find that he wasn't there (admittedly I had arrived about two hours later than the time we'd arranged),and after logging on to my email I discovered that he was in fact waiting for me at the other end of the street, so I had to endure a second round of getting soaked. I managed to find him in the end, and we spent the next few days while the festival was on waking up to club music blaring out on the streets from about 8am, and joining in the huge three day water fight, which was a lot of fun. It did get quite tiring not being able to leave the room and walk down the street without someone throwing an ice cold bucket of water at you or covering your face in a disgusting flour and water concoction, so as fun as it was I was quite pleased when Bangkok returned to its normal level of chaos.

The day after the festival finished Tom and I set off with what we thought would be the fairly simple plan of going to the Burmese embassy to apply for our visas. After arguing with a few taxi drivers who were trying to overcharge us for the journey, we got dropped off at the completely wrong address, and then spent the next hour wandering around lost and asking for directions, and occasionally popping into the 7 eleven to get some air conditioned relief from the 36 degree heat. Eventually we found a tuk tuk driver who knew where the embassy was, but he wanted a massive 100 baht (two pounds) for the fare which we decided was far too much. Instead we struck a deal with him, for 20 baht he would take us to the embassy, provided we stopped off at a tailor shop on the way and pretended to be interested in buying a suit, which would mean he would get some free fuel vouchers from the shop. We thought he was a nice guy so decided to go along with it, and put on a great show of umming and aahing about a tie before deciding not to buy anything. When we eventually got to the embassy we discovered that it was closed, so struck another deal with the tuk tuk driver to pay him an extra 60 baht to take us back to the guest house, provided we went to another tailor shop and a jewellery shop on the way home. Since we now had nothing else to do with our day we agreed, and I put on another top performance pretending to be interested in sapphire rings before abruptly changing my mind. We eventually managed to make it to the embassy the next day and put in our application forms. I was quite amused that one of the questions on the form was 'complexion', and even more amused to see that most of the Asian applicants had put down 'yellow' as their answer!

It is now day seven in Bangkok and I must say although I have thoroughly enjoyed indulging in cheap massages/manicures/pedicures and eating out three times a day the delights of Bangkok have now well and truly worn off. Thankfully we are picking up our passports tomorrow and flying to Burma on Sunday which I am very excited about. Not sure how often I'll be able to get on the internet there, if at all, but I shall be updating my blog as often as possible.

Anyone interested enough to read this do get in touch and tell me what's going on at home! xxx