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Well our China adventure was over and it was time to begin a new one. We really didnt know what to expect of Bangkok, you hear so many stories but we were looking forward to it at the same time.

We left our hotel for the airport at around 9am, our flight was 13.45. The visa rules for Thailand are that on a UK/Irish passport you don't need a visa if you are staying for less than 30 days and have an outward flight booked. If you have no flight booked out of Thailand within 30 days then you need a visa. We do have one booked for Penang so we didn't need a visa, however we forgot to take the flight details out of our luggage we checked in, and it was only once the luggage had gone through that the lady behind the desk said make sure you have your details at customs because if you dont you will have to book another flight. At this point the two of us were nervous about not getting into Thailand before even leaving HK. We got to Bangkok around 3.30 Bangkok time, and in the end nobody even bothered checking if we had outgoing flights or why we had no visa - silly really as I have seen newspaper articles about the Thai government wanting to crack down on abuse of the system. (One thing as well we had a quick Burger King in HK for breakfast, which proved a mistake as the food on Thai Airways is stunning and we could hardly eat any of it )

Our next task was to get into the city. We knew from our book that most backpackers head straight to the Banglumpa area when they arrive in Bangkok. We got the AE2 bus from outside the terminal. At this point you have to remember we have been used to the chinese weather, starting at -2 degrees in Beijing up to about 17 degrees in HK, so on our arrival into Bangkok we had our thick jackets and jeans on - but it was 34 degrees - a bit of a sweatathon! We got on the bus along with two mosquitoes for the hour long journey, they were causing a bit of a bother as we were scared of getting bitten, so we spent most the journey flicking them away! In front of us there was a Japanese tourist with a huge feckin camera taking photos of everything he saw the whole way to Banglumpa. We thought this was hillarious!

We got to Banglumpa around the 5.30 mark,we hadnt booked a hotel previously so we decided to use the books recommendation for the first night. We saw a hotel called the New Siam and set about trying to find it. There were people everywhere, the streets were jammed, stalls selling food and clothes, it was utter madness. We eventually found the hotel which is near the Sam Rambuttri area, a great area for Backpaker bars, Thai massages, street stalls. We got a room for 890 bahts a night which is around 17 euros. It had a safe and satellite TV so we were happy.

We got the shorts on and decided to go and investigate. We ended up on the Khaosan road, it was fabulous, a great buzz around it, bright lights, cd stalls playing Jack Johnson and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, people getting Tattoos and their hair braided/dreadlocked on the street. We just wanted something to eat and didn't want to do anything too adventurous on our first night. We ended up in a place called the Sunset Bar, it turned out to be a great place for a drink as it had a promotion on "Buy one beer Chang get one free" so i had a couple and got a couple free. With that i had a Thai Curry, it was gorgeous and much nicer than any curry we'd get back home. Roisin went for an omelette. After dinner we decided to pick up a couple of bottles of Singha beer and watch a movie on Star movies.

So that was beginning of our Thailand trip.

More to follow...

Team Domro