I haven’t actually been travelling for very long so far. 5 weeks is not a huge length of time (and one of those weeks doesn’t even count because I was just with Jill in Detroit, not exactly the most difficult or exotic of circumstances to find myself in). Nevertheless, because of the type of travelling I’ve been doing, moving from place to place, living out of my backpack, eating, drinking and travelling with people that I knew I’d only be with for a few days at a time, it feels like it’s been a lot longer than 5 weeks. Home is becoming a more and more distant memory with every passing week.

I knew that this would be set right in a big way on this leg of my trip; I knew that my 3 best friends would be joining me for Bangkok and Phuket and that we’d have as legendary a time as we do on all of our other trips, but it taught me something I wasn’t expecting about myself too.

From Bangkok airport I took a taxi to the hotel the guys had booked (and generously paid my share for as well). I called on the way there to let them know I was almost there (and to ask where the hotel was because the non-English speaking taxi driver had no bloody idea). Eventually, with the help of the Google Translate iPhone app (big thanks to Steve Jobs and Google!), I managed to get relatively close to the hotel but still had to walk for about 20 minutes in the Bangkok heat, with my two backpacks on before I got there. It was a massive relief when I finally did though, even more than it normally is when I get to my accommodation. After I got up to the room I was stunned by how nice it was. The hostels I’d been staying in so far were good but this was on another level, it’s possibly the nicest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in and it was only £40 per night. Everything was immaculate and ultra-modern. It had every convenience you could possibly want and the rooftop pool and view of Bangkok were amazing. We had some really cool Hangover 2 style moments up there :) It was great seeing the guys again when they got back to the hotel, we all gave each other big hugs and I had a great time filling them in on the trip so far (I guess my best friends are too busy to read this website!) They looked pretty fresh (it was maybe 4:30 in the afternoon at this point) but it turned out that they’d only woken up a couple of hours earlier. I probably could have guessed it would happen but this fact set the tone for large sections of the rest of the trip, their previous night, their first in Bangkok, had been a big one, it sounded pretty cool. Though it wasn’t as cool as my first night in Bangkok ended up being!

Once I’d finished admiring the room and had left my stuff in the room safe (it was funny seeing Rocky’s face when he first got in and saw me standing in the room with the safe door open – his choice of lock combinations is far too predictable), we headed out and the guys introduced me to the surrounding area. We’d all comment on it at various points of our 2 night stay in Bangkok but the streets bloody stink. Now I’m not an ignorant xenophobe, I know that different countries have different cultures and cuisines but this smell wasn’t just the food, it was everything. We quickly learned not to breathe in when we were near a manhole and everywhere else, the aromas of the exotic cooking ingredients were combining to leave an unpleasant feel to the air every which way we went. That first day, we all wanted a massage so we found a nice looking place and each went for the two hour Thai oil option. I felt fantastic afterwards, my massage was outstanding. (I wouldn’t feel so hot later that night, the fact that we all got smashed negated any positive effects the massages might have had. Oh well, live and learn!) Anyway we felt great after our massages and headed out in search of a bar, the first decent one we found was, surprise surprise, an Irish one. We ordered a few pints and before we knew it this American guy came up to us and asked if we’d like to take part in the pub quiz. This really was turning into a little piece of home! There were a lot of cool people in the pub that night but some creepy ones too, like the old English guy that kept telling me about his 30 year old Thai wife and the fact that he had skin cancer. He told me some pretty messed up stuff, luckily the pub quiz was at hand to help me forget about it. Our team picked English Language and recent technology news for our double points round, most of the questions fell to me since the guys weren’t up to the challenge but unfortunately, my lack of recent Internet access meant that I wasn’t either. We got 24 points for that first round, which for a short while put us on top. Our egos were inflated but that didn’t last long either, at the end of the game we were dead last. We headed back to the hotel after that for pre-game round 2. As they always do, the guys had bought two bottles of vodka and two of Captain Morgan for the trip. We poured a few drinks and kept the night going. Rocky was (also as usual) more drunk than the rest of us and so was causing some trouble but it was all good fun. We headed up to the roof pool next. The view was amazing up there, it was a 360 degree panorama of the Bangkok skyline, the pool lighting was really cool (I almost got a much closer look than I would have liked when Raj and Rocky almost threw me in), and the company was fantastic. It was perfect up there.

The next stop was the backpacker nirvana, Khao San road. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a street filled with bars, clubs, shit restaurants, hostels and street hawkers selling cockroaches, assorted bags full of nasty deep fried bugs and various other disgusting foods that you’d only ever eat if you were really drunk. It’s wild, it’s hedonistic, it’s way, way over the top, or in other words, it’s exactly the thing you’d want in a city as seedy and disgusting as Bangkok. We met a couple of Australians soon after our taxi dropped us off. Eli was cool but Rory was already a mess. They were obviously drunk and since we were too, we (I) kindly obliged when they dared us to eat a horrible looking and smelling dried squid. It tasted horrible and I gagged constantly as I chewed and tried swallowing it but I got it down eventually and the dudes were suitably impressed. As we were walking down this street packed with young tourists looking for a big night and locals with rolling metal carts filled with assorted nasties, we were running into all sorts of interesting sights and sounds, everyone there was on it and there were all sorts of random shit like break dancing going down. As we passed the various bug carts, Eli and Rory were daring us to eat more and more stuff. One of the next ones was a cockroach, I put it in my mouth and started chewing while trying to think about anything else, but it was just too disgusting and I had to spit it out. Rocky later succeeded in eating one but he didn’t look happy about it. We all hand handfuls of the lucky dip mixed bug bags though, I think they had things like grasshoppers and maggots in them, we also ate these deep fried frogs but they were horrible too. It was a relief to finally sit down at a bar and carry on drinking when the guys were done with that stuff. The famous Thai buckets we ordered each had six shots of vodka and Red Bull in them; they did not go down well. I have no idea what the place we ended up in was called but there were a lot of cool people inside. I lost track of the guys pretty quick after getting in but I had a great time in there. The only problem was that the clubs close so early. Everything was done by 2am but what we didn’t know is that the party continues on the street itself afterwards. Everyone came out and the break dancers and food and stuff were still there but now there was much louder music playing in the street. It was like a massive rave and people were going crazy.

We all slept well that night.

The following day was a late start at maybe 12pm but we decided to do something productive. After “breakfast” (Sundip and Raj didn’t get out of bed until 2:30 so we had to wait for them), we headed towards the temples of Bangkok, unfortunately when we left we didn’t know that we were inappropriately dressed and would not be granted entry to any of them. Even worse, by the time we got there the temples were all closing so we couldn’t even change clothes and come back. Instead of going to the temples, we settled on a boat tour on the main river. There wasn’t really much to see but the flimsy, make-shift houses by the sides of the river were kind of cool. The ride was definitely more interesting because of all the rain and the choppy waves too. After wandering around for a few hours and re-charging at the hotel for a bit we found our next activity for the day, an evening of Muay Thai fighting.

It was a pain finding the stadium but was well worth it when we did. Well, for a while at least. The fights were really cool and everything, they did the ceremonial dancing at the start of each one and there were some brutal knock-outs where dudes had to be stretchered away (one of them wasn’t even moving at the end of the fight) but the whole thing was 4 and a half hours long and towards the end it was definitely starting to drag. We had great seats because we paid for ring-side (there was rampant betting going on in the cheaper seating areas) but even with the great view some of the fights were a bit boring.

It wasn’t a particularly late night for us but Phuket was calling.

Top: Good times now!; Above: Bad times coming!