All Seasons Sathorn Bangkok

... until the 13th of December, although we warned Brittany not to expect another fancy dinner. That evening we went out on Koh San Road looking for some live music, we found it along with some new swedish and new zealander friends. We taught them our version of Kings Cup with grenades and geckos, and soon found ourselves on the streets because we got thrown out for being too rowdy. We then continued to sample what the nightlife in ...

... departure. As always, when we get together there is a ton of meaningful discussion and even more laughter. We talked about Bhutan and the custom of marrying more that one wife (or more than one husband – apparently both options are permitted – and Krisha shared that he is one of 15 children born to his father's two wives. Another 5 children died in infancy, bringing the total number of children to 20. Tek is the only child in his family, so we had a lot of ...

... start with, you see we payed too much attention to the government map up on a sign board and ended up walking the wrong direction.

We decided it'd be best to gather our thoughts back together and scurried back to the democracy monument, this time armed with an iPhone compass and a shockingly drawn and tiny scaled map out of a Lonely Planet guidebook, things were looking up.

But before any adventurer can continue on his way he must ...

... had backpacks which we had to awkwardly put somewhere. Gabe’s of course was so big that he sat sideways in his seat all night with his legs in the aisle. I propped my feet on top of my bag so that my knees were close to my face in a crouched style. We got almost no sleep and at 12 or 1 am we stopped at a roadside somewhere for a half hour food break.

When we arrived to Bangkok I was half awake and cognizant of the fact that we had arrived ...

... said attendant, as is customary. What I was not prepared for was for the guy to suddenly grab a warm face cloth, jump behind me, briskly rub my face and neck then crack my neck sideways and down and to the left, sideways and down to the right, before commencing a shoulder massage, at which point I pushed him away. I simply wasn't prepared for this impromptu and brutal massage, and it had all happened in the space of four or five seconds. I'd never heard my neck make such a crack ...

... from anything you an get on the high street back home. I knew I was going to have to watch my cash but everything was so cheap. I spend around 750 bhats (roughly £20) in the end on some t shirts and shorts. I'm glad I brought so little clothes with me now.
By lunchtime the market was packed with what seemed like hundreds and thousands of people. It was claustraphobic so I went and had a sit down in the park next door. In the afternoon I took the sky train back to Siam Square ...

... feels like "home" here. I realized this just last week when I went to Singapore....by the end of the trip I was ready to go back "home".

Meanwhile, I have been traveling throughout Thailand as often as I can. I try to leave Bangkok about every other weekend, more or less, to explore the countryside. I would like the opportunity to go more often, but I am also juggling life as a student, which takes up most of my time ...

... from the session 2 nights before!!
Finally got Lucy's passport this morning. Then we had to go to Thai Immigration to get her stamps transferred from her old passport. Mental busy! Picture the bank, the tax office and the dole office all rolled into one. Arrgh! Then we went to the Australian Embassy to ask about their visas then off to the Vietnamese Embassy to hand in our passports for our visas there. All in all a busy old morning!
Tonight we're going to go to ...

Not long in Thailand this time around. Only one night before heading up to Chiang Mai. We hit Khao San Road last night and it was WICKED! Its like Otara Markets but about 50 times bigger. It was sooooo much fun! There are stalls everywhere, and smells of Thai ...

... short replies) and send a group update about once a month. With that said please don't hesitate to drop a line now and again!

That's it for now...short but sweet!

Cheers,

Darren

P.S. For those who wonder what happened between my last update and this one, what follows is a summary of what I did mid December through mid January. Pretty dry stuff though...the dates are only roughly correct:


Bangkok, Thailand - December 19th - 22nd
What a ...