Suan Sin Tak

... slept for around 8 hours, which Is the most I have slept in weeks.

Wednesday 7th October
I was awake by 7am so decided to wander out and see Bangkok in the morning. I am glad I did. Thai's love food, and in the morning they gather at the side of the roads on plastic tables and eat with friends and family before setting off to work. I started to suffer from culture shock, which was to be expected, so headed back to the comfort of the air conditioning at the hostel (it ...

... of pictures, said whats up to the Emerald Buddha, and now we can say that we have been there.

The rest of the weekend was just taking life very easy and just lesuirely making our way around town. Please check back to the blog soon for Lauren's blog as she was the first of us to actually leave Thailand and travel to another country in South East Asia. But she kind of had to........stay tuned.

L & J :-D ;-D

... regards as religion by the Thais) on special occassions.

Muai Thai boxing! VIP ringside seats, we were basically sitting with the judges. After a few tame-ish warmup matches, the big guns came out. One knockout and a couple of stopped fights made for some great games. Some of the guys fighting were tiny, even the biggest fighters were only 60kg - wouldn't say that to their faces though ...

... and its "alliance" which are matter-of-factly accepted as a part of the Thai way of life. A country, like a person, becomes more complicated and harder to generalize when you know more about it.

The trip to Ayuthaya was rather enjoyable. The place seems to be a bid cooler than BKK and the ruins are good to look at. Now I know that all those big pagodas are built with humble bricks and covered with stuccos and in turn ...

... is a part and parcel of what Bk is scratch the surface and it get sleazy real quick.

In a nutshell spend as little time in Bk as you can unless you’re with a big gang on the **** with plenty of money or an old White guy.

O yea and the Guinness in Patpongs Irish house O Flarretys wasnt atol bad

... in the pictures every morning. I have included some pictures of both places in this blog.

I will be working at Ruamrudee International School which is in the Minburi area of Bangkok (about 20 min more east of where we are now). Lauren will be working at Fun Language International School with headquarters located in the Sukumvit ...

The Siam Centre was GORGEOUS! It turned out to be a gigantic mall. I'm talking bigger then West Ed by far! Talk about sticking out like a sore thumb though, ha ha me and Mandy show up in our backpacker clothes all sweaty from the humidity and we go into this beautiful mall where everyone is wearing there Sunday best. That's another thing we weren't thinking of when we headed to the mall, being that it was Sunday, the ...

... and congestion after spending a week away from home already had something to do with it, and I was still tired after getting here and wandering around, so it wasn't a big deal, but I did decide to get out of Bangkok sooner rather than later. I resolved to look into buying a ticket on the night train south the next day, a decision that would lead to what was my best and worst and (thankfully) last day in Bangkok, and after the nightly movie in the guesthouse lounge, went to bed.

... it OK to drive - but you just have to be so alert. Debbie and I have been sharing the driving. And we sing along to some cheap CD's as they play over and over and over. We drove to a small town called Tak where we planned to just stay overnight and continue on our way the next day. We got there around 4pm and went for a wander through the town and found it to be quite a charming little town. In the end, we decided ...

... platoons of women soldiers. "They didn't dare touch the women in our village," she says of her days as a soldier. In those days, her platoon tracked down and killed Burmese officers known for cruelty to women. She quit when the SPDC targeted her family. She came to Mae La and now oversees the income-generation projects, women's rights advocacy, and a few safe-houses. Feeling useless with no work opportunities, lots of men in the camps become abusive alcoholics, and with no real ...