Had the usual first day of trying to get over the jet lag and it was a bit difficult as it was hammering it down with rain outside. Slept from 9pm until about 2am and spent a few hours outside the hostel talking to a couple of other travelers and drinking myself to sleep.
It was the next morning when the jetlag cleared and I went to look for the Laos embassy to get a visa. Found everything on the map near it except for the one thing I was looking for. Also got lost for about an hour in the midday heat but somehow bumped into a train station. I gave up in the end and headed back. The heat and pollution about finished me off I then knew why the traffic cops wear them masks. I got straight back into the swing of Thailand such as having spicy hot noodles for breakfast. Also I was determined not to let the pushy taxi drivers and touts get me down this time.
At night 4 of us went out (one from Near Sydney two from Hampshire) to a few local bars then headed off to the famous Khaosan road. The street was packed out like being at a big music festival mostly with drunken Europeans. One of our crowd (not me for once) had the idea of doing these mini vodka buckets. To be honest there were only about 6 at the most UK pub shots of vodka in these things but the other 3 were all slurring their words by the time they had been drank.
All was going well until the Australian broke some plastic chairs and the owner demanded he paid for them. He was only asking for a couple of hundred baht but the Australian kept trying to walk away. I knew there was only going to be one winner in this argument so I stayed well away. Sure enough the police got involved and dragged him to the station round the corner then the other 2 got involved and started arguing with the police and the owner of the chairs. I could see them all arguing through the window from the street. In the end the Australian paid up (from what I remember a lot more than the owner of the chairs was originally asking). As soon as he got out I dragged him into a taxi and we went back !!!!!!!!
Had a lie in on the Saturday and later went for a walk down China town it was a bit of a dump but the spring rolls were good. I was asked to go out at night but was moving hostels the next day. I moved just down the road into Lub d Bangkok. Its was a squeaky clean place with high speed Internet and all the locks were the electronic swipe card type. It looked a bit like McDonald's. Went to explore parts of town I had not seen before such as the big shopping centers round Siam square. On the way back I heard some very loud bangs that turned out to be a massive firework display coming from some nearby hotel.
I didn't leave the city completely trouble free, at the underground station I got my bag searched and my cans of insect repellent were taken off me by the security. Due to the trouble they had been having they search every bag going into each station (anything flammable is not allowed). The funny thing was is that they only checked the top quarter of my big rucksack so if I had put the cans anywhere else I would have got away with it. Waiting for the shuttle bus to the airport I had a couple of taxi drivers telling me that the bus was not running because of a public holiday. (They wanted to take me for 3-4 times the price). When the bus did turn up I made a point of waving a wad of notes out the back window at them.
I HATE TAXI DRIVERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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