Thailand, Bangkok - where's the ping pong then?

The journey to Bangkok involved two flights totalling 7 hours so the obvious thing to do was try and drink as many G&T's on the plane as we could get from the air hostesses. We lost count at 6 and unsurprisingly turned up in Bangkok at 12.30 am feeling utterly broken and wth no hotel booked.

We headed for Kao San Road - the classic backpacker place and had extreme culture shock as it was all McDonalds, Starbucks and stupid drunk English tourists.

It was Kieran's 30th birthday when we woke up the next morning and we made the most of the day by having coffee in Starbucks, going on a canal boat trip, having a wonderful massage and finished the day by taking in "Thailand's most spectacular show" - a big costume-filled extravaganza with a bit of history and a bit of fantasy and some cool special effects includig a river on stage and a rain storm.

We found Bangkok to be a bit like a cross between Hong Kong and Delhi - no culture anywhere, although thee were a lot of brand new gleaming wats, and plenty of tourists with dreadlocks and eating steak and chips and not really being in Thailand at all. We knew we had to leave the next day as Kieran's diving course was starting but we really didn't realise what Pattaya had in store for us.

We never did see any ping pong shows in Bangkok by the way, we chickened out!