Lainey's Greetings from Thailand

We are having a blast in Thailand so far. Currently we are staying at a small town called Jomtien about 15mins from Pattaya central.

Pattaya is rock spider central; it is the sex capital of Asia and full of dirty old men with their trophy Asian wives or paid for girlfriends! We are just far away enough for it not to be too in our faces.

It is also full of old eastern European couples (and single men) desperate for some sun, there are Russian bars, and most menus are in English or Russian! We had a lovely old couple with us on the taxi yesterday from Siberia. When we told them we were from Sydney they nearly fell of there seats laughing asking us why were here and not in Sydney! We had to ask ourselves the same question as the beaches are pretty filthy by Australian standards. I do not recommend Pattya, its florida meets padpong road, retirement village meets asian brothel. Nice.

Before Jomtien we were in Chaing Mai for 4 days, 2 of which were a hill trek. I recommend good walking shoes for this one. All i had were a pair of useless jiffy shoes so I trekked in thongs. My guide thought i was a jackass. we trekked for the first day to a remote village then spent the next day on elephants (i now morally object to elephant riding but will get in to that another time) and a used a bamboo raft to float out of the jungle. Our raft was unusually large to accommodate our unusually large trekkers. Greg and Paris weigh close to 110kg each. Our raft buckled under the pressure not once but four times. We had to stop for emergency bamboo and reed repairs and so we were 2 hours late for pick-up.

The journey north to Cheng mai from bangkok was a 17 hour train ride.we had convinced a shop keeper to sell us her styrephone storage box, which we then converted into our beer esky. party time!

Bangkok is loads of fun! However, what goes on tour stays on tour so details of our activities in bangkok have been restricted to nice things such as tiger temples, floating markets and rooftop bars

The tiger temple is a sanctuary run by Buddhist monks that in take orphaned tigers and looks after them. The money you pay to pat the tigers goes towards the upkeep of the sanctuary. It was an awesome experience, one of the tigers was over 200kgs.

The rooftop bar at the Banyan tree hotel was just amazing too. We arrived at the door of a 5 star hotel in a tuk tuk, shorts and jandals. classy. When we arrived at the 59th floor rooftop bar we were told there was a strict dress code. “But not to worry” the receptionist said "we have pants and shoes for you to borrow!" NICE. We went in and it had restaurant and bar that had a completely open roof and 360deg views of Bangkok – amazing. http://www.banyantree.com/en/bangkok/gallery.html

TODD YOU MUST CHECK THIS OUT- Sydney bar prices but worth it for a couple of bevies. we didn't make the bed bar. word on the street is that it is really expie.

Tomorrow we are flying to Chennai for our Indian adventure.

Looking forward to the second leg of the journey,

Xx Lainey

p.s the photos are greg's, not mine.