Feeling the pressure, and meeting some cliches.

Hello again. Debs and I have been feeling the pressure since the last entry, to be honest it's possible that we have already peaked and we have been wandering around trying to get into merry japes purely for the purpose of this blog... our wide eyed 'we're gullible please take us on an adventure' look has not been a success... what follows is therefore a more conventional travel blog entry. We will try and do something a bit stupid for the next entry.

Since our last update we went to visit the floating markets south of Bangkok, we stayed overnight in a hotel recommended by the LP which was refreshingly free from bulding regulation and 'red tape,' it was also free of other guests and light bulbs above 40 watts. We are beginning to doubt how wise we were to get the 'on a shoe string' version of a travel guide but it can't all be bungalows on beaches.

We had travelled the night before in order to be the first to arrive at the floating markets and that turned out to be worth the effort, we were up at the crack of dawn and were amongst the first on the waiting boats, we saw monitor lizards swimming across the rivers, had coconut patties, noodles and spring rolls for breakfast and had a fantastic time, we refrained from buying anything big however as we have a long time to go yet.

Back in Bangkok we had a few hours to kill before getting a bus overnight to the South of Thailand and Koh Samui and so visited Chinatown and the Thieves market... A word to the wise, if you come to Bangkok be sure to have tight security around your bootleg dvd's and err... adult entertainment goods as judging from the goods on sale the Thieves target these almost to the exclusion of everything else.

On the way to the Thieves market we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a huge long food market on both sides of a long alleyway, not marked on the map or mentioned in any guides, it was loud, crowded, and absolutely fantastic... I suspect we were complete pains to the other patrons as we wandered around mouths open and camera at the ready trying to identify what the various goods on sale were, onbe of our favourite experiences so far.

We've been in Koh Samui for a couple of nights and have already met a chap who seems to exist entirely on booze and Marlboro reds and who has been coming here for the last couple of decades... it is such a cliche we had wondered if the hotel hired him for the ambiance... he is impossible to age and we have seldom seen him away from his barstool, he has an opinion on everything and frankly we're not quite sure what to make of him...

We're staying in a little bungalow thing about 20 metres from the beach, it's basic but functional, last night we ate fish grilled on a bbq right on the beach and ended up sipping drinks and listening to Bob Marley at a beach bar whilst a tropical storm gave an impressive light show on the horizon... we could get used to this.