Hannah and Jase's World Tour

After a couple of days in Mumbai and via Singapore, Hannah and I arrived in Bangkok very late Sunday night, 28th Jan. As we thought it would be a good idea to wait until we were in Thailand before we bought the lonely planet guide, we arrived blind, which was fun. Straight into a taxi and asked for th Khao san - where all the western travellers seem to hang out, and infamously known by the opening scene in the movie "The Beach" whereby Leonardo Di Caprio arrives in Thailand to Khao San Road, stays in a flea pit ridden appartment before finding a man murdered next door...mmm? It is a great place, full of life and a good way to start our Thailand chapter I guess, although quite touristy. Lots of bars, massage parlours, street food and lady boys!

Hannah and I took a day to settle in. As the thais are well known for their tailor skills at a good price, we have already had ourselves measured and suited up for some new suits for when we get back. We have had to return to get a second fitting and I am really impressed. Should be completed by tomorrow night and then we will be sending it back in the post. I decided to get some work shirts custom made too, which is good.

Hannah has been busy exploiting Thailand's markets and cheap prices and I have just had my first swedish massage, good fun. Tomorrow Hannah and I are going to do a swedish massage course for a couple of hours in one of the parlours in Khao San Road. Looking for to that. Once finished and having collected my course certificare we will then check out the museums, galleries and buddihism part of Bangkok and then head off to the floating market. 

We have just submitted our passports to get our visas for Vietnam and Cambodia, this should take 3 working days. With Vietnam we have had to state when exactly we will passing their borders so we had to do a bit more forward planning that we would like.

Plan: Stay in Thailand until about 24th Feb. We travel to north Thailand and do a 3 night elephant trek in Chang Mai. We will then cross over to Laos from north Thailand where we will spend about 10-12 days in Laos travelling down the river south and then enter Vietnam for the 5th March. We will then spend a couple of weeks in Vietnam and then doing a clockwise tour, enter Cambodia and travel through back to Thailand. Having covered cultural stuff, once in Thailand, we will then head straight to the south and do some sunbathing on their beaches until our time is up - will find the beaches in the "The beach" - majestic. It will be when I am in this area that I will hopefully get to meet up with Loel Guinness and hang my hat in his palace for a couple of days.

Cheers