There was also an aquarium in the basement of the shopping centre which was pretty interesting.
Pictured are spider crabs.

Our day in the shopping district was pretty interesting because we got a chance to see Thai people in their day to day lives, instead of the ones that are always dealing with tourists on Khao Sarn Road.

The next thing we did was take a one day tour to the Floating Market, the Bridge over the River Kwai and the Tiger Temple. This also included a Snake Show which we had to pay extra for.

We left at about 7am and, with no time for breakfast, got in a minibus, which had to drive for about two hours. We were all wrecked tired but I didn't want to sleep because I would wake up all disorientated and I didn't think it was worth my while sleeping. If I had known how long it would take I would have slept. At one stage the driver jammed on the brakes and we all went forward in our seats, there was an aligator or really big lizard ponderously crossing the road in front of us.

When we finally got to the floating market we were offered a beautiful breakfast of sticky rice cakes wrapped in banana leaves. They were quite nice enough and I was starving so I had two. The floating market was kind of shit. I expected it to be though, because it said in my guide book that it had become very commercial. It was nice and relaxing at first, we were in a long boat sitting in pairs with two women at either end rowing, but when we reached the main stretch it wasn't so relaxing. There were dozens of boats filled with toiurists and all that was on sale was fruit and the same touristy crap you can buy on stalls on Khao Sarn Road. It was really busy and a really tight squeeze down the main waterway. I kept thinking the boat was going to capsize and all my camera gear would be destroyed.

So the floating market itself was a bit of a bust but it was nice and peaceful in the quiet parts.

After that we drove for a heil and then came to a Snake Show arena, which we had not been told about. It was an extra two hundred baht to see, which was annoying, but we paid it anyway because it sounded good.

First there was a few snakes in glass cages which you could walk around and look at, then we waited in the arena for the show to start. It was pretty cool, but a bit cruel in parts, they held open the snake's jaws and paraded it around to show the size of its teeth for example. They showed a cobra fighting with a mongoose aswell, which looked a bit unpleasant for the snake, and the mongoose must have been a bit annoyed thinking he was getting a feast and then having it snatched away from him. Sheena hated most or all of it because of the cruelty. I'll upload a picture of one of the guys catching a snake in his mouth in the next post.

Then we headed to the Bridge over the River Kwai which was a big bridge and not all that interesting really. It was quite scenic though. There was also a museum there which was 30 baht but none of the others wanted to go to it because they thought everything was included on the tour and we had already paid extra for the snake show. I should have gone anyway, but not to worry.

Then we drove to the highlight, which was the Tiger Temple. This is a Buddhist temple founded in the early nineties which also doubles up as an animal shelter. Their main attraction is obviously tigers, but there are also wild boar and dear on the grounds. They are apparently trying to raise money for building a tiger island on the grounds where the tigers will live in a more natural enviorment and be prepared for going back to the wild some day. There are around ten tigers there, and we got our photos taken with about five or six of them each.

It was a little nerve racking, you gave your camera to one of the staff and then another one of them led you around buyy the hand to each of the tigers, where you hunkered down beside them and stroked them. From time to time they were growling and rolling around and you could see some of them were getting frustrated, but it was cool being so close to tigers, and getting the full appreciaton of their size. I'll upload pictures from there too.

All in all it was a good day, but there was a bit too much driving around, but that couldn't be avoided really.

After we were in Kaoh Sok National park we came back to Bangkok and I met up with Carlo and Egan for a couple of days. I didn't get to see them for long but we had a bit of craic. It reminded me of home seeing them again, and in a way it made me kind off homesick. They were having a totally different time then us, drinking their heads off every night, while we have barely been drinking at all, and they'd spent about three weeks of what our budget is in two days. After a couple of days they headed down to Koh Pah Nagn.



Last time we had been in Bangkok we spent almost all our time on Khao San Road (which is the main backpackers strip), so this time we tried to get out of there a bit. On the 7th of August we took a trip around Bangkok, taking some alternative modes of public transport, like the underground and the skytrain. We first got a taxi to Hualampong train station where I thought there was a skytrain stop, but I had read the map wrong and we were actually beside an underground stop. The taxi driver didn't mind though and still told us the skytrain was nearby (it wasn't). I realised my mistake anyway and we hopped on the underground and headed for a stop that had a nme similar to a stop on the skytrain route (the underground station did not show on the map where the service linked up with the Skytrain). The underground was, unsurprisingly, just like any other underground. On the actual metro train, we saw on the list of stops, the name of the stop which linked up with the Skytrain, so we got off one stop earlier than we'd paid for. It was a waste of 2 baht.

Then we were pretty excited waiting for the skytrain. I had images of a futuristic hovering train soaring at skyscraper level in the clouds high above Khao San Road. Then a DART pulled up and loads of commuters piled off onto the platform. We piled on and looked around at all the depressed commuting Thai people. It was pretty boring. It was like coming to Ireland and getting on the LUAS. There were some nice views though. Our ticket was one way but we used it as a return because we felt the Bangkok public transport authority owed us money after the crapness of the skytrain and headed back towards Siam Square, the main shopping district in Bangkok. First we went to Siam Centre, then headed for Mahboonkrong or MBK, a big shopping centre. The shops were a lot more expensive than I expected and a lot less cheap than the stalls of Khao Sarn, so I didn't buy any clothes or anything, but I was looking for a camera shop. Unfortunately we didn't find one because Steven had left the camcorder sitting on his chair in the pizza place we'd eaten in, so we all went running back there, hoping our camcorder was still there. Fortunately it was, and we decided to head for another shopping mall, called Siam Paragon. This was a very upmarket place, with Ferraris and Mini Coopers on display on one floor. On the top floor was a cinema and we saw a crap film, The Break Up, with Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn.

This is Stephen, Sheena, Tawee and Donna.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhh

Update

Okay, my last long post was from Surat Thani, and it's high time I gave a complete update, with pictures and all.

We were in Surat Thani intending to make a day trip to a place called Chiaya where there are a few temples and similar sights. We got the idea because it said in a couple of guide books that Surat Thani was mainly as interest for making day trips to Chiaya.

When we went to the bus station, as I said, we encountered lots of scammers. Weell, some of them might not have been scammers, but they were all trying to make money out of us.

First we approached a songthaew driver (a songthaew, which literally is translated as "two rows" or "two planks", is a pick up truck with two benches either side of the back and is used as a type of share taxi in many parts of Thailand) who tried to charge us 250 baht or so, which is more than we were willing to pay, and more than the guide book recommended, more importantly, we wanted to get a local bus, the same as Thai people would get if they wanted to go to Chiaya. So we tried to communicate with him and figure out where to get the bus from, and some helpful guy told us we needed to go to the other bus station which was just up the road (the guide book had told us to go to the station we were at). We headed that direction anyway...

...we got to the other station and three guys ran towards us asking "where you go?", "you want ticket?", "you need bus?" One guy (wearing an Irish jersey) was referring to a piece of paper with Thai writing on it, then speaking to us in English, he must have written the English phonetically in Thai, he asked us if we wanted to buy tickets, expecting us to hand over the money directly to him.

We ended up just getting too much hassle and decided to get out of there, we were getting paranoid that we would be mugged and robbed if we got on a bus. As we walked away, Sheena looked into a tourist office and saw some westeners in there and we decided to pop in and ask for some advice. We got chatting to the owner, a Danish man who we then told our further plans were to go to Kaoh Sok national park. He told us a friend of his had a guest house there, and his friend just happened to be in town, and that his friend would be willing to give us a free lift that night to the national park if we wanted to stay with him. We had already booked into our hotel for the night so weren't going to head there until the next day. Then his friend came back into the office and we shook hands and said hello. He seemed nice. It turned out that he had business in Surat Thani that night and wouldn't be going down until thew morning. We decided to give it a shot because the Danish guy told us we wouldn't have to pay for anything up front and we could pay when we arrived, so if we weren't satisfied, we could just leave. The guest house's owner was named Tawee and he asked us when we were going to get up, because we were on holiday so it was up to us to decide what time we wanted to get up. We arranged to meet him at the tourist office the next morning.

I was a little skeptical that things worked out so perfectly, but we weren't paying for anything so we took the risk anyway.

As it turned out Tawee was one of the nicest people we've met so far and our visit to Kaoh Sok has been one of the highlights of the trip to date.

Sheena's blog

Sheena has set up a blog too. It's not as good as mine, but you can check it out at:

www.sheenafriel.blogspot.com