First few days

Having a great time in Bangkok, it's very hot and humid but fairly cloudy at the moment.  I can smell coconut milk and fish sauce all the time here, I'd heard the city is smelly but I can just smell lovely food all the time.  The tourist centre of Khosan Rd is crazy, very busy and touristy, but it's a good base from which to explore the rest of the city.

Yesterday I spent the day exploring on my own, I walked around for hours, along the river and then south to the Golden Mountain.  It's a temple with hundreds of steps and views across the city.  Then I went ot the Queens Gallery, I had the whole gallery to myself!  I walked some more, got very lost and then got a tuk tuk back towards where I'm staying.  I actually enjoyed getting lost though, there's tuk tuks everywhere so you know you can always get back on track easily.

I met my tour group in the evening.  There's five of us, four girls and a guy.  Our tour guide is called Sunit and he's from Chiang Mai.  Went out to a local bar last night with my roommate Charlotte, an Aussie girl.  We think we'll stick together after the tour and head to Southern Thailand together, she is keen on hitting the beaches and parties, so I think we're going to get on just fine!  They have live music in a lot of the bars here so we listened to a Thai guy singing Oasis and Bob Marley, his renditions were, erm...unusual!  Very enjoyable though.

Today we did a four hour cycle tour of Bangkok, which was extraordinary.  In the photo where I'm with my group you can see a big bridge in the background, and we cycled over it later that morning.  We went through tiny backstreets and saw loads of shanty houses and little street stalls.  I just wish I could have had a camera strapped to my head, as you can't take photos when you are cycling and it was all so beautiful, I would love to be able to show you what I saw.  Because it's so hot we cycled early and finished at lunctime.  I'm going to go for a swim now and then we're getting the overnight train tonight to Chiang Mai, where we will go trekking for 3 days.