Bangkok - Gateway to South East Asia - and the 2 Leitrim Boys.....

Arrived in Bangkok Wednesday afternoon on schedule - and got the passport stamped again - 30 days allowed for Irish and no visa needed - true sign of a tourism country. The traffic to the city center was woeful - took over 3 hours - but got dropped off right outside the hostel which was handy. More expensive than China - it was a nice place. Headed out to Ko Shan Road for a look around. It was pretty much what I expected - very cool - with everything and anything for sale. The tuk tuk drivers were very annoying - took cabs all the way. On Thursday - caught up on some Internet stuff and stage 2 of the trip officially began when the 2 lads arrived into the room around 6pm. Now there are 4 of us for the next 8 weeks in Asia and Sydney for Christmas and New Years. Ross and Derek are 2 cousins from Leitrim, both primary teachers who are off for a year. Ross worked with James for the summer camp and that's the connection. Anyway - we had another night out with the lads to get to know each other, and we saw the best of the Bangkok nightlife and met a few locals and went for food with them. On Friday - Ireland were playing Australia in the International Rules series, and we found a bar that was showing the game live on the Australia Network - and good Irish food in the bar - a change from the rice and noodles was welcome. At this point the 4 of us decided to head east to Cambodia and on to Vietnam and then head north through Vietnam - hence doing the circle anti-clockwise. The next stop hence would be Siam Reap in Cambodia. Good win for Ireland in the game - and a quiet early night for a change.
Saturday was excellent - we took part in the Incredible Race Bangkok with the staff in the hostel. Basically - its a sort of treasure hunt thing around Bangkok and the hostel were sending their staff on it for team building.They wanted guests to join them so they could work on their English etc - and the hostel paid for the whole thing - so it was free for us. It was from 2pm to 9pm - so a full day of visiting parks, shopping centres, temples, etc - it was class. We had Arabian tea in the Arab quarter, lunch in a rotating restaurant on the 30th floor with views of the city - an excellent day out. At the end, the hostel even bought us dinner again ! We hence decided to stay an extra night, and leave on Monday instead of Sunday. Buzzed from the good day - we hit the town again Saturday night since we had a free day of touring. Spicy was the key. Sunday we finalized our plans for Cambodia - and then went to see a Thai boxing match with a lad from Kilkenny that we met at the hostel. There was a couple of fights on the bill - pretty cool. The funniest thing was however when the last fight was over and they were clearing the arena - a song came on over the loud speaker.....the theme from Notting Hill by Ronan Keating - not very manly for a Thai boxing match !

Bangkok is a good city - very touristy but in a good way, and I can see why. Could be back there on the way to south Thailand later in the trip, and if not, will prob end up here on holidays in the future.