You name it and it's for sale on the streets of Bangkok

Bangkok is great, especialy the backpacker area in and around Khao San road. Bangkok is where middle-class white people come to be hippies. Nobody gets out unaffected. I've never seen so many dreadlocks on pasty white heads. It looks like a photographic negative of a promo for the Caribbean tourist authority. On our first evening there we saw a bunch of Dutch fiftysomethings wandering the streets in trousers, T-shirts and trainers. We saw the same guys the next night wearing kaftans, headscarves, flip-flops and a stack of beads around their necks. Fantastic. Instant lifestyle change : just add Visa ! You can also get a tatoo done in the back of a van or blue hair extensions on a stool in the gutter? We saw one lady getting dreadlock extensions by the roadside whilst breastfeeding her baby. Go on, dear ! That'll look great when you get home. Oh, and a tuk tuk driver tried to persuade me to take in a show involving snakes and ping-pong balls. Why the hell would I want to watch snakes playing table tennis ?

As Cara mentioned previously, we paid a visit to the hospital whilst in Bangkok. The knock I took on the shin three weeks previously was still troubling me and I thought it would be wise to get it looked at whilst in Thailand. They have excellent healthcare facilities if you're insured. (Actually, Cara made me go. I was happy to stay in the bar and hope it would all go away by itself). The hospital itself was superb. All shiny and new looking and all the staff looked like they got plenty of sleep, so that was a pleasant change. What was surreal about the place was that it was built and run by the Seventh Day Adventists, which as far as I'm aware are a wacky religious organisation into creationism and the crazy fire and brimstone stuff at the back of the bible. This is something akin to the Jehovah's Witnesses opening a dentist in Twickenham. Now I'm not one to mock the ridiculous beliefs of others, but I found it difficult to keep the grin off my face whilst being treated by a doctor surrounded by paintings of Jesus chipping in at a bit of medicine. Bloody backseat surgeons ! I never realised Jesus looked like an over-eager geography teacher from Basingstoke. Also nice to see the son of God keeping up with contempory medical procedures. I also never knew he had a receding hairline. It's amazing the things you learn whilst waiting for an X-ray in Thailands capital city !

Anyways, the treatment was superb, the staff were professional and kind and the gammy leg was given the okay by a doctor who was the spitting image of the shakey-hand man of Banzai. Apparently just a subdeurel haemotoma. I'm afraid I have no idea what that is or how it's spelled, but apparently it doesn't require amputation. I was prescribed a bunch of stuff and they gave me a nice pink bandage that I was supposed to wear whilst out walking. I think not ! The worst part of it was that all the treatment, X-rays, examinations and prescriptions only came to twenty four quid, so I don't even get to claim on my travel insurance which has an excess of thirty five pounds !

On the trip from Cambodia to Thailand we got into conversation with a couple from the UK, Kay and Stuart, about how great the bus journey was and how having a full frontal labotomy would be a good way of taking the edge of some of Cambodia's larger potholes (we saw bomb craters in Vietnam smaller than some of these). We all checked into the same hotel and over the next few days shared a few beers. Anyway, my point is that Cara mentioned to me that they looked familiar and as it turns out they were the people we met half way up the side of that hideous mountain climb in Halong Bay (Se earlier posting for details of that debacle). The very same people whose sage advice Cara took and buggered off back down, whilst the rest of us ignorant fools soldiered on and lived to regret it. Is that a coincidence or what ? I'll go you one further. They live in Penwortham, which is the next town on from my beloved hometown of Leyland in Lancashire (All my friends in London, I'm sorry that you had to find out like this that I'm not really a Cockernee). Actually, Stuart is from Scotland but now lives in Penwortham, but that only makes it a greater coincidence because as we all know, Cara is Scottish ! Okay, she denies it but we all know the truth. Obviously, I started blathering about how crap the beer was down south and how you couldn't get decent fish'n'chips anywhere. There's nothing more patriotic than the man who moves away from home !!

Right, so between us Cara and I have filled you in on Bangkok. From there we fired off to Chiang Mai in the north east, which I suppose makes them the Thai version of Geordies ! We'll let you know what happens there as soon as.

Cheers
Mik

p.s. If anybody of a particularly religious persuassion is offended by anything in this posting, please don't write and tell me because I really don't care. Thank you.