At Hong Kong airport we attempted to get into the business class lounge using Toby's brother's OneWorld Gold card. Despite the fact that the card was scanned (which should have told them Tom Tweddell wasn't even in Hong Kong) we were allowed in and the wondrous bounty was revealed to us. The never-ending comfort and freebies of the lounge were an amazing new experience but the highlight was the flashing vibrating ! noodle alerter!

Despite the fact that Bangkok is noisy, smelly and overcrowded, we initially found it friendly and charming (mostly because everyone smiles at you). We soon realised that the smiles only lasted as long as the scent of a sale (everyone's trying to sell you something) and they disappeared as soon as they realised we didn't want to buy.

Over the five days that it took us to arrange our Vietnamese visa and buy our train ticket out of there, we grew to really dislike Bangkok. The pushiness of the salesmen is inescapable and there's only so many times that you can say "no thank you" politely. After a while we started ignoring them and just kept walking.

The worst thing about Bangkok though is the traffic. We made the mistake of taking a Tuk Tuk (small open motorised cab) across the city instead of taking an airconditioned taxi for the same price. The Tuk Tuk was fun to begin with and would be fine for short journeys, but after a while the choking lead fumes of Bangkok's streets had us feeling pretty sick and the driver refused to take us home before we'd visited three shops that paid him commission in petrol.

The one touristy thing we did was visit the Grand Palace. This place redefines the word oestentatious but was pretty cool. Inside is the Emerald Buddha (Thailand's most sacred item) where we tried to have a spiritual moment...this was spoilt slightly but the sheer number of tourists (completely unlike us of course).

We eventually escaped Bangkok and headed North on the train to the 700 year old, ruined palace / temple complex at Sukhothai, the former capital (pretty much every city in Thailand has been the capital at some point). This place was lovely - much more relaxed than Bangkok and a lot more like what we expected from this country. Co-incidentally we arrived at the start of the Loy Krathong celebra! tions (an enormous Thai-Buddhist festival) which made the whole place pretty crazy but great fun. At one point we were dragged into the Thai Culture tent where a gang of old ladies forced us to drink whiskey then taught us a traditional Thai dance.

After two days in Sukhothai we were suffering from temple fatigue and caught the train up to Chiang Mai (Thailand's second biggest city but 40 times smaller than Bangkok). We were both quite dazed and confused from the long journey so were utterly baffled when we stepped off the train into the chaos of the station and saw a grinning Thai holding a board with our names on it. It turned out that a nice Belgian couple who we'd met in Sukhothai and who'd come up earlier in the day had booked us into a guest house and sent a taxi for us. VIP treatment again ;) We spent a day cruising round Chiang Mai and it's fantastic markets (where T attempted to restrain J's wanton souvenir hunti! ng) then set off on one of the area's famous treks. This involved three days of jungly-mountainous walking, sweating, DEET-ing, scratching and squatting, 2 bamboo huts, 6 elephants, 3 river rafts, 5 hill tribes, 5 Brits, 3 French, 2 Belgians, 1 Yank and 1 Aussie. We were very tired and quite sore by the end but very proud of ourselves!

We got back to Chiang Mai in time for the final night of the Loy Krathong festival and one of the biggest parties in Thailand. The buzz in the city was awesome with thousands of people in the streets to watch a parade and float candles down the river. We got into the spirit of things by drinking more Thai whiskey and eating deep fried bugs. Hundreds of tissue paper hot-air balloons were being set off all over the place and the sky looked like it was covered in golden stars as they got higher. Towards the end of the night the place descended into anarchy with kids letting off fireworks in every direction. It sounded like a war-zone and we realised it was probably almost as dangerous as one so we hid in a bar to watch the madness! Fortunately we didn't see anyone get hurt except a guy who fell off his moped.

That's about it for Thailand part 1 - we're now heading over to try and cross the border into Laos. Things are a lot more basic (and dodgy) there but a few of our trekking friends are doing the same route so we won't be on our own.