Week 6 (Bangkok and Phuket)

Week 6

Bangkok

(14/11/07 - 15/11/07)

We arrived back in Bangkok after a very bumpy ride from Cambodia. This was our second time in Bangkok so we decided to do something different to before and stay away from the backpacker areas. We ended up in the commercial business district of Siam.

The area was very busy and quite westernised. There were so many department stores, they had fake shopping malls that had 8 floors of fake goods in seemingly legitimate shops. Nearly every floor had a McDonalds and a Starbucks! It was very different to the Cambodia - where we were the day before.

We spent the day shopping and being typical tourists! The top level of the centre was the entertainment floor and it had a cinema, a bowling ally, a singing studio, a photo shoot studio, a karoke studio, video games, and hundreds of fast food restaurants. We were going to record our own song but decided to go for a game of bowling at the super funky cyber disco bowling lanes!

We also treated ourselves to a meal at the Hard Rock Cafe, which was really good fun, the portions were so big that we asked to take our left overs with us. We gave them to a poor mum and child we had seen begging before on the street and their eyes lit up, we were really glad that we thought to take it with us.

Phuket
(16/11/07 - 20/11/07)

We got to Phuket on the 16th and that night Jen was up all night being sick. We had gotten bad stomachs on our travels before but it was nothing compared to this. In the end I was really worried so I called an ambulance which took her straight to hospital where they treated Jen with a saline drip, antibiotics and pain killers. The one night-two day stay cost 400GPB which was fortunately covered by the insurance. The hospital was of a very high standard and the room we stayed in was nicer than any other we had stayed in while travelling!

When we weren't busy being in hospital we did get to spend some at the beach (which was beautiful). Jen was still very worn down so we didn't spend along time there because it was so hot.

Phuket is amazing the only real probem being that there are alot of package holiday tourists which really bumps the prices up and generates a commercial tourist culture in the towns.