Yolanda’s bit
The airport shuttle bus dropped us round the corner from Koh San Road. The place to top, stock up, restore and get organized in a fun street where you can do all of these and more.
The heat was unbearable. We found a comfortable and restoring room with air-con.
A good dose of Internet, emailing and updating the website.

Best place to shop for clothes, I did a quick megabuy and also got an International Student Card for 80pence! That would be handy in Australia. Miles got his butt-ing fine for 200B in a more civilized way than me and after a couple of days we were ready for the next marathon killer bus that would drop us in the Krabi area the next day, dazed and confused once more.

Miles’s bit
Bangkok - 3rd time here and the longest stay so far. We’d sussed things out a bit more this time before arriving so we managed to stay on Kho San Road cheaply without any hassle. We took the airport bus and sat in Bangkok’s traffic for hours. One particular intersection was pretty much gridlocked. We found a box room with air-con 2 floors (it was hot hot hot so the aircon was a must) up overlooking the bars and nightclubs below that blared out music and videos till 4am.

We didn't really see any of the sights of Bangkok, we spent most of the time bumming around with the herds of other backpackers. We stocked up on essential bits and pieces, anything you needed was nearby, I even managed to get some computer games.

I got caught out on the same littering fine as Yolanda had the first time she arrived in Bangkok but I ended up paying out I had been smoking a cigarette in the street, extinguished it on the floor and was instantly nabbed by the Tourist Police. It’s a bit of a setup really. They follow you around the street at a discrete distance if they see you smoking (not an offense), waiting to see where you stub out and drop you butt (a littering offense) then they sidle up to you and drag you off to the nearby police booth to pay out a 200 baht fine. There was a queue of a few other tourists who had been nabbed for the same thing, it’s a bit of a scam really.