Hangover, jet lag and stomach cramps

Number 2 on the list of things that must be seen and done in Bangkok in my Rough Guide is to sample the nightlife. I can safely say that I can cross it off my list. The result was that today was a complete wipeout. Instead of visiting the grand palace and other beautiful sites, I spent most of my day getting fully acquainted with my hotel room. After an unsuccessful attempt to find food at around 1pm where I mustered two bites of a cheese toastie before it decided to eject itself, I finally crawled out of my hovel after overdosing on rehydration sachets at around 6pm. I would love to attribute my rather sorry day to my drinking of contaminated water or some dodgy food off the street stalls, but in truth it was my own stupid fault for drinking copious cocktails with Irish lads who had drinking down to a perfected art.



On the plus side, I spent a night in an Irish pub that had an amazing live band playing. Called the Big Brother Band, they were all Thai but sounded better that the artists they were covering. One of the girls sang a Tina Turner number which was so good that if you had your back to the band, you'd have thought Tina was in the room. They were even more amazing than I originally thought when I discovered that none of them could actually speak a single word of English.



I also met four very sound but slightly young and naive Irish lads. It was their first big trip abroad and in true Irish style they had arrived at the airport in Ireland drunk, continued to drink solidly for their 20 hour flight via some obscure Muslim country, then having arrived in Khao San, found the nearest 24hr Irish Pub to their hotel and sat there drinking and talking about the 'culture shock'. Other than the name of the beer, they had really just changed the location of their drinking establishment but I felt it wasn't really my place to point this out. Whether they will see the sights of Bangkok or the rest of Thailand (they're here for six weeks) remains to be seen. When I left them at 4am they were pretty settled in their pub and were already talking of staying in Bangkok for the entire six weeks.



Needless to say, young fresh farang (white) blood appealed to the local Thais and within hours two of them were under the spell of Thai girlies and were loving every minute of it. That is, until someone jokingly mentioned that one of the girlies might be a ladyboy. Poor Steve's paranoia about ladyboys proved too much and he made a quick escape.



Well onwards and upwards. I'm sticking to water and I have an action packed 3 days planned. Tomorrow will hopefully be more successful as I'm planning a boat trip to Wat Pho for a massage then visits to the Grand Palace and the national museum. I will hopefully head to Wat Arun for sunset. There should be some amazing photos to take and I'm certainly looking forward to escaping the tourist hub of Khao San...two days is more than enough.