We spent four nights in Bangkok – two at the Green Hotel and two back at the Villa Cha Cha.

The two nights at the Green Hotel were pleasant enough, the hotel rooms were very basic (a little prison cell like) but clean – the restaurant downstairs did pretty good food (mix of Thai, Israeli and western). They made a fantastic tomato soup which Tehya ate once a day if she could. One of Tehya’s favourite snacks at home always used to be tomato soup – it can be hard to find really tasty tomato soup in Asia. We left only because the rooms at Villa Cha Cha are just a little more expensive but are 100% newer and much more comfortable with cable TV.

We did not do very much in Bangkok this trip – on our first day we collected the Laptop. It was so good to see it again after what felt like forever. You don’t realise just how much you come to rely on a piece of machinery. It has become a vital part of our travel kit – for communication and keeping the blog up to date. It was all shiny and new – the hard-drive, disk-drive and all the other issues/problems we had with it had been replaced or fixed. So the catch up began in earnest……..

We spent a few afternoons out and about and Gavin went off one day and walked to all the main tourists spots along the river. We took it easy though as there were real problems with the government, the main Bangkok airport had been closed and was held hostage as a form of political protest. There was a lot of unrest at other points around the city and it was looking increasingly likely that there would be a coup. We had seen various streets blocked off with barricades and lots of police everywhere. The final straw was seeing the ‘reds’ taking to the streets to protest….. we came across a huge party of them the day before we decided to leave.

In the end things were beginning to sound too risky so we packed Tehya and our stuff and caught the Monorail to Victory Monument and found an air-con mini bus to Hua Hin. Jon had been in touch and had agreed that we should call passed his house and stay for a few a week on our way south.