crazy town

so we arrived bangkok after a 13 1/2hr bus journey...wasn't actually too bad- managed to get some sleep. after walking up and down the khao san road a few times, we decided against the prison style smelly rooms, and headed up the 'villa' guest house where we stayed the last time. its gorgeous- an old thai style house with big wooden beds and old wood furniture and antique wardrobes and desks.its so nice and airy- the best place and so different!

i had to change my flight (supposed to be flying back to darwin in a few days!) and becky had to pick her bank card from the british embassy, so we took a tuk tuk across the city. it was all great fun until he started driving up all these side roads, and stopped and asked us for some money for petrol. then he said we should go with him to look at t-shirts. unbelievable- would have been fine apart from the fact that the embassy closed in half an hour, for which she needed to show her passport. we needed to give our passports in to get visas for laos and vietnam which takes 4 days- the amount of days we have to leave thailand before our visas to expire.... so we really really didnt have time for t-shirts. we tried to explain that it was very very impotant that we got to the embassy now...'no its closed' arghhh!!!!!! becky said she's phoned up and checked and off he went. just as we started to relax again he turned a corner and pulled up outside a travel agent, and said we could get our visas there for vietnam! we were so mad! we just got out and started walking, but had no idea where we were. when we figured it out, we weren't that far from the embassy, but no driver seemd to be able to understand the meaning of 'one right, and right again' . even thjouough they knew where to go they wouldn't take us to anywhere except a hotel it seemed. it was so so annoying. cant believe we arrived in bangkok and within 6 hrs we were being conned.
by this stage the embassy was shut, so we tried to go and change my ticket. got to the building and they told us it was only open on mondays. when we pointed out it was monday they told us to go ahead. the woman at the desk needed to see id before we could go up, but actually it didnt matter i didnt have any! we went up and sure enough it was closed (but the door was open). we went inside and found out that the ticket office had actually changed buildings anyway. at this stage we thought we'd give up but just decided to check the time in case, we could make it by 4.30....i asked the woman at the front desk, and she told me it was 7.30.... the final nail in the coffin- we decided to go and get a drink. quite an exhausting afternoon!

last night was fun. we ended up at a bar which they had opened in the forecourt of a petrol station (and today it is really a working petrol station!). the bar was actually a van! the first thing the brought us was corn water with a shot of moonshine, with a side dish of unidenifiable v v v salty beans, and white fruit cherry type things? all quite horrible! on the way back becky kept asking all the tuk tuk drivers whether they could bring her to somewhere to buy a suit, or some gems, or a nice set of pearls.... you gotta love this place once you get over how messed up it all is!!!