Swamp, rampant undergrowth, enormous billboard structures, washing hung on every balcony and window of multi-story apartment blocks, and a cat on a smorgasboard of tin rooves. We’d arrived in Bangkok. Then, horror of horrors, we went to Khao San road, where we see an alarmingly enormous bogan woman (with her miniature mother in tow), wearing cork heeled sandles and a hideous elasticated strapless “dress” and straggly bleached hair. As we eat breakfast, we watch overexciteable English blokes standing up and yelling at each other, before returning to conversations with the Thai bar girls who are hanging off them – starting early, or still up?
We do some touristy things to waste the time away before our overnight bus to Vientiane… Giant Buddha, markets… find a street that sells only speakers and amps… find some American tourists trying to find out how much it would cost for them to take the cute puppy on the plane home with them… then our tuk-tuk driver Schumacher takes us to the station, and we get onto our super VIP awesommo double-decker bus, and barrel our way northwards to Laos.