BANGKOK AND NOISY SLEEPER TRAINS

20th June

We slept in until check out, which meant the day started at 12pm. Which became the case for the rest of the trip apart from when we had an organised trip where we had to get up super early. It's hard to describe what it's like walking through the streets of Bangkok, because you can go to two diffrent parts of the city and it feels as though you're in a completely different place entirely. Sukhumvit, where we were staying was home to the famous nana plaza, the red light distric and we would soon find out why. 

The heat and humidity hits you as soon as you walk outside, so does the sour smell constantly present on the streets of the city and the noise from the endless queue of traffic. I'm not complaining though, this is the sort of thing I love, lots of things all going on at once, busy fast environments. Headed away from our hostel with little more than a camera and some money we decided to wonder. I had a map of Bangkok, I just didn't bother using it. We stumbled, somehow upon the Nana district and it became clear immediately. Every bar we walked past followed the same pattern, a white westeren looking guy with one or two pretty young thai girls sat around them. The bars were pretty much full, this was in the middle of the day and the same sight could be seen for the entire strip. 

We fed our western hearts with a starbucks, we'd been walking for ages and just wanted the coldest drink possible [a Mango and Passion Fruit Frappucino]and we were treated to some free samples, I have no idea if it was a promo day or the staff were feeling nice, we had these little Frappucinos and two lots of cakes and pastries. 

Deciding we'd done too much exploring and it was too hot we headed to pick up our bags and make our way to the main station in Bangkok. We decided to brave the metro, which is probably the best way to travel, its fast, cheap and the one to the Train station literally stopped right outside it! The little tokens they use are in the photo below. London, take note...

That night we would experience our first Thai sleeper train complete with smelly hole in the floor toilets, a crazy guy from Iceland and 

We took the 19.35 train to Chiang Mai, which was a special express train meaning its a little bit better than the other sleeper train options. You'll get a little cabin room with four beds, two upper and two lower. The upside of this is if you're travelling in a group of four you can stay together but we were split up. The beds are also already made, meaning you can just go straight into them rather than waiting for them to be made up. If you plan on travelling around Thailand, you have to take a sleeper train, actually I really enjoyed them. Probably the only one out of my group that did, but if spending 15 hours on a train isn't for you take a plane, it's about £5 dearer if you can get a good deal on a flight and will take an hour for the same journey.

If i had the choice now I'd just take the Express train. It is cheaper and the beds are just as comfy. The beds face out into a corridor and it's a lot more social, we met a lot more people travelling on the way back compared to the zero we did on the way there.

Next: Waking up in a jungle in Chiang Mai...
Laura :)

Make Friends, Stay Friends, never ever break friends.

Gavin and Stacey reference there. No? Okay.

After reading an article in COMPANY Mag a few months ago it made me think about what a friendship actually means. So you can understand my situation I went all through primary school (age 5-11) and through high school (age 11-16) being around pretty much the same people for the majority of my school life, then feeling reckless (obviously) I decided to take the plunge and instead of going with all my friends to the same sixth form that was joined to my school (that’s the last two years of education before college/university) I decided to go to the sixth form college in the next town. After some mess up’s with the admissions process I only got accepted the day before college started and I remember getting the call for an interview and being so excited I physically jumped into the air. I couldn’t have been happier. i never ever get excited about anything. No, really. Never.

When I made the decision (I was given about a second to decide) to go, I thought simply, why not? I’d never moved schools in my life, never had to go into a completely foreign environment and make friends with people who were complete strangers. (I’d had a pretty sheltered existence) It was probably the single most exciting a scary thing I’ve ever done and from what I know now the best decision I have ever made.

While my ‘old’ friends were still in school, no change of scene and still bitching like they were thirteen again I met people who liked the same things as me and were (cliché) on the same level as me. Don’t get me wrong, this was college which meant lots of free’s and the first few days were pretty horrid. After a few weeks it got better, (Suring up the fact I had made the right decision. ) I made more friends, took more Starbucks trips and became friends with people who it felt like I’d been friends with all my life, but what about the people who I had been friends with all my life. 
Would I lose touch or would we become friends more. Both, I think. Some friends, those who lived by me, those who I’d known all my life I saw and still see whenever I can. The type of friends who you don’t see for weeks and when you see each other it feels like you haven’t been apart. The friends who I knew from lessons and am now ‘internet friends’ with. And lastly the friends which I don’t speak to at all or they’ve ‘gone off the rails’. But what makes a friendship worth keeping? It’s not a case of wanting, sometimes it just happens, others you lose touch or you both go in different directions so much so that you probably wouldn’t be friends anyway. So now I have old friends, new friends, twitter friends, friends I don’t know any more. Sometimes you have to accept the best friends’ you’ll be is twitter friends or not friends at all. But the time that you were friends is what will shape you as a person and will be significant to that particular time in your life.