We arrived in Bangkok and got reunited with our luggage (always a relief) and then proceeded through customs unhindered (always a relief, but then who in their right mind would smuggle drugs or anything else for that matter into Thailand).

There were a lot of very stern looking guards with very big machine guns in the airport, but that didn’t stop you being accosted by people offering you everything under the sun. It was basically a case of "spot the foreigners who have just got off a plane and are therefore disoriented, tired and haven't got a clue about the country they've just arrived in." This was one point where a backpack comes in very useful, as you can see from my travel tips.

We all got a taxi to an area known as Khao San Road. This is the area of Bangkok where all the backpackers head for as it has the cheap (very cheap) accommodation, cheap restaurants and various travel offices. After a day and a half of Russian food, we urgently needed to find a restaurant and pig ourselves stupid. A meal that would have cost a bank loan in a Thai restaurant in England was about a pound.

The problem with the cheap accommodation is that you get what you pay for. For two pounds each we got two rooms, each with a double bed. That meant that three of us had to share one and two the other. We were good mates, but three of us sharing a bed was probably going a bit far. But the worst thing was that on our first night in the heat and humidity of Bangkok, they cut the power to the lights and the fans. Sleep was not an option.

Despite the lack of sleep we had the energy to do the tourist bit and visit the Grand Palace. To get to there, we took a ride in a glorified three-wheeled lawn mower called a tuk tuk. The combination of this being seriously overloaded and the psychotic tendencies of the driver meant that it was a hairy ride. Two of us had to hang out of each side of it and then grit our teeth as the driver swerved between traffic on both sides of the road. We learnt the hard way that you agree the cost of the journey before you travel as it saves a lot of arguing.

That was only our first mistake of the day. The second was to try and get into the Grand Palace in shorts and tee shirts. A strict no-no and the guards (who had machine guns of course) refused to let us in. Right on cue and in the true Thai entrepreneurial fashion a guy came along offering to rent us long trousers and shirts. Before he would hand them over however, he wanted one of our watches as a deposit, and preferably one that would be worth copying. My Casio digital was not an option so Alan's was to be the blue print for the next batch of watches to hit the shops.

The Grand Palace was huge and it took the best part of the day to get round it. Made the Royal Pavilion in Brighton look like a run-down shack.

That night we caught a bus to the islands and beaches of the south. You can spot the people who have just arrived in Thailand due to the pasty white colour of their skins. We would need to spend some time on our tans before we could hold our heads high in Bangkok.

Once on our way, we settled down to yet another sleepless night on what turned out to be the bus ride from hell. The floor was more comfortable than the seat and was probably cleaner. There were different classes of bus in Thailand and we were on the economy class. Boy did it justify its name!

Bangkok was the hub of our travels around Thailand and consequently we came back here again later.