Day 56 Khaosan Road

29/04/13
I was picked up from my hotel just after 7 and taken to where the bus was waiting, we left around 8. The bus was a really fancy 'VIP' coach with large comfy seats, but at the Thai border we swapped for a minibus. The crossing wasn't nearly as swift as going into Cambodia. This time it took over 2 hours. By the time we were through it had started raining again so everyone got rather damp whilst walking through no man's land. The minibus was nearly full, the only seat was up the front, next to an English girl called Sam who was from Manchester and had been teaching English as a foreign language for the past year and is now travelling, I spent the next 5 hours chatting to her which certainly made the journey go faster. We stopped just once and I quickly went to get some food, by now I was starving as I hadn't had any breakfast. When we got to Bangkok the bus was meant to drop us off at the end of the Khaosan road but it was actually 2km away. I hadn't got a clue where I was going to stay (like usual) so I just headed towards the Khaosan area in the hopes of finding somewhere. The hotels are all twice as expensive as either Vietnam or Cambodia, the cheapest I found was $8 a night, I went for it but I can't say it's that great, the only plus side is it is within spitting distance of the Khaosan road, where I spent a couple of hours just walking up and down. Even if you go at a snails pace it is still too fast to see everything, there's far to much stuff to look at, including a few people offering odd food, like scorpion, fried maggots, cockroaches etc. plus there are shops where you can buy knuckledusters and taser guns (disguised at mobiles) and others selling fake ID cards (including driving licences  and fake degree certificates (it would certainly save 3 years and a few grand, tempting...).