If you love her take her home

Friday 21st January

We arranged to meet our friend Dave Gary in Bangkok as he was on a business trip, so we booked ourselves onto a "VIP" bus from Krabi and braced ourselves for the 15 hour journey from hell.

It was one of the nicest buses that we have ever been on and although you didnt get flat beds, the seats reclined a fair way back providing loads of room.

Tyler had also comondered the front row so we wouldnt wake up with anyone elses heads dangerously close to our groins as they tried in vain to make their seats recline further than gravity allows.

As there are three of us one always has to sit next to a random and this time it was Paulines turn once again (in truth its practically always been her turn as she doesnt like playing computer games so I become Mr popular on these trips).

Unfortunately for this random Pauline actually managed to get some sleep this time which meant that her head was cradled on his shoulder most of the night and her dribble was oozing down the front of his new comedy T-shirt.

Upon arrival in Bangkok we discovered that we were unable to book additional nights in the hostel so we would need to come up with an alternative destination to meet Dave.

5 Minutes of internet surfing later and on a whim I had booked 2 "deluxe" rooms at Joes Palace in Pattaya town, most famous for its multitude of go go bars and other unsavory sites.

However I had been assured that the tide had turned and whilst this was definately still a major part of its attraction for certain tourists, it was fast becoming a family friendly resort.

We met Dave at Bangkok airport sporting a variety of welcome signs ranging from "David Hasselhoff" to "Al Koholic", however after an hour of receiving increasingly weirder looks from passers by we gave up and put it away.

Literally 2 minutes later he walks around the corner briming like a cheshire cat completely clueless as to where the hell he is going to be spending the next few days and trusting us imppecably (ha ha ha).

Joe's Palace was definately not on the same par as the Shangri-La which is Daves normal abode when travelling in these parts, however he took it all in his stride and didnt even bat an eyelid when they informed us that we would be sharing a bathroom.

Unfortunately for him this meant that he got to listen to Pauline and I being ill for most of the night after picking up some random bug en route.

Driving into Pattaya we saw a fantastic sign for a lawyer specialising in foreign visas for Thai ladies, it had the tag line "If you love her take her home" which put a smile on all of our faces!

Pattaya itself was pretty filthy in general so we decided to head out to coral island to get away from the mainstream and have a little R & R time.

Alarm bells should have started going when we rounded the corner of the ferry port to be confronted by a vessel absolutely teeming with tourists to the point where it was a miracle it was still afloat.

Luckily it set off just as we got there so we managed to blag a prime location on the next potential death trap and chilled out on deck for the 45 minute trip across to the island.

It turns out that 10 million other people had had the same idea as us and the beach was the busiest I have ever seen with ever square centimeter of sand housing an umbrella or a Russian in tight speedos.

We went for a bit of a trek but quickly decided that this was not going to be the tropical paradise that we had hoped for and headed home.

From there we headed back through to Bangkok and introduced Dave to the delights of Khao San Road, where you can get a Degree from Oxford, a watch from Switzerland and an STD from Eastern Europe all within a 1 mile stretch.

As this was Dave's first time here we decided to introduce him to the wonders of Thai massage on the promise that this would help him to unwind before his flight in the morning.

At one stage he almost killed his masseuse as she was trying to get to a particularly stubborn knot on his back, he flung back his shoulders and launched her blindly into the street behind, much to our amusement.

Admittedly he looked a lot less healthy walking away from the place than he did when we entered but it was an experience he wont soon forget and after a week or so the bruising will probably subside :-)

The next day Dave was headed out to Singapore and we were all jumping onto the train through to Chang Mai, Dave it was great to see you buddy, you are a legend and hopefully we will bump into you again at some point on this trip!