Bye to the Baltis Hello to the Ladyboys

Hi one and all and hope you are all doing great in whatever part of the world you are in.

So we have now left the the Arabian shores of India via a 2 and a bit week stop in Sri Lanka and we are now in Bangkok!!!

India was great and now seems ages ago!!! Sri Lanka turned out to be void of many other travellers, full of desperate Sri Lankans doing their best to con as much money out of us (especially the tuk tuk drivers) and so dissappointed since having such a great time in India. Don't get me wrong, apart from the expense and some towns being a bit uninspiring we managed, along with our long time travelling partner Neil and a new friend Dave, to rustle up many an enjoyable time.

Highlights of Sri Lanka was the food for one, in many of the places we stayed as it seemed to be more varied and less bland than some of that in India (although I for one loved my curries) and much more fiery than India. This being surprising as in India we had expected hot food, but even the vindaloos were as spicy as mashed potato. Seriously, even when asked to make hot in many places they still didn't get it. Jay have you had a hot butter chicken since getting back? Of course some of those restaurants we frequently went to got the idea in the end.

A place called Adam's Peak in Sri Lanka was also great. This adventure consisted of getting up at 2am to climb a 2000m high mountain to a temple at the top, in time to watch the sunrise. 5000 odd steps is a killer on the legs. The views were amazing, but what was eerie was the triangular shadow of the mountain that appeared over the clouds and mountains in the distance 10 mins after sunrise. Hopefully we will upload pictures to our blog soon. Here we also met Dave, great bloke who happening to be a hypnotist agreed to help me and Em stop the smoking. So far it has been 2 weeks, and still going strong. We're both very positive about it. Cheers Dave!

We spent the last few days in Sri Lanka in a small town north of Colombo (the capital not the cigar chomping detective) called Negombo. Full of package holiday makers and no other backpackers, at all, we made ourselves comfortable and used a swimming pool of an expensive resort, since ours had none and the beach was full of rubbish.

We have now been in Bangkok for 6 days, longer than we had expected and will be longer still as we will probably not leave until this weekend. When we arrived we threw ourselves into the rigours of shopping. My own big buy was a new digital camera and Em's was a new pair of glasses. The glasses being the main reason we are staying longer as we have to wait for the lenses to be made. The time to make them being longer due to Chinese New Year causing the makers to be closed for 2 extra days.

For those of you that have been here you may wonder on earth we are getting up to as most travellers stay for 3 - 4 days then leave!! We've done the sites, more temples!!! We've done loads of shopping, clothes, required electricals and the like. We've eaten so much Sushi that I think we're growing scales, loving the raw fish and it is really cheap out here!! We went bowling last night in a great alley, really well funkily designed and only a quid a game. And of course we have been living it up drinking stylee!!! We have seen 2 famous stars whilst out here. Firstly, and maybe more exciting to GB, was the drunk blond identical twin out of Hollyoaks!!! Secondly was Zinedine Zidane (Ex French and Real Madrid footballer for those who don't know) sitting in cheaper seats literally just behind us. His name was called out on the tanoy which then caused everyone to look at him, the Asians in the house fascinated that he was there. Apparently started to refuse autographs.

We are heading of up to Chang Mai to do some trekking and stay with some hill tribes. Then we are not quite sure what we are going to do. We never planned where we were going to go in SE Asia!!! Maybe some of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, or perhaps head south via the party islands and check out Indonesia!