Bangkok revisited

Our island-hopping days have come to an end for the time being. Next stop Cambodia, but to get there we must drop into Bangkok again to pick up a flight to Phnom Penh. Decide on a different location this time - close to the Chao Phraya River - in the ancient part of this vast metropolis where South-East Asia's very own City of Angels was born. (Los Angeles can't have everything its own way). Staying in a cute little hotel, the Bhiman Inn, close to the infamous backpacker streets of Khao San and Rambuttri Road. The Bhiman is in a top-notch location, with especially friendly and helpful staff. Most of Bangkok's must-see temples and sacred sites - Wat Phra Kaew, Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Wat Arun - are a short ferry ride away on the river express or tourist boat, while street stalls, bars and restaurants lie within easy walking distance. Our Swansea friends Noel and Pam have been a great help to us. Regular travellers here, they have provided us with a wealth of information on how to get the best out of both Bangkok and Thailand itself. They have been in the country the same time as ourselves and we had been hoping that our paths would cross. Unfortunately, we missed each other, but managed to keep in touch on the dog and bone - and their tips (Bhiman included) have been invaluable to we newcomers to this part of the world. Thanks, both - and the first one is on us when we we next see you in The Joiners. Promise. Just one of the their countless recommendations was the Gecko Bar - a short hop from our hotel. Noel reckoned on it being a great place to grab a few beers and watch the world go by. Head there on our first night back and grab two seats out front, spending a couple of hours chilling out over a few cheeky Changs and checking out the street and the colourful characters who inhabit it - locals, tourists and some grizzled and gnarled old ex-pats. The Gecko's a fun place to hang out, but it's not a good idea to sit too close to the drains - the smell would floor even Desperate Dan at six paces - and the distinctly dodgy toilets should be given as wide berth as possible. You do not want to go there if you can help it. Those black marks aside, the Gecko certainly scores in terms of cheapo drinks and atmosphere. There is oodles of energy around the Ko Ratanakosin and Banglamphu areas and the streets are particulary great to explore at night when the stalls, shop fronts and bars are lit up like a Christmas tree. Next day it's off to the Chatuchak Weekend market, which sprawls out over a vast area. There are reckoned to be 15,000 stalls and an estimated 200,000 visitors a day on Saturdays and Sundays. If you can imagine Swansea's Ashleigh Road covered wall to wall in stalls then that's Chatuchak in a nutshell. You can buy anything under the sun here - from crafts, clothes, shoes, jewellery, CDs and DVDs to snakes, squirrels and pedigree Spaniels and Labradors.We don't end up buying any squirrels, but do purchase a few knick-knacks, including a trilby for John (it loses ít shape within three days) and a pair of mustard yellow trousers for Chris (trousers still in good nick, but she has always looked after her things better anyway). It's the market to end all markets - our old mate and venerable Swansea Market stallholder Chris Clark would do a roaring trade here - but after about four hours in the sapping heat we are pooped and find a small stall selling coffee and biscuits, which revive flagging spirits. Finish our day with a visit to the Golden Mount - a Buddhist shrine on top of a hill which offers stunning 360% views of the city skyline - temples and river, huge shopping complexes, tower blocks, ultra-modern hotels and sleek skyscrapers reaching for the stars. The shrine also sports bells galore. Ring them all and Lady Luck is sure to come calling on you, so Thai legend has it. We have one day left of our second visit to this Venice of the East - and are spending the morning in the Sukhumvit area with Donna and Kevin Murphy. They are friends of Peter and Susan George from Ballarat in Australia, who we met and made friends with while visiting Ayers Rock. Donna has, via email, also given us some top advice on how to spend our days and evenings here. Time to meet up face to face. and we receive a really warm welcome from them at their fabulous apartment, which has great views looking out over the city. We thoroughly enjoy a couple of hours in their company - Donna hails from the States and Kevin is Australian-born - over coffee and mufffins (delicious). Chris reports Donna's Thai massage recommendation a winner - a tad painful at the time, but she emerges from it with renewed vigour and flexibility. While Chris has opted for a serious hour's massage, John, decides on a more traditional form of relaxation (well in his book) - bending his elbow outside the Soi 8 sports bar across the road, sipping a couple of cold ones while watching the world pass quietly by.Energy enhanced all round, it's a case of nipping around the corner to find Donna's tailor, Jack, who measures Chris up for a new suit - jacket, dress and trousers. It's quality gear at half the price you pay back home. There are further fittings to come - and we will be returning to Bangkok again - so more of that later. Head back to hotel via the elevated and superfast Skytrain. Speeding across the city through Sukhumvit, Asok, Nana, Silom and Siam Square on this silver bullet, with the snarling traffic ground to a fume-filled standstill below, feels like a scene from Harrison Ford's futuristic sci-fi film noir Blade Runner. We Bangkok Blade Runners are Cambodia-bound now, but we'll be returning here at least one more time. After all, we won't want to return home to Blighty without Chris's new suit.

Phuket sunset over Surin

After dark - Patong prepares to party

End of the day at Surin Beach

Phuket

The 'Pearl of the Andaman' is all things to all men, women and kateoys (ladyboys). Phuket is Thailand's largest island. It's also the most developed by a country mile, but to deny that it is beautiful would be criminal. This is home to huge cliffs, a twisting coastal road that is a photographer's dream - the higher you climb the better the vista below, and the sunsets between Nai Harn and Kata on the west are awesome - long stretches of golden, or pure white, sand and brilliant blue-green seas. There is certainly something of Corfu about it. Thailand meets the Med goes some way to summing it up. But there is another side too - plenty of tat, sleaze, girlie bars, strip joints, sex tourists (the number of 60-plus white males with young Thai girls on their arms is an eye-opener for us Sketty suburbanites) and some rather worse for wear British (I Love Thailand T-shirt) holidaymakers (no, we were not among them, we'll have you know). Bid our last destination Koh Lanta a fond farewell - maybe, and hopefully, to return one day to this unspoilt gem (our Diamond of the Andaman) and catch the ferry to Phuket. It's a three-hour crossing - one on a rather overcowded tub to Koh Phi-Phi Don. But we don't get off at pier. Instead we quite literally jump ship (suitcases and rucksacks too) - the two vessels berth side by side - for final two-hour journey on a much bigger and more comfortable craft. Plenty of room to stretch out in shaded area on middle deck - it's a really hot (35C) day - and enjoy some lovely island scenery on voyage across. Arrive at Phuket ferry terminal. It's baking, dusty, sweaty, chaotic and unattractive. Barry Island was never like this - even before Gav & Stacey's day. Bit of a lucky dip - and a little research (Lonely Planet doesn't half help) - takes us towards north-west coast by taxi and quiet resort of Surin Beach. Check into Surin Bay Inn, a nice family-run guest house/hotel, which has a lovely beach a minute's walk away. Soon discover a very different world from Koh Lanta here. Phuket so much more commercialised and westernised, and certainly more expensive than Lanta. Surin, however, we love. The beach is heaven-sent, and it's only two baht a day each (four quid) for the most comfortable sun-loungers and sun umbrellas on the planet. Waiters at the nearby beach bar also bring your drinks to your little table, so you don't have to move a muscle - which we don't very much. It's a place to relax, unwind and get one's teeth into the last of Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Twenty minutes south, however, it's an altogether different story as a taxi ride to Patong confirms. This is the Costa del Sol Thai style - lobster-red tourists with beer bellies, wall to wall bars, go-go dancers and clubs trying to outdo each other on which can top the garish neon lights stakes and pump up the bass volume the loudest. Sounds gross? Not a bit of it. A sense of humour and an open mind helps. Perch ourselves onto bar stools overlooking a street one back from the beach to spend a wonderful hour just people-watching as dusk turns to dark. Some spectacular Lola lookalikes pass us by - ''Girls will be boys and boys will be girls. It's a mixed up, muddled up shook up world'' (to coin a couple of lines from one of the great Ray Davies classics). Phuket has its fair share of kateoys or ladyboys (male-to-female transvestites) and Ping Pong (table tennis it's not) shows (you can look it up on Wikipedia. This is a family blog). Needless to say the Patong touts were out in their hundreds on raucous party street Soi Bangla after dark and we were offered plenty of PP opportunities, but politely declinded. We were having fun, but did we want more? Maybe when we are in our 70s. The Lolas, it has to be said, were stunning. Guys we defy you to tell the difference, and gals you would die for a figure like theirs, truly. In fairness, Patong - another serious casualty of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and which has since been reborn - was a blast for a few hours. The problem is you get Patonged and Ping Pong-offered out pretty quickly and, after being fed and watered, we were more than happy to hail a taxi just before midnight to drop us back to the more laidback confines of Surin. Phuket's a bit like football. For funny old game, read funny old place. It's home to peasants and millionaires, shanty towns and five-star hotels, smiling Buddhist monks and dirty old men chasing their young Thai girl dream. You can party until dawn, or do next to nothing. Take your pick. It's mixed up, muddled up and shook up - just like Lola. Cambodia lies around the corner, but to get there we are dropping back into Bangkok for a couple of nights. We are going to stay near to the river this time around - close to where the ancient city sprang up. Strangely a city we were at first ambivalent about is now luring us back. Underneath her brash and sometimes ugly exterior lays a secretive and seductive charm. Bangkok is a little like peeling an onion - there are layers galore. We hope to unravel a few more of its many mysteries on our next visit.

Born To Be Wild - Easy Riders on their mean machine at the Coral Beach Resort, Koh Lanta

Chilling at the Boh Lanta festival - with Monica, Stacy and Kyle