Day 4

So yesterday, after Michael (the german) and I went looking for stuff for his camera we came back to our hotel (not so great, pretty old but liveable) and waited for the others a bit, (we met our group leader, Yao, and he said to come back in an hours time) And so we met some more people from our group, there are 11 people in total plus Yao is 12 .
Yao - Thai Guide, grew up in the jungle in the north, very nice friendly on to it guy
Robby- American Student doing the same thing as me, taking a year off in between college and grad school. Robby played rugby in the states and has worked in Aussie i think and visited NZ
Geoff- British guy working at the bbc, compiling the different clips they need to air all their programmning.
Yuri - Finnish PC systems analyst (or something along those lines)
Hermina?? - Ex NZ living in England doing the same thing as me, she is also going to study English and Classics next year (crazy ay?)
Michael- German is going to study commerce net year
A German chick whose name I haven't caught yet
Sherry and Isaac - American couple finished Grad school
Kate - Australian working for the NSW gov with something to do with Bio/science
Nicole/Nikky - Australian has been travelling most of this yeat i think

So that's the group, i think we are goingto have a lot of fun together, btw only 7 of the 11 are doing the whole 18 days, the rest have only booked a smaller trip that does the same first part.
We might get joined by another smaller group for the second part aswell. We lso might get a different guide for the second half.

So last night after a bit of a briefing, we went out for dinner and into the really crzy touristy part of town( apparently 'the bech' begins there). the restaurant was really nice, i had crab in a yellow curry which was really nice, i also had a freshly pulp watermelon drink which was really yum (only 3NZD )

after that we went to an irish bar of all places and the beer was quite cheap and the cocktails a little bit cheaper than in NZ but not by much, I didn't drink but we all had a really good time dancing. they had two very good live bands, lots of the Chillis and heaps of those songs that everyone loves. so yeah all good.

This morning the plan was to go and see the grand palace, the reclining Bhuddah and take a canal tour, I started getting ready oly to find to my horror that my camera was missing I seached everywhere and got increasignly frustrated, (i' sue sue can still remember my 'angry trying to find something' act, not a happy place, anyway the group had to go and I had to pack (also I forgot about the 12pm checkout so i'd gone and washed clothes and hung them out to dry thinking i could take them down at 4pm an hour before we left, so i stayed to look for my camera and pack. I went everywhere looking for it, the restaurant, the bar, a stall Michael was looking at jeans in, eventually almost given up all hope i checked the internet cafe it went to yesterday and voila it was there waiting for me, so hopefully that means i won't loose it again.

I think i'll try catch a canal tour before getting back to the hotel at four (1ohour before our departure)

ok you all take care, hope your eyes are ok.

Mike