Bankok was only a smooth 3 hour flight away from Delhi. After being in India it's amazing to see clean buildings with working air conditioning, smooth roads on which the cars obey the traffic laws, and people who don't hastle you. No wonder they call Thaliand a paradise!
Despite being in such a civilised place, I made no effort to see any of the sites of Bangkok. All the temples seem so clean, well kept and modern (and hence so similar) that I only visited one in passing. I suppose I had rather a lot of temples and sites in India and knew that I'd be heading for a big dose of temples at Angkor, so I just take it easy. I had lots to do anyway with organising visas. I managed to get my Cambodian visa overnight and discoved I can't get my Lao visa in Bangkok as it would expire before I plan enter the country. With only my Vietnamese visa left to obtain, I decided to leave my passport at the embassy while the paperwork was processed and spend the time at the beach.
Ko Chang is a picturesque tropical island about 5 hours South East of Bankok. The beaches are beautiful white sand and the sea wonderfully clear. I spent a few days just lazing around, reading books, taking the odd dip in the ocean and eating delicious Thai food. It was a great escape from the big city life in Bangkok. I did a couple of scubs dives with the local dive crew to see some of the local sealife. The jet black sea-urchins with tiny, strongly coloured yellow and blue mouth parts were beautiful, but not something I wanted to get too close too. I saw anemonies and my first (living) clams, sifting the ocean for food. At times, there were amazing schools of fish swimming all around you. One cleaner fish tried to nibble a little bit at my arm, but considering he was only about 1 inch long, he didn't do too much dammage.
Back in Bangkok, I picked up my visa for Vietnam which was ready just as promised. It turned out to be a big piece of paper, about A5 in size, with lots of official writing on it and a copy of my passport photo attached to it. Rather more flamboyant than the usual rubber stamp in your passport!
That's Thailand for this time, next stop Cambodia...