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Thailand & Singapore
This is an edited version of our travel log. This sixth page is about Singapore and Thailand (first time).
1st November, 2005, Singapore
On to the last continent! We arrived late without a hotel booking and ended up in a bizarre hotel which was full of immigrant workers! We only had 1 full day here, so we had to rush around to see things. First we went to a Hindu temple, before wandering around Little India and the Arab Quarter,
which were both full of tiny little streets, packed with shops. We then took the MRT down to the Colonial District, where the buildings were huge. One of the best views was over the river with old fashioned flat bottomed boats and old Chinese style houses, with huge skyscrapers in the background. We finished off by eating in a hawker centre, basically a food court but a lot nicer, with loads of choice. After this we went to the night safari, which was really cool wandering around in the dark seeing giraffes, cheetahs, lions and tigers.
November 3, 2005, Khao San Road, Bangkok
Blimey!
it is fairly hot here and there are more dreadlocks and stripy linen trousers than you could shake a juggling stick at. 
I'm glad we went to South America first, as it has made here a little less overwhelming. But it is still a fair bit to take in.
There are quite a lot of tourists and travellers here, a lot more than we've seen, probably anywhere, maybe even Cusco. Those sandal things that ware designed for hiking are making me so irrationally angry that I find it hard to think.
I have made one important discovery recently and that is that I do not hate/fear crowds. 
In fact I take an instant dislike to most people and hence crowds of people will statistically contain a much larger number of people that I dislike, hence I intensely dislike crowds of people. It's all about the statistics. Tim can probably shed more light on it.
The traffic here in Bangkok is crazy. We arrived at the airport at 2.50pm and didn't clear immigration until about 4.15pm. By the time we had waited for the bus and got across town about 15km to Khao San it was nearly 7pm.
Today we just took it easy and we probably haven't made it to 200m away from the hotel! Tomorrow we are intending on doing a bit more stuff, but with people coming to visit for Christmas we might leave a few sights until then. Applied for our Cambodian visas today and should have them by tomorrow night, we are then going to a beachy island for a few days to chill out (not having a job somewhere foreign is very tiring) 
, before heading into Cambodia.
Incidentally the hotel is really nice. I added my winnings from betting on Leamington from the last round to our maximum daily accommodation budget and booked one of the most expensive hotels in Bangkok for two nights.
Got my monies worth by eating so much of the buffet breakfast that I had to have a lie down and have still not eaten anything else yet today (now 7.30pm); I hope I've made you proud Tony. Speaking of which there was a place in little India in Singapore that did a ~3 quid 15 course Indian banquet; I thought of you. "What are these? You call these popadums? You're...."
Anyway, still having a good time and I think it will be about 9pm here when Leamington kick-off on Saturday, so more than enough time for a pre/post and half-time report from Tim/Jezz.
Missing you all. 
5th November, 2005, Koh Chang
After two nights we moved to a more budget hotel, and planned our journey to Koh Chang.
The next day we took a taxi to the sky-train, rode that to the bus station, then took a bus to Trat. When we got there we took a songthaw (pickup truck with seats in the back) to Laem Ngop, the ferry “port”, when we got off the ferry we had to take another songthaw to the village where we planned to stay. When he dropped us off he tried to rip us off (as had the previous songthaw and the taxi in the morning). After this it took me about half an hour to find a free room. Which all left us feeling like leaving right away!
November 8, 2005, Koh Chang
We have spent the past couple of days on an island about 200mile from Bangkok. It is fairly nice here, not as sticky as Bangkok and a little less crazy. We managed to get ourselves a room overlooking the sea at the quiet end of "white sands beach". We haven't really done anything important or noteworthy since we've been here.
Well I argued with a taxi driver over 50p and used the phase "for shame", which he didn't understand. It was the night we arrived and I was in no mood to be ripped off. again.
The weather here is fairly tropical, it is sunny some of the time, but it can quickly turn stormy and chuck it down with rain. Sea is always warm though and I went swimming today. Well some people might point out that it wasn't strictly swimming in the dictionary sense of the word, but I splashed a bit and didn't drown.
Gemma says: Simon was very good at swimming. There aren't any phones here so sorry we haven't phoned.
Simon says: Gemma has to write the message next time, she is being lazy and is now eating ice-cream and muttering. (now she says I'm not getting any more ice-cream. )
November 10, 2005, Koh Chang
The island isn’t quite what we expected of a Thai island, it is really mountainous, and the jungle comes right down to the town/beach, really nice though!
We stayed right at one end of the main beach town – at high-tide we had to wade though the sea, which was kind of cool.
It was very nice to spend a week doing absolutely nothing. We spent most days reading on our balcony overlooking the sea, then maybe an hour on the beach, then some swimming, then out for tea.
Had a really good fish barbeque on the beach – for about £7 we had huge prawns, a whole red snapper, plus beer.
Malaria tablets made me ill though