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Bangkok- Goodbye Thailand!

Lucked on a hotel I found randonly on the net- Suan Dusit Palace (or Place- depending on what crockery that has the name on it) but wsas only 800 Bt\for the 2 of us, like a 3/4 start hotel with regards to room, free brekkie, swimming pool (Altho men couldnt use it in the day as they had ladies swimming lessons!) and cheapo internet.  Had to catch the bus to get into town or Khoa San Rd but for the price and value, was great. Also had an AMAZING face massage there and Paul had a foot one after a long day of shopping, the best I had in Thailand

Most of our time was going between the tailor and the hotel, was soo humid that was just tiring doing anything. Was cool that we endewd up buying stuff at the flash tailor coz their taxi picked us up and dropped us off everywhere so saved us all the missioning! Got nice suits from Tonys Fashion House, but I was dumb and got navy and black- should have got a stripe in it or somethikng to difine the difference. Nice quality tho as dont crease which is nice.

We travelled lots on the Sky Train too (like their tube) which was lovely and airconned. Went to lotsa shopping places, as thats pretty much all we did while we where there. Some cool stuff.

The only other thing we did there was visit a prisoner, Vanessa Goosen. An ozy friend (Sean) gve me the idea as he went to visit a foreigner when he went to Thailand a few years ago after reading a book- the Damage Done, about an ozzy prisoner and how badly treated he was.  Vanessa is a South African and I found her name on a website: http://www.foreignprisoners.com/ She is in the Lard Yao Womens Prison and she is a former Miss South African contestant.  I was just really interested about how she had ended up there at the age of 20 and pregnant (she had her baby in prison).

I had written to her before I had left the UK and when we where there, as I said, it was a bit of a mission to go to the SA embassy to get a visit in the embassy room for 2 hours (or you go to the local room and only get 20 minutes).  It was really great to go, Vanessa is an amazing person and was just so excited to get a visit, she was just gushing, saying, she couldn't believe that someone was visiting her.  She is really soft spoken. She had told in her letter that she was very good frieds with Phylis (a kiwi) and suggested that Paul visit her, so he did while we where there. She had originally been given the death sentence for the amount of drugs she was trying to smuggle but the sentence has been reduced to about 35 years, the same as Vanessa who has served about 11.5 years of her sentence.

She spoke a bit about her daughter and her friend at home that is looking after her. She said its really hard as the time is so slow and its hard not to get depressed.  She said she wants to get into counselling when she gets home one day as she is a natural listener and a lot of the prisoners in there come to her with there problems already.  I said I would try and get her some books from my mom and Nicoles mom for her to read through.

I would really suggest anyone that would want to do it, go for it, its really an uplifting experience, quite emotional, hard to see a girl so similar to yourself stuck in there doing a sentence probably 10 times longer than most places in the world and in the worst conditions. I am so glad we went there.  All in all Bangkok was an amazing place- I surprisingly really liked it.  Really buzzy and crazy!

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