Wrong place at the wrong time

It's been a week since we left India, and an eventful one too!

We landed in Kuala Lumpur late last Saturday night, tired but excited about being in a new city, and hopped on a bus to the Chinatown district. Little did we know that it was to be our most stressful night so far...

We'd booked a hostel online the night before, but arrived shortly after midnight to find that our room had been given away! Karl was pretty annoyed, but I didn't think it was too big a deal - I was just keen to move on and find somewhere else to stay. There were signs all around us for hostels and hotels, so how hard could it be? Absolutely impossible. And I'm not even exaggerating! It turns out we'd arrived on one of the busiest weekends in KL - the weekend of the Malaysian Grand Prix. We walked around for an hour asking at every place we came to, only to be told that everywhere was fully booked. I mean seriously, the Grand Prix??

Anyway, eventually we got so tired of walking around that we pleaded with a hotel clerk to let us sleep on the sofas in the lobby, and thankfully he said yes. I think he was too tired to say no - he fell asleep before we did!

We managed to find a hostel easily enough the next day (air conditioned, too!), but the strangest thing was that the city didn't really seem that busy or buzzing with any sort of Formula 1 fever. Where did all the people go?

We stayed in Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days before deciding that we couldnt wait to get to Thailand, so we booked a train up to Bangkok and arrived there a couple of days later. It's been pretty cool here so far - we visited Chutachuk Weekend Market, which sells really nice souveniers, homewares and some nice clothes. If we were flying back home after Thailand, I think I couldve spent a lot of money there!

We've also been lazing around in parks, and when the heat gets too much it's quite nice to walk around the lovely air conditioned malls.

Unfortunately, it seems that once again we're in the wrong place at the wrong time as there are currently massive protests going on against the government - you may have heard about it on the news? The Red Shirts want to overthrow the current prime minister, so they've been rioting, and about 18 people were killed yesterday when they clashed with the military. We saw some of the protesters when we went to Siam Mall the other day, and they looked quite peaceful at the time - there were families, food stalls, people getting foot massages. I guess it doesnt take long before things can get out of hand!

So tomorrow morning we're moving on to Cambodia instead. We'll spend a couple of weeks there, before visiting Vietnam for a little while, followed by Laos for a further two weeks. We'll then cross the border back into Thailand for a month or so, before working our way down to Malaysia again, and finally ending up in Indonesia sometime around July/August. Or that's the plan, anyway!