hospitals

We discovered that in fact pretty much everything was closed. We had a lie and wandered around looking for somewhere open to serve us brunch. It was fairly expensive as it was aimed at westerners obviously. After that we thought a trip to a doctors would be fun. We arrived during the lunchtime break so we checked out a nearby Wat which had some monkeys amling around. We headed back to the clinic to realise, actually, it wasn't opening today. So off to the hospital we went! Izzie got a CAT scan, it was advised to check she was OK for the flight to bangkok. This took a fair amount of time and there was a man with a large wound to his neck bleeding everywhere - really pretty!She in fact has a very healthy brain.
We wasted much of our day in this useless fashion and took in a limited number of shops before rounding the day off with a sunday roast (or jacket potatoe for me) The other 2 hit an internet cafe and I updated my travel journal - lots of sticking in to be done and watching a very dodgy horror movie. Phnom penh was not the most exciting of places for us! Cambodia has not been my favourite stop and I was most glad to be arriving in Thailand yesterday. We flew here and had a dispute at the airport about the departure tax. I was under the impression that it was included in the price of teh ticket but upon further inspection of the terms and conditions just now it says it is only included at SOME airports. Annoying.
We arrived safely in bangkok and took a taxi to a travel agent to book some bus tickets up to chiang mai. We had some spare time so we left our bags at the travel agent, checked out a nearby wat and then hit a shopping mall with an international food court for dinner.
I found an english paper headlining something about Gordon Brown selling out on the queen which got Craig and I started on a political conversation, which led to the novel idea of me setting up my own political party (or merging Lib.Dems and the BNP) in my campaign to be Prime Minister. We even discussed policies. We asked Izzie what was wrong from a foreigners point of view. She came up with 4 things: 1)A-levels are too easy (though she couldn;t tell me what she studied in maths that I hadn't also studied) 2)Britian sucks up to america (that is a misfortunate consequence of having a leader who thinks George Bush is best thing since sliced bread) 3) we drink too much (and she's irish!) and 4)we're all really arrogant and expect everyone else to speak english. My response to the last point was that in the case of the few people who do try to speak a native langauge (i.e. me) i'm met by stubborn people who only want to practise their english which is incredibly frustrating. She was abit offended that I suggested some of her opinions of the british we're unfounded especially when I told her that there are some things I can't bring up around her because of her irish pride she just insults everything british (i.e education) which gets a bit annoying really.
I've just caught sight of the powerpuff girls on the tv playign in the corner! teehee!
We arrived in Chinag Mai no problem. I slept quite well as teh bus was pretty empty so I had 2 seats. It was a struggle working out what to do at 4.30 am but one hostel agreed to let us sit in their courtyard and we could check-in later. We stayed up doing not a lot, then went for breakfast. We went for an amble too. A motorbike fell over onto Craig's leg (sounds ridiculous I know)I hadn't realised how bad it was so whilst he went back to the hostel to clean it up izzie and I ambled a bit more and went back to meet him. After taking some alcohol & iodine to the cut to clean it, we realised it was a pretty nasty gash that would need stitches. To the hostpital we went! It was a relaly nice hospital actually and he got seen almost immediately. The staff that dealt with us all spoke english and were really friendly. The doctor stitching Criag's leg up (5 stitches) even cracked a joke. Craig was in a bit of a state a) because of the pain b) he hates hospitals and c) he was in shock too. So it's 11am on our first day in Thailand, if you don't include yesterday, and we had a trip to the hopsital already! They were joking that it's me next. I just hope it isn't!