Friday 10th October. Have arranged a trip up the river this afternoon. Spend the morning - v.hot and humid - on shopping expedition to look for a ladiesTailor as Marilyn wants a silk jacket made for her. No success. I am so hot and sweaty that Iam ashamed to report that Iam driven to taking a dive into an 'English Pub' just to take advantage of the air conditioning. The traffic is amazing and at the height of the rush hour a team of paintersare painting the kerb stones. No barriers/no signs/no lane closures/no traffic cones. Just get on with the job. How refreshing.

The boat trip was fun. Up river on a fast sight seeing on a fast 24m launch then transfer to a former rice barge to return at a more leisurely pace. The rainy season has just finished and so the river is high and many of the riverside shanty houses are indanger of flooding. All the boats seem to be fitted with ex-car/truck engines. The fast narrow boats have them mounted on a stand with a long propshaft extending out over the transom. They go like the proverbial off a shovel throwing up a cock'scomb of spay from the prop. Take lots of photos of engines. You know me. Back to the hotel in time for 'Happy Hour' and guess who is gasping for a G&T. She's so keen to get stuck into it that she tries todrink through a plastis swizzle stick mistaking it for a straw. Likes the shape of the glass so much that she nicks it!. Can't take her anywhere. It's only now that we have got back to the hotel that Marilyn discovers a Tailor in the building and arranges for a jacket to be made in 24 hours. In the evening we take the Skytrain - a high level railway - to have supper at a restaurant that Marilyn found when she brought her mother here nearly thirty years ago. Its called Cabbages and Condoms and is run as a charity with all the profits going to the promotion of contraception and safe sex. A super meal. More than we could eat and drink for less than £25. for the two of us. When the bill came I didn't take much notice of the goodies on the plate thinking they were mints but I realised that I might have found them a bit chewy when Marilyn suggested that she took them home for the boys. You'veuessed it. They were packets of condoms.

Wandering around the Patpong street market tonight it struck me how very few of the Thai people are over weight. Can't say that about the tourists. Not many smoking either. Have been told that blocks of modern one roomed flats do not have kitchens. The cooked food is so cheap in the street markets that people don't bother to cook at home.