Amsterdam

Amsterdam is all that we imagine it to be. Flat, watery, bikes everywhere, some of the houses are disappearing into the subsoil. The windows are huge and the stairs so narrow that everything has to be craned into the house. It is a smaller city than I expected - only 750,000 people. We went on a canal boat ride and then for a walk but it was flying visit.

There are many houseboats, the number of registrations has been capped so they are very expensive. Many of them have been taken over by squatters.

Amsterdam prides itself on its flowers and this is a small street market with bulbs, blooms and dope starter kits. (One in Graham's case - dont tell him.)

Bangkok - July 5-7

Goading crocodiles must be a hard way to make a living. This was at the Samphan Elephant Park. It was eerily quiet there indicating that Thailand's recent turmoil has really impacted on the tourist trade.

Graham and Liv went of a ride on an elephant - each time the elephant took a step the seat seemed to slip a bit further Grahamward. He is wearing the Pinkie Hat which I bought there.

We went to a floating market. In the brochures advertising this tour there were hundreds of boats over flowing with flowers, fruit and other fresh produce. After a 90 minute drive we arrived at a back water canal in which lumps of floating rubbish far outnumbered boats. A few old ladies sold cooked squashed bananas and the inevitable street market was full of

people desperate to sell.

This is the lady who had never seen a pinkie hat before and was desperate to have it for her granddaughter. It undoubtedly looks a lot less silly on her granddaughter than it did on Graham or me but I was sad not to have it for some days. Never mind, Bangkok residents were probably a lot less amused and unkind than Londoners would have been to see Graham walking about in it.

church

This is the church in which Shakespeare was buried. He was probably outside originally but they have carted him and put him on an inaccessible place so they can charge $3 to see the casket. He's probably making almost as money dead as Elvis or Michael Jackson.

Shakespeare's birth house

This is purportedly the bed on which Shakespeare was born, or at least the room in which he was born. The house is set up to look very like it would have then. The trundle bed on the side is where the children slept and the wall paper is made of linen, it hangs quite loosely on the walls and was painted by decorators after it had been hung a the walls were never square. The dress on the bed was worn by both girls and boys at the time as boys had a higher mortality rate and so they tried to trick the devil into thinking they were only girls. (How many cross dressing gender confused adults they produced we will never know.)

castell coch

This was amazing. The then richest guy in the world who owned half of Cardiff in the late 19th century had a hankering for a good project and so he decided to build himself a genuine medieval castle complete with working draw bridge. It is also beautiful inside as he got a heap of painters and and furniture makers to decorate it. It has the most incredible paintings on the walls, the drawing room is completely covered with aesop's fables. Can you see Pinkie sitting on the bed in the mistress's bedroom?

castles or piles of rubble?

This is the view of another castle wall. Edward 1 made himself very bust building heaps of these things in the 11th century and they are very intriguing.

This is one of the beaches we visited in wales. The mountains are incredibly green and the colour of the sea, sky and vegetation is enough to turn you to the nearest jumbo pack of Derwents.