BANGKOK, Thailand – Welcome all celiacs....Enjoy! Or at least that's what I think this country should have at the ticket counter. After months in the Middle East, I was thrilled to see Pad Thai served on the street and rice coming out with every dish heaven (at least for those of us who cannot eat wheat).

Unfortunately, while my stomach might have been happy, my head was not. As the swine flu scare hit full swing, every country required travellers to declare, not shopping, but their health level. Luckily I managed to make it through Bangkok's airport, checking on the form that I had a sore throat, and make my way for bed.

I was a little nervous travelling solo, but Bangkok is easy to travel around. From the airport there are buses that run you into town and the hostel choices have improved since it was slandered in the book and movie of the same name, 'The Beach'. And people who are attracted to this part of the world seem far more interested in being social.

My first day here I managed to meet two girls from France and Holland while simply eating my fifth Pad Thai of the day. OK, an exaggeration, but seriously I almost OD'd on this stuff which cost only $1. The next day we decided to head out together to see the Grand Palace in Bangkok.

After an amazing breakfast of fresh mango and sticky rice for just under $1, we headed for the Ko Ratanakosin area which is, as the guidebook puts it, "the Vatican City of Thai Buddhism". But this is the Vatican City that has been sent through the wash with an orange and green T-shirt. Everything is full of colour here. And these colour-carpeted and holy buildings include the Wat Phar Kaew (Temple of the Emerald Buddha), the Grand Palace and Wat Pho. What's a wat? Essentially it is a temple monastery and this Thai pilgrimage site covers more than 200,000 square metres and walls that run 1,900 metres long.

Of course first you have to get here and for some reason the favourite game of Thais standing on the street is to tell you the area is closed.

Beware travellers, the guards will close the palace to you if they don't like what you're wearing no bare shoulders or knees. My poor Dutch travel buddy came with a sarong for her legs, but a sweater for her shoulders. They wouldn't let her in until, rather than drape it over her shoulders, she fully put on the sweater. I thought she was going to pass out halfway through it was more than 30 degrees Celsius!

The first stop, of course, was the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. Actually made of jasper, it has made quite a journey around East Asia. From Northern Thailand, where it was hidden in stucco, to its present home, it was seized by the Lao forces which took it to Luang Prabang and Vientiane before the Thais finally brought it back home. There were no pictures allowed in this main temple, but I managed to sneak one outside.

Then it was a quick run past the Grand Palace, which the most revered King of Thailand (Don't you dare whisper a bad word or it's off with your Apparently the former leader of the country was ousted after he muttered something unseemly towards the king.) uses for ceremonial occasions. Us commoners, however, are not allowed in. So before my Dutch travel buddy could pass out we left the site and headed for the oldest Temple in Bangkok.

Wat Pho was a quick five-minute walk (or at least it should have been but my French travel buddy got caught in the market along the way) from the palace grounds and is the largest temple in Bangkok. It dates back to the 16th Century AD. But what's more intriguing is the enormous reclining Buddha. Forty-six metres long and 15 metres high it puts Bermuda wedding cakes to shame!

Though made in plaster with a brick core it is completely covered in gold leaf! Imagine covering that ...

After spending a couple of hours in these temples and palaces we were completely templed out and needed nourishment. So it was back to a street market for some rice and a ginger curry for $1 before returning to the hostel.

With an hour of downtime I had to get ready for my first experience with Muay Thai or Thai Boxing I promised my Dutch travel buddy I would go with her. Perfect thing for a head cold!!

I was sure I would be fine I did bootcamp three days a week in Bermuda. How can a two-hour boxing session be that bad? Ok, well what I should have read before going is that in Thai boxing "all surfaces of the body are considered fair targets and any part of the body except the head may be used to strike an opponent". Apparently in this no-holds-bared contact sport, that includes opponents grabbing each others heads and slamming them on their knees! Needless to say the training for this sport is, uh, tough. Warm-up? 15 minutes of skipping ... no breaks. Then it was shadow-boxing. I had never done this before and the instructors didn't speak much English so it was anybody's guess what they were asking me to do. Eventually I learned I was supposed to be kicking them in the ribs and trying to knock them out with an organised series of punches. I was ready to quit after half an hour, but my pride kept me going and after two hours left the ring stress free, ready to take on any opponent, and soaked.

I was in bed early that night and the next day I said goodbye to my travel buddies, who were heading home, and took a bus to Kanchanaburi, the town which hosts the Bridge over the River Kwai.

A three-hour journey on an air-conditioned bus transplanted me from major city to tiny town with two main roads, one of which runs next to the infamous river. I didn't arrive until about 3 p.m., but managed to sneak a peak at the museum that details the history of the bridge, the railway, and the town. Seriously depressing stuff. Imagine every man, woman and child in Bermuda and then some (yes, about 100,000 people) dying to detonate through a forest creating 415 kilometre of train track and you have what is now called the Death Railway.

This railway connecting Burma (now Myanmar) to Thailand was supposed to take five years to complete according to engineers, but this was not fast enough for the Japanese. They pushed thousands of Asian labourers and captured POWs, including British, Australians, Americans and Canadians, to complete the connection during the Second World War in 16 months (it was supposed to make transport of goods easier). After all this blood was spilled, the Allied Troops then bombed and destroyed the Bridge in 1945 [it was rebuilt after the war).

With some of the history under my belt and feeling completely exhausted I didn't make it to the actual bridge which is three kilometres from the centre of town, but did find some dinner at the hostel. Besides I was planning to see it the next day as part of a tour I booked after seeing the nearby waterfalls.

Next Stop: Climbing the waterfalls near Kanchanburi