Southern Thaislands

Beth dreading Patrizia's hair - her Swiss double!

Well I guess it's my turn, am struggling to leave this huge bed next to lapping waves on Ko Phi Phi (overly-touristy but stunning island famed as 'The Beach' set) so I should really get on with it. Since being in Thailand we've learnt almost everything here is done purely on trust, even people clearly living on pence per day will often expect you to remember to pay them rather than asking - to the point where after staying in a jungle hut for 3 days and eating at the attached restaurant every day, upon leaving the owner handed us a pad and asked us to write down what we had consumed... of course not everyone is so honest (or lazy!), as we found out upon arriving in a phuket guest house and discovering our bag had been gone through on the last bus and they had stolen beth's wash bag (with all her jewellery), travel towels (hmm, okay...) and our 2 LARGE hoodies & a coat. Bearing in mind it's 30 degrees here and this is the cool season. Honestly.

Benches are often the only refuge from relentless ants

Our camo neighbour

The jungle deserves a mention, not just for the stunning surroundings and surreal gibbon calls that wake you up every morning but particularly for our trip across cheowlan lake, reached after a breezy pickup ride from Khao Sok.

On the other side of the lake are a collection of floating raft-houses, with a small but tasty restaurant and a scarily rickety dive platform from where I tried to scare random kayakers.

A further short boat ride took us deep into jungle territory, a magical place where the plants react to the slightest touch :)

Deeper still (deeper!) and we were taken through a cave following an underground river, which got narrower and narrower until we were literally abseiling down underground waterfalls and swimming through the deeper sections. Along with the thousands of bats and spiders lurked some even nastier-looking unnameable monsters.

Yet another unnameable monster

Into Phuket, an island synonymous for package holidays and lager louts (so we had heard), though we were very pleasantly surprised after being shown round by an old school friend of mine - Paul Overton - who has been living here for the last 20 months and by all accounts absolutely loves it and has no intention of ever returning to the UK. Upon arrival we sorted out a moped (essential around here - £4 a day) and filled the tank (£1.60), paused to abandon all the road safety I had ever learnt and hit the road.

Getting used to motorbikes, pickups or motorbike sidecar foodstalls pulling out into the road without the slightest glance at the traffic, happens fairly quickly - the most worrying part is when you're happily motoring along at 60mph or so on a dual carriageway and see someone (usually a motorbike foodstall) coming towards you on your side... they swerve, you swerve, everyone smiles and you truck on. I found that expecting this to happen all the time was the safest way to travel.

Our first run-in with the police happened on the way to Patong, landed us with a 300B (£6) fine for driving without a license... meh. Patong should probably be experienced once in every person's life - once is probably enough too. As the seedy hub of Phuket's (and essentially Thailand's) sex-tourism, this place thrives on the type of people you'd give a wide berth to back home, with the main crowds lining trannie-alley, a 100m stretch of filth where the ladyboys gyrate atop tables and show off their brand new (and occasionally very deceptive!) implants and bodies. I won't go into too much detail, but the strip clubs (all women thankfully... or were they?!) make Krakov's clubs look like a church tea party.

Drinking around there is just as debauched - a favourite around the local bars is a thai bucket - involving a load of Sangsom (local hella cheap dark rum) and Red Bull. The Red Bull here is like a syrup, I'm told because it's many times stronger than the equivalent back home (european anti-amphetamine laws probably) and gives you a mean headache the next day. Similarly the local beer, Chang, is the cheapest around and at 6.4% can leave you with a massive Changover.

A slap-up meal Christmas Eve was much needed, a very understated little restaurant with crab pieces in coconut soup the size of your fist. Beth ordered a Sangsom, which at 200B (£4) we initially thought pricey, however when a half-litre bottle was presented our minds were set far more at ease!

A very chilled Christmas day consisted of motoring around the island on our moped, stopping to see the largest Buddha in Thailand which although still incomplete is an incredible sight to behold.

The Buddha Cat, asleep and twitching

Our plans are to chill for the next few days on Ko Lanta before heading back to Phuket for a beachy, hedonistic New Years!

So a very merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you, wishing you all the best from our little mosquito-netted beach den! xx

And so it begins....

Whoop whoop! We arrived in Bangkok and immediately got heat stroke due to a 40 degree leap in temperature... once recovered I had the best massage ever, a 1 hour Thai massage for just £4. Done by the typical tiny, beautiful Thai girl bending and stretching my muscles, twisting me and entangling me in positions that I didn't think possible. It was pretty painful at times but 'no pain, no gain'. James still hasn't had one, I think he has THE FEAR! I can't wait to learn Thai massage then he wont have a choice! of course other types of massage were available just around the corner...

From Bangkok we booked a night train south which James told me in great detail about how the seats clip together to make a bed and a second one pulls down from the wall, how you get a curtain, fresh, clean bedding.. so I'm thinking, awesome! watch a film, get a good nights sleep, how wrong I was.... when the train arrived it was just a normal train with hard plastic seats not built for western leg lengths. Possible the worst 7 hour train ride of my life followed by a 5 hour bus ride, what joys!

At the island of Ko Surin the snorkeling has been brillant. people say the coral is dead, (got 3 degrees too hot last year and killed it off) which is true but is quickly regrowing plus we didn't see how good it was before so it looks great to us! The marine life is in abundance, as well as many beautifully coloured fish we saw 8 black tipped reef sharks, a turtle, a lion fish and a scorpion/stone fish in one trip!

we have settled in to the travelers way of life qickly and easily meeting great people along the way (including our fabulous Swiss doubles Patrizia and Sven and two wonderful Italians Daniel and Mirko) who also enjoy a steady pace of life. An example of this: the 6 of us having dinner the other night and it took us 15mins to figure out what day of the week it was!

The island itself is stunning, all the jazz; white sand, turquoise sea, giant lizards roaming the forests, mischievous monkeys swinging from the tree tops and occasionally into your tent to steal the odd banana or coffee pot! also less desirably sporting the odd rat that eats through the tent and leave holes for the red ants to come in and eat you alive while you sleep! but worth it entirely. the first night james could feel the rats running up the side of his arm as he was pressed against the side of the tent, thankfully not telling me this until the following day!

upon leaving the island james discovered that giant soldier ants had decided the best place to set up a new colony was his left walking boot. lucky he noticed before putting it on. there must have been at least 60 ants in there. i guess ants like dark, smelly, damp places.

onwards we go inland to Khao Sok national park!