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