So, after four hours sleep, we woke up just in time for our pick-up, and made our journey to Ko Tao hungover and still covered in sand from the beach party. Feeding said hangovers with chicken burgers at the ferry point we met Greg from SF, and once we arrived in Ko Tao we met up with Steffi from Khao Lak.

We stayed at AC Resort, swayed by the pool which turned out to be pretty grim. Luckily we were right on the beach, and spent our first afternoon catching up on our sleep there, though not too successfully on hard wooden sunbeds. We all ate dinner together on cushions by the sea, although out of the four of us only one was impressed with the food. I had green curry which was more of a watery soup with lumps in it, but Thai food in ferang areas is never that fab. Went for drinkies at a popular bar called Sairee, whose bungalows we were originally going to stay in, and after seeing how lovely they were wished we had. But we did have a telly in our room and me and Brooke fell asleep watching Kindergarten Cop.

The 29th was Brooke's birhday and I treated her to brekkie on the beach. Her's was lovely, I had stale bread and something posing as a coconut shake. She was off for a day diving and me, Greg, and Steffi took to the sea snorkelling. It was fab as we went around the whole island and saw the most incredible coral and fish and sharks!!! I had an interesting encounter with a triggerfish, it was only after I got out the water and described it to our guide that she said to avoid them as they were really violent... which explains why it was circling me and about to go in for a headbutt :S! I also saw a sea snake, again being told afterwards that it was poisonous.

I met Brooke from her dive with a doodled birthday postcard and salty breadsticks, lame present but the best I could do without a Clinton's! We had cocktails at sunset and proceeded to get ready to go out in the dark as the power went off for the umpteenth time. Had a lurvely bbq for dinner, courtesy of Greg (he didn't cook it, obviously, but he paid, such a gentleman).

We wandered to the lively end of town and ended up at a ladyboy cabaret show, which was awesome, as you'll see from the Tina Turner vid I uploaded from it. Afterwards we went to a beach bar and partied on the shore... and then on the bar. As usual rounded the night off with 7-11 toasties and rotee.

I was pretty sure I hadn't drunk that many margaritas but Brooke maintains otherwise because of what's become a favourite holiday story: I took my glasses off and put them on the bedside shelf, lay down, and half a second later sat up declaring I'd lost my glasses. Whoops!!

Another day of travelling, another hangover. We spent a few hours on the beach before our ferry in the afternoon. As we'd already checked out of our room I had to shower the sand off with the 'bum cleaner' in the restaurant's toilets.

The two hour ferry ride to Chumporn on the mainland somehow extended to four, during which we played lots of rounds of cards, and we ended up arriving in BKK around 4am. Haggled with a taxi driver to take up back to Saraburi for 500b each, and were tucked up before dawn.

Bye bye lovely beaches!!