Ko Pha Ngan I deliberately waited a little while before uploading our opinion of Ko Pha Ngan because if I had done it straight away, I may have been unduly harsh. Unfortunately the abiding memory of this island will be the loss of my daybag, and with it everything I hold dear - my gadgets. We lost the bag on the first day and the rest of the trip didn't get much better. Ko Pha Ngan was the last of the islands we hit before returning to the mainland. It is a s...

Koh Tao is located northwest of Koh Samui and was only an easy 3hr boat journey. Koh Tao literally means Turtle Island and is so named because of it's shape and the abundance of green turtles inhabiting the sea around the island. Known as one of Thailand's best dive spots (the island is ranked number two world-wide for issuing PADI certificates) we had chosen this island as the best (and cheapest) place for us to learn to dive. We had selected Crystal Dive as it...

Ko Samui After spending the night in Krabi, we headed across Thailand on our way to Ko Samui. Samui is the 3rd largest Island in Thailand and the biuggest in a chain of Islands known as he Samui Archipelago which includes Ko Tao, Ko Pha Ngan and the Ao thang national marine park. The purpose of going to Samui, was to spend a week at a Spa. Its not exactly your average backpacker activity, but we found out about it online and it sounded quite good and was relat...

Phuket, Ko Phi Phi, and Krabi We had planned to catch a train down to the islands, but after we found out that it would take us the best part of 2 days to get there we decided to investigate other options. We managed to find a flight to Phuket which cost only about 45 quid. The only problem was Phuket is on the opposite side if Thailand than Kho Samui, which was where we were heading. There are two main groups of islands in Thailand, and they are situated on...

Chiang Mai Chiang Mai is the northern capital of Thailand and is about 700 km from Bangkok, closer to the mountains in the north of the country. This was to be our first stop in Thailand, and we had 10 days planned here to ease into the Thai life, including Paddy's day in the sun. Our landing at Bangkok started badly as my guidebook is 2 years old and hasn't any info on the new airport or onward connections, but after a little bit of confusion, we simply hop...