And lo, it was time for the visa run, an unpleasant but necessary part of the trip if we were to stay in Thailand for another month.

On paper it was (fairly) straightforward. A tuktuk ride to the pier, a boat trip to the mainland, a taxi to Patong - the sleaze capital of Phuket - for dinner and some light gawping, another taxi to the airport, flight to Kuala Lumpur, hang around the departures hall for 3 hours, flight back to Phuket, taxi to pier, boat back to island, tuktuk back to resort. Phew. What could possibly go wrong with such a simple schedule?

OK, well let's start with the tuktuk. Or rather let's not, as it didn't turn up. Which was rather awkward for the resort as it was their own transport, but the driver had gone awol, along with his vehicle.

There were lots of frantic telephone calls and walkie-talkie communications. Even without the ability to understand Thai it was apparent that the general message was one of panic. We were booked on the penultimate ferry at 4.30 p.m., the last boat left at 4.50 p.m. If we didn't get to the pier by then all the rest of our carefully arranged plans, well, you can guess the rest.

At 4.15 p.m. the driver screeched to a halt at our feet, threw us and our bags on before jumping into the driver's seat and putting his foot down. It's a leisurely 30 minute drive to the pier but he was channelling Jenson Button. Never before has a tuktuk travelled at such speeds down those roads, around those bends and, ouch, over those potholes. Islanders and chickens scarpered clucking and screeching as we zoomed along, intent on breaking the tuktuk land speed record. Brian and I hung on grimly in the back trying to avoid concussion as we were bounced around like King Edwards in a sack. At least I assume Brian was doing the same as me, it was a bit hard to see in amongst the swirls of thick red dust that were being displaced by all this furious automotive activity.

At 4.35 we screeched to a halt at the pier and emerged blinking and staggering to find that we had, unsurprisingly, indeed missed the boat and now had to wait quarter of an hour for the next one. Because tuktuks, even flat out, are never really going to be able to knock more than a few seconds off the journey time due to them being run on old eggshells and wellington boots, so the energy and speed was more of a message to us that effort was being made rather than an actual belief that that struggle would result in us getting there any quicker. Oh well, at least there was another boat, which half an hour later dropped us at Bang Rong Pier on Phuket. One step closer to the airport!

But first we were off to Patong as we had a few hours to kill before our midnight flight, for which we had the services of an air conditioned people carrier and a talkative driver. After we'd dealt with the usual exhortations to visit the snake farm, the Fanta-sea show (geddit?) and any number of tempting shopping emporiums, no doubt run by members of his family, we were on our way through the surprisingly heavy Phuket rush hour traffic. After nearly an hour we were winding our way up a wide, steep hillside, our driver skilfully overtaking whilst chatting occasionally on his mobile, pausing only to motion to the road ahead. 'This; Patong' he informed us as we crested the hill and started our descent along an equally steep and sinuous road. 'Many, many accidents in rainy season'. He tutted and pointed to the low, dented and totally inadequate crash barriers at the side of the road 'then government installed these'. We nodded and, observing the sheer drop on the other side, made a mental note never to come here in the rainy season. 'It Ok though' he chuckled, obviously seeing our alarm 'it only buses go over - and they mostly full Chinese people'. 'Hilarious' I muttered, but I did feel strangely reassured by that information, after all we weren't in a bus, it wasn't the rainy season and we weren't Chinese. The odds really were in our favour.

And so we arrived in Patong. We wandered down a road that, because it is pedestrianized after 6 p.m. has been imaginatively named 'Walking Street'. It was a heaving mass of tattooed and bejewelled tourists in lurid leisurewear, bright lights, MacDonalds, Starbucks, KFC, bars, beers, boxing matches and, of course, girly bars. Touts offered us tickets to the ubiquitous ping-pong shows, massage shops promised us they were 'Number one on Tripadvisor' and every shop had invested in at least one flashing light to attract the attention of the passing trade. It was an assault to the senses, it was colourful, and it was noisy. It was horrendous.

After dinner for us, and a casual snack for some passing mosquitoes, we braved Walking Street again just to reassure ourselves that it was as ghastly the second time around as the first. Apparently not - Brian admitted that he was starting to enjoy it, purely in an observational capacity he hastened to assure me. He wanted to have a beer and watch a bit of street life, but I was intent on more mundane matters - getting my legs waxed. So I settled back on the world's smallest couch behind a musty curtain in a corridor at the back of the beauty parlour and allowed Mrs Magoo to slap hot wax on my legs. She would then rip it off and peer uncertainly at my skin, attempting to work out through her milk-bottle glasses whether or not she had successfully removed sufficient hairs (she hadn't). Meanwhile Brian settled down to enjoy a chilled Singha beer and keep out of trouble (he didn't).

I only left him for a half-hour, but in that short period of time a fight had broken out in the bar between a thai girl and her consort. Fists flew, heated words were exchanged and, surprisingly, (and rather thrillingly for Brian) female chests were bared. This was more excitement than we've had all month. Given that the average age of the bar's inhabitants was about 70 I'm surprised there was no collateral damage in the form of a heart attack, but they all looked so spaced out and bored, intent on drinking as many beers as possible and smoking as many cigarettes as they could manage before bedtime, they'd probably seen it all before.

There was just time for a glorious thai foot massage at a bargain £6 an hour before it was time to leave behind the fleshpots and drinking dens of sleazeville and head for the airport. We were feeling quietly confident as we strolled, boarding passes in hand, through the departure gates and into Immigration one hour before our flight. You could almost have said we were whistling…

Until, that is, we saw the queues in front of the Immigration desk. It wasn't that they were huge, probably about 20-30 people in each, but they were barely moving. We settled in for a tedious, slow-moving wait and no time for a cup of tea at the other side of them. Ho hum. After 20 minutes in line we had moved maybe 10 feet. Other people on our flight were getting restless and kept trying to jump the queues. People kept rearranging themselves into different groups in different queues, it was all becoming a bit annoying and stressful. Ten minutes later and we had shuffled forward another few feet when we noticed an air stewardess in full Qatar Airways uniform (our flight, our flight!) gliding slowly backwards and forwards the other side of the Immigration desks, she was holding up a large placard that said 'Final Call'. It was 11.20 p.m. and our flight wasn't due to leave for another 40 minutes, we all thought we had plenty of time. Panic seized us. Panic seized the other Kuala Lumpur bound passengers; there was general mayhem and a surge to the front. Whispered discussions took place between officials. Passengers on our flight were told to gather at one of the currently unmanned desks, which of course favoured the young and agile. Spotty teenaged youth elbowed little old ladies to the ground as the cheering rabble formed a disorderly queue. We had a split second to decide whether to join the unruly throng or hold tight to our place in our queue, we were only 5 from the front, how much longer could it take? As we crept ever closer I noticed a woman carrying her sleeping child who had pushed into the front of our queue and were waiting patiently for someone to let them in. I felt sorry for her, the child looked heavy and cumbersome. I really, really didn't want to let her go ahead of us as we had so little time, but still..... Luckily just as I was about to make the gesture her large, fit and healthy husband loomed up behind her to see how she was getting on in her bid to beat the system. I suddenly felt a lot less guilty as I pushed my passport across to the Immigration Officer, got my stamp and we ran to the flight, hearing the doors clang shut behind us. That is the first time I have been on a flight that left 20 minutes early. I have no idea why, I'm just grateful we made it.

The only thing we had to worry about now was getting another visa on our return. I know it's mostly a formality but of course it had crossed our minds that we would be in real trouble if we didn't get back into Thailand for some reason, not least of which being that all our possessions are currently on a little island in the middle of the Andaman Sea.

We got to Kuala Lumpur, leisurely disembarked (no rush as our next flight was 4 hours away) and wandered through the modern airport marvelling at the architecture, the shops and the number of people around at 2 a.m. in the morning. Stopping at the Departures Board was just a formality to check our return flight, but I did one of those comedy double takes when I couldn't see it on there. I got Brian to check, nope, no sign of our flight. Gulp. How many times had I checked, double-checked and re-checked these flights? My stomach gave that little sinking feeling. Were we stuck now in Malaysia with no clothes, no belongings and, worse, a really bad reputation for trip organising?

Distraught we headed for the Information Desk, where we discovered that our flight was leaving - but from another airport. Two fellow travellers informed us that we needed to be at the LCC airport (the LCC stands for Low Cost Carrier). After the scheduled luxury of Qatar Airlines we're back to earth with a bump on Asia Air, their equivalent to Easyjet. Luckily those same two travellers have been there before, know how to get there and one of them was heading back there now to catch a flight to China where they are both teaching English in Shanghai, and we can share a taxi with him. Of course we had no local currency to pay for the taxi, but his co-worker, an English guy named Nick, offered to lend us enough Malaysian Ringgit to pay for our share of the taxi. The kindness of strangers.

And so we found ourselves, dazed and confused, bleary-eyed yet triumphant, at the budget Kuala Lumpur airport. We were on the final stretch! It was seriously bustling at 3 a.m. Lots of travellers with old-fashioned suitcases, large cardboard boxes, tethered goats and chickens in crates, ok maybe not the livestock, but everyone did seem to be travelling with all bar the kitchen sink. People were trying to sleep in all sorts of contorted, uncomfortable positions, ma, pa, grandma, the kids, and us - all piled into this giant aircraft hangar waiting patiently for our £5 flights.

Finally, at 7 a.m. we took off, landing back at Phuket airport just over an hour later. Clutching our passports, crossing our fingers and trying to look supremely not bothered, we approached the Immigration Desk for our hoped-for permission to return. It took agonising minutes to get the stamp in our passports that allowed us to stay for another month. But we got it, hurrah!

We strolled out of the airport where the sun was just coming up and bathing everything in a soft, golden, glorious light. We felt we should be kissing the ground in gratitude. We skipped triumphantly into a taxi which whizzed us back to the ferry, where, our luck still holding, there was a ferry ready to go. With breakfast waiting at the other end our day really couldn't get any better, but actually it sort of did.

On our homeward tuktuk ride (thankfully rattling along at a much more comfortable pace than our boneshaker ride the previous day) we were followed by a typically overloaded motorbike. In Asia it's not unusual to see 3 or 4 people, adults, children and babies, squeezed onto a motorbike; people rarely wear crash helmets and frequently take the opportunity to transport animals and building materials as well. The other day I saw a motorbike where the passenger was facing backwards and pulling along a food cart with a fire burning merrily away on top of it, and of course no-one seemed at all concerned.

Anyway, the motorbike that followed us most of the way back to the resort after our eventful, yet successful, visa run was being driven by a boy who looked no more than 8 years old. I kid you not. His passengers were his upright and placid grandfather and, behind him, another 2 boys of a similar young age. The driver looked a little nervous at being observed so closely by us in the back of our tuktuk as he tried a number of times to overtake, but lost his nerve at each attempt. What struck me the most though was the serenely calm face of his grandfather who seemed to be taking the whole journey in his stride. Not for him the anguished face-pulling and screaming that I would exhibit were I foolish enough to allow myself to be chauffeured by a school-boy on a dangerous vehicle. My 18 year old niece, the lovely Alice, has just passed her driving test (congratulations Ali). Being her passenger will be excitement enough for me.

Time for a little lie down I think.....