Hi everyone! we almost managed a whole nights sleep last nite so think wer finally getting over our jet lag woohoo. So today wev gone to our new lodge to meet our group and see our tour leader. our room is so nice, great to be out of our other one, its in a much nicer location with the river running beside it and its is only a 5 min walk from khaosan which is where we are at th moment using the internet to book some accomodation...WE HAVE OUR FLIGHTS TO KRABI!! we fligh tomorow at 5pm and stay there for 2 nights, then we are goin to island hop to Phi Phi island, stay 2 nights amd then onto Phuket island for 2 nights. accomodation is about 15 pounds anite, which isnt bad for air conditioned thai beach resort bungalows! Then we will get back onto the mainland and take a bus to Khao sok national park where we are meeting our group and continuing to travel down to singapore with them for 12 days. we had no problem sorting this out with our tour leader today he was very helpful and took us to the groups offices to giv us all info that we needed and contact numbers, and the office turned out to be upstairs in our hotel which was handy we were preparing ourselves for a trek accross bangkok!

we are both happy with the decision to not go to chaing mai as we saw someone today who had done it before and she said it was awful and almost killed her! we were worried about missing out but we will be seeing similar scenery at the national park and will be able to ride elephants-which we originally thort we could only do in chiang mai.

Carly's just been haggling again, think shes got the bug! got a v nice skirt for 200 baht (about 3 pounds). Such nice freshly squeezed orange juice from street stalls, you see them making it and its so refreshing in this heat, and need we say very cheep!! and wer sticking to evian water as bottled thai water tastes sweet, but we had thai men laughing at us wen we bought evian!!

We are going to get a tuk tuk (picture above) back to our hotel, the amount of times we get asked a day, tuktuk? is ridiculous! u cant look at anyone in the street because as soon as you show the slightest interest to them they just wont leave you alone!

wev got some nice pictures of deep fried bugs that are beeing sold on street, yummay! so wel upload soon (as wel as some nice piccys!) u can also buy a diploma/degree on the street rather amusing wen we tried to take a picture of the sign and they hid it because they thort we were undercover police or something.

(lauren) Yo.the hotel is soo decent..we had a REALLY NICE dinner...the spring rolls are soo nice but we were soo full after starters..i ordered like a $5 dish of seafood and i just couldnt eat it.. Anyway we had our Thai massage and we had to change into these obese robes..they were comf though..i duno what carly expected but i CERTAINLY did not expect a thai massage to be as such. (For me) at first it was quite painful, they really dug their elbows into the front leg and i could really feel my muscles twitching which i guess was supposed to happen..it was generally REAlly nice and then we turned onto our back and the Thai women really literally crawled onto our back, so funny...the most painful bit was the neck massage and Carly was NOT happy..about that OR the fact that they kept touching her knees!! But for 300baht for an hour it was amazing..thats like $5 (btw..these computers dont have pound signs so im using the dollar sign but the price is really 5 pounds)

We havent quite got used to sleeping with air con yet so it gets freezing..but il let you know when we have a dees sleep..SOO happy that we are not going to Chiang Mai!!!

so nice speaking to u today charles, absence definatly makes the heart grow fonder. and thanks to lisa for topping up my fone!

lots of love hope everyone is ok xxxxxx