We're now in Koh Pha-Ngan and getting ready for the infamous Full Moon Party - generally thought of as a pretty crazy night by itself, but we're planning on meeting up with a fair few people we've met along the way, so we've got definitely got high hopes for it! That said, when we arrived in Pha-Ngan yesterday my hopes were pretty much at rock bottom....... We were sad to leave Phi Phi, we'd had a great time there and really loved the place, it was really chilled out and a great place to relax. We went on an island snorkelling tour which was excellent, probably the best snorkelling we've done on our trip. It also included some of the more exotic animals for a snorkelling trip.....namely monkeys, not something you'd usually expect to see when you sign up for a boat trip! The monkeys in question live on Monkey Beach (duh), and Sarah and I decided to kayak into the beach rather than swim so we could take some photos. We did, managing to stay a good distance from them, and we laughed heartily when a load of monkeys jumped on someone else's kayak. I believe this is called getting one's just desserts, as minutes later there were four or five sitting on ours. Any attempts to get near the canoe resulted in teeth being bared at us and us running away screaming, and in the end we had to be rescued by one of the boat crew.....not so funny after all! Stuck to swimming after that....... We also managed to have yet more time relaxing by the pool in the brilliant sunshine. I sensibly decided to stay out of the sun, having got burnt the day before, and yet somehow managed to get more sun through the shade that I did before, and got my worse burns so far! And I was trying to be good! But hey, even that didn't put us off, so it was with sad faces that we left Phi Phi. Fourteen hours later, via a ferry, a bus, another bus, a ferry that looked like it belonged in the Dark Ages (serious Titanic feeling getting on board - maximum capacity 110 and there were at least 3 times that), a taxi, and yet another taxi, we arrived at our accommodation in Koh Pha-Ngan. Having booked slightly last minute in Phi Phi, we'd had to pay rather more than we expected, but it looked nice in the pictures so we weren't too bothered. So imagine our faces when, after a very long day, we walked in to find a distinctly grubby room, with dirty looking sheets on the bed and a door that looked like it had been kicked in a fair few times. We might just have been able to cope with this......if it hadn't been for the cockroaches. Roaches the size of mice, running around our bathroom. And our room. Horrid. We asked for help in getting rid of them, and amid much squealing the girl on reception did manage to dispose of about 4 or 5. We had to get her to leave the broom she was using with us, as we weren't too confident that there wouldn't be hundreds waiting for us when we came back from dinner. And sure enough, when we got back there was a nice big one grinning at us from the bathroom. After about 10 minutes of standing outside and looking at it, I finally plucked up the courage to go in and brush the little toerag out......not nice at all! Sleep was distinctly uneasy, in horrible sheets with the fear of waking up to find a nice big cockroach or one of the many gheckos that share our room in the bed with me. Thankfully this was not the case, but we did wake up to 2 more dead roaches on the floor. Given that cockroaches are claimed to be able to survive a nuclear explosion, I sincerely hope that whatever caused them to go belly up does not have a taste for humans......... So needless to say, we weren't feeling too great about our start to Koh Pha-Ngan. However, we managed to put a smile on our faces this morning, and after checking at every guesthouse within a 15 minute radius and finding them all full, we decided to just put a brave face on it. We asked for clean sheets, and for someone to fix the door (which they did - with masking tape!) and just decided to hope against all hope that we'd seen the last of the cockroaches! After that, we decided to head to the swanky resort on the other side of the beach to use their swimming pool, and while there got talking to two girls who were staying there, paying more than twice what we were, and had a whole nest of roaches in their room - baby ones and all. So maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Tomorrow we're hoping to go on a tour of the island, which seems to be weather permitting, but if today is anything to go by, we should be ok. And then the day after is the Full Moon Party, and we're going to be getting together with all our friends, which we're really looking forward to. And then we've decided to check out a bit early and just splash out for somewhere decent in Koh Samui - a little luxury never hurt anyone after all!!