Yesterday we arrived in the island paradise of Koh Phi, via an extremely long journey from Chiang Mai. It started with the night bus on Monday night, and ended with a ferry on Wednesday morning, and went through Bangkok and Phuket on the way! But its all worth it, Phi Phi is everything you would expect and is fast becoming one of our favourite places..... On our last day in Chiang Mai we went to Sang Bo, the artisan area of town. It involved a tuk tuk driver sheperding us around from one shop to another, and waiting outside for us - it really is the way to shop! We went to the world's largest jewellery store, which looked like it belonged in a bad James Bond movie - all smoked glass and dim lights and sharks swimming around in fish tanks. The vast majority of its jewellery was hideously ostentatious however Sarah managed to sort the wheat from the chaff and come away with about the only decent item in there! We also went to some other jewellery places, a hill tribe craft centre, and the umbrella painters, where we had elephants painted on our tops and bags....proper travellers now!! Then as I mentioned, we got the night bus, which was as lovely as you would expect, only marginally better than the way up as we did get 2 seats each. This arrived in Bangkok at 5.15am, leaving us more than 5 hours to kill until our flight to Phuket (we'd decided we couldn't face 2 overnight buses in a row!). We had breakfast with a girl from the bus, and the taxi to the airport took an hour, but we were still too early to check in! But eventually we managed it, and the flight was decent, we even got a drink which is pretty impressive for a budget airline! The best bit about it was the landing - we had a window seat that wasn't over the wing for once, and as we came into land we could see right out across the islands, it looked incredible. By the time we got to Phuket it was 12 noon, but we felt like we'd lived an entire day already! We tried to save ourselves a few pennies by getting the shuttle bus instead of a taxi - so not worth it! Stupid people didn't know where we were staying and they stopped off at their office to try and sell us accommodation, which was intensely irritating as all we wanted to do was get there and crash! Plus, it really really irritates me that they insist on asking how much you paid for your accommodation - in what possible way is that anyone's business but ours?!? Anyway, rant over. It wasn't really a bad thing that it took so long because the reception at our guesthouse didn't open until 2 - thanks to all the delays we only had 15 minutes to wait. And that was about it for the rest of the afternoon, we were absolutely exhausted and had gone to great pains to get a place with a pool for this exact purpose, so we spent the rest of the afternoon snoozing in the sun....lovely. The most exciting thing that happened all afternoon was yet another lizard falling on my head...think I am a lizard magnet. In the evening we headed down into Patong for dinner. The beach is lovely, but the town itself is very reminiscent of Ibiza or Faliraki or somewhere like that - lots of neon lights and theme bars! I'm sure Koh Pha-Ngan and Samui will be a bit like that too, but we quite simply didn't have the energy for it that night, so an early night for us! And then yesterday morning we were picked up at 7am for our 8.30 ferry over to Koh Phi Phi. It was a strange ferry, it was mostly full of day trippers and it made a scenic detour to the beach where The Beach was filmed which was rather odd! Just before we got to the island we stopped in the middle of the sea and were immediately surrounded by other boats who took away most of the passengers - bit like our mid-sea swap in Brazil only a little bit safer! And so, finally, we arrived in Phi Phi. And it was worth every moment of the journey, we love it. We're in a nice resort, not a scummy backpackers, and we've got a pool, so no need to explain what we've been doing ever since! We've had a lovely relaxing day today, although we did manage to get a bit burnt - the sun here is ferocious! We're just about to head off for dinner, might try and catch another fire show like we did last night - absolutely incredible, though slightly worrying to see 2 children not much older than about 10 swinging lit poles around! And then tomorrow we're off on a snorkelling tour of the islands....I know I say this a lot but this time I REALLY mean it.....its a hard life!