We had a lovely time in Haad Yao on Koh Phangnan where we met the sweetest waiter from Burma who was desperate to learn English and asked us so many questions to help him learn. The most popular one was "where you go?" every time we moved even to go to the toilet! We stayed there for 11 nights in total which is by far the longest I have stayed in one place yet. It was really lovely to relax for that long especially after the full moon events.

We bought a ticket to Krabi but ended up getting a free boat over to Koh Phi Phi so let fate take us to our next destination.The Island is so beautiful with the most amazing beaches.The Island suffered the effects of the Tsunami and is still very much rebuilding itself. The streets and restaurants are still half built or temporary built.

Apart from in Bangkok this is where I have seen the most British people in one place, there were also so many Americans who we have hardly seen traveling at all. I'm guessing that the film 'The Beach' has brought many young Americans to this resort as it is where it was filmed. The beach was so busy every day with people drinking and sunbathing. Two of the days we took Kayaks out to visit Monkey Bay which was a small bay with clear water and white sand. As you can probably guess; there were also lots of monkeys there too, they hopped onto our boat at one point and tried to take our waterproof bag. One of the days we tried to go over to the other bay which was a lot further than we thought, the waves got quite big and we decided to turn back with not that much further to go, I was quite scared. We went out on a long-boat trip around to many of the islands and to some amazing snorkeling spots. The snorkeling was out of this world, there were so many tropical fish and some lovely coral, I also spotted a barracuda which I saw later had lots of tiny sharp teeth. On our way back the boat stopped at Shark Bay and we splashed about looking for them without much luck. We decided that we would go and book ourselves on a professional trip so that we would have more luck seeing the sharks. It was an early start on our last morning on the Island. We kitted up into our wet suits to help us float and got given our snorkels. The guide was very good and gave us a big lecture on how to behave in the water to have more chance in seeing the sharks, it was very interesting. We then went out to see them, when we got there, there was a big group of people who had just hired and taxi boat to see them, they tried to latch on to our group and the instructor told them where to go. Unfortunately they were doing everything that the instructor had told us not to do and probably the same thing we had been doing on our previous visit.I was quite disappointed as I only managed to see one small shark the whole two hours we were in the water. The other girls had seen four or five so I was very disappointed, the video that we got given actually showed much more than what I saw of our trip. At least now I know how to behave in the water so maybe in Australia we may have some better luck no big ones though hopefully.

The night life was very good in Phi Phi but a little more expensive than we were used to, luckily we had nice rooms so could stay in with less difficulty to save money on the occasional nights. The bars on the beach were lovely and had a great view of the sun sets which I am still not bored of, I watched it most nights.There was a steep walk up to a great view point with amazing views over the island and we watched the sun set from there one night. The bars on the beach all had some spectacular fire shows at midnight too.There was one bar that was really enjoyable until it started doing 18-30's games like musical chairs that turned into go and find a thong from the audience, we moved on from there quickly. The most popular bar was probably the bar which had a kick boxing ring in the middle of it. They invited drunk westerners to fight their friends or anyone who would oblige for a free bucket of drink.I don't know who in their right (or drunk) mind would want to do that, I would rather buy the bucket, it did however entertain us for a good hour or so though.

We stayed about a week and then moved back to main land. We stayed one night on Railey Beach. There was no port so a wobbly long boat packed full of people took us from the boat to as near to land a it possibly could. The tide was out so far and the beach was grey and rocky. I knew that we must have to walk to find the beautiful place that we had heard about and that we did. With our big back packs we found a lovely beach but it was full of expensive resorts. Some other back packers led us to another beach that you could walk to with the tide being so far out. We walked for ages on rocks and sand with hundreds of crabs running about but finally found it. It was surrounded in huge rock cliffs.It was a really popular spot for rock climbing. We had a chilled out night watching a distant storm over the sea and moved on the Krabi today. Tomorrow we are heading into Malaysia and we are now nearly half way through our years trip, it has really gone so fast!!!