What to say about Phuket (the Patong part of it that is)... Large, old, red-faced Engrish guys & young Thai "laydeez". Nuff said. We stayed one night & had a few drinks, and a bloody good laugh.The best part of it was the flight to KL, which cost all of 5 quid each & came with a half empty plane & leather seats!!

6 hours by ''bus" to the Cambodian border along the worst excuse for a road you can possibly imagine. By the end everyone was covered in red dust (except where you had shades on) & would be having great trouble sitting down for a couple of days. Decide to treat ourselves with a 10 quid room that included our first hot shower for a couple of weeks - heaven. Back on the Kao San Rd it was Same Same, beer & torrential rain, bit of a theme for us so far. Night tr...

It was good to get moving again after our little time out on Koh Tao & boy were we right in the thick of it! We decided to get the night boat to the mainland & then a couple of minibus thingys over to Krabi & Lanta. It was a wonderful experience - rows of 5cm thick "mattress'" that helps you to understand how cattle feel when going to the slaughterhouse! Luckily, we had planned ahead & had a lovely bottle of Bacardi & an equally ...

Finally we make it to the beaches! We took the infamous night train from Bangkok to the South, then a nice boat ride brought us to the island. It was a beautiful place to go, and with a quiet beach recommended to us by a friend we were ready to do some relaxing. The first person we saw was our good friend Sven, who was with us throughout Laos, so im afraid his peaceful island paradise was ruined by our arrival!. Anyway we had some lovely meals on the beach and sa...

I wasn't too sure if i would do any diving when we got here. Maybe a couple of days & move on to the next place. Then I decided to just go for it & jump straight in at the shallow end. It felt very unusual to have homework to do when on holiday, but that wasn't the bad part - the instructor said no beer in the evenings!!!!!! AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!! Having cried myself to sleep on night 1 I pulled it together & got under the water (having puk...