HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLAIRE'S MUM!! 50 TODAY!!

Walked into town this morning to book our transport to Langkawi for tomorrow. We decided to spend a bit more money to get the ferry direct to the island from Lanta rather than go back to the mainland and drive for 4-5 hours to just catch a another ferry to Langkawi.

Claire managed to have a quick conversation on the phone to her mum to wish her a happy birthday, but would be able to say more when we video called them this evening. Since we had put some money onto our Skype phone account we decided to ring round a few friends that we hadn't spoken to for 3 months now, it was good because we got the peasure of waking some of them up with it being about in the morning at home.

We lazed around in the afternoon and had some tea before going to video call Claire's parents at about 10. Unfortunatley at the same time a storm decided to take over the island. Thunder and lightning everywhere with lots of rain meant that they turn all the computers off at our hotel and as they don't make any phone calls over seas it was beginning t look like we we wouldn't be able to get in touch with home after all.

One of the bar staff saw how dissappointed Claire was about not being able to ring home and so he said we could borrow his motorbike to go to the next town up to see if there was a phone we could use or if a web cafe was better equipped to handle storms! So we set off on the bike with no waterproofs, with the rain battering our faces, along the dark road to the next town! We finally found a web cafe and managed to skype home to wish Claire's mum a happy birthday in person!

There was a good chance we wouldn't be able to get back from the twn though as David now realised he had to kick start the motorbike just like he had seen the owner do before he leant us his bike. The problem was, that David didn't hadn't a clue how to kick start a bike and it took him a good 20 minutes trying different techniques along with trying different swear words to see if that helped, Claire stood by and couldn't help but giggle at her boyfriends frustrations which only seemed to make the situation worse!

Eventually we got back to our hotel and chatted to a couple from Rochdale before getting to bed.