The journey to Koh Samui was one of our most interesting so far. The minibus picked us up at 7:30 and was supposed to take us all the way to Surat Thani, where we were supposed to catch a ferry across to the island. But after getting comfortable, half an hour into the journey, the bus pulled over and we waited 10 minutes whilst the driver was on his mobile. He then chucked us off the minibus and told us to get on a public bus that was just pulling up behind!

We eventually got dropped off at Surat Thani, at a travel agent in the middle of nowhere, desparately hoping that we wouldn't have to pay for the ferry tickets again as we had no idea if we were in the right place. Luckily, I think this must be a normal occurrence for them, because everything ran quite smoothly from then on, and everyone knew what was going on (except us, of course).

So we got to Samui and took a taxi to Chaweng Beach, where we wandered up and down for an hour with our packs on trying to find somewhere decent that didn't cost the earth. Eventually we haggled a decent price out of someone and checked in to the Chaweng Inn, which was cheap and not too bad.

Again, we spent most of our time on the beach here which was fantastic, with clear blue water, white sand and lots of coral. We did spend a day touring the island in a jeep, which was quite good fun (especially sitting on the top of it going up steep mountains, ducking whenever the huge tree branches threatened to knock us out). We went swimming in waterfalls, watched an elephant play football, and saw a couple of the obligatory temples, even though the tour company messed up and forgot to pick us up (but we did get it half price in the end).

The next day we got the ferry over to Koh Phangan for the half-moon party that evening. We spent the day on the beach (surprise), and then wandered over to the famous beach for the evening at around 10pm. What we didn't realise is that, unlike the full-moon party, the half-moon party was in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains, and the locals were charging a fortune to take people up there. In the end, we decided we really couldn't be bothered and couldn't afford it, so we ended up spending the rest of the night on the beach anyway, getting entertained by fire dancing displays (and me being entertained by Ellie drinking buckets of cocktails, and I do mean proper buckets. Well, one was enough for her anyway, but do check out the pictures when we get them up!).

The following day we caught the ferry over to Koh Tao, and spent a worrying few hours wandering the beach trying to find somewhere to stay. It's such a beautiful place that pretty much all of the accommodation on the main beach was fully booked, but in the end we managed to get a place in town as opposed to on the beach, but at least it was a place to stay.

The next day we got up early and managed to check in to a much nicer bungalow on the beach, right in the centre of things. After that, we did our usual lazing on the beach, which was even better than Samui. The coral comes right up to the beach, so you can stand in ankle deep water and watch the brightly coloured fishes swimming around as the water was so crystal clear.

It was so nice I even managed to persuade Ellie to do a scuba dive the next day, which we were both a bit nervous about, but went without any hitches in the end. Eventually. After Ellie hogged both of the instructors for the first half hour as she was a bit nervous about breating underwater. This did have one benefit, which was to take her mind off her somewhat strange phobia of fishes, of which there were literally thousands swimming around in shoals. We spent about 45 minutes under water at about 10m depth, and saw loads of different fish, including Angel Fish and Rabbit Fish. At one point, we were completely engulfed in a shoal of fish, so much so that we couldn't see more than a metre each way.

Our next port of call is Chumpon, on the mainland, from where we get an overnight train up to Bangkok, where we start our tour of Cambodia and Vietnam on the 14th. We'll try to keep updated, but I'm not too sure how much free time we'll get.