Just a very quick update to let you all know what I'v been up to here in Koh Phangan over the past week...

Tuesday, we went back to English camp for the morning and it was every bit as shambolic as the day before.

Wednesday - was quite a long day teaching wise (for us anyway). One of the Thai teachers had previousoly asked if we could help him with his english, as his written english is fine but he finds speaking english very difficult (which is not surprising, since it is usually Thai teachers who, like himself, cannot speak the language very well teaching english to the children). So after we'd finished with all our lessons for the day, we agreed to teach him. It was quite hard work, and a little bit wierd, especially when he asked if we had any homework to give him!

Wednesday night was another half moon party. Yes, another one! But this time we did not have quite so early a start the next morning and I was only teaching one lesson the next day so we could enjoy it a bit more. We got back about 4:30am after a pretty good night, and I got some good tips whilst I was there about places in Thailand to travel to afterwards.

Thursday was mostly spent recovering from the previous day and resting in preparation for the next day... When we were at English camp earlier on in the week, we asked Erng, one of the Thai ladies looking after us here, for any advice she could give us about trekking up the highest point in Koh Phangan (called Khao Ra) when she admitted that, even though she was born and bred here, she had never done it herself. So we convinced her to come with us, and we set on Friday morning for our little adventure. After debating for a long time about whether we needed to hire a guide to take us up there or not, we finally decided to it was better to take one and then set off up the mountain. Within 10 minutes, we were all sweating buckets, but enjoying the scenery. At some points you felt like you were in Jurassic Park or something. It started to get very steep and I was very glad we had hired the guide as the path was non-exsistent. By half way up, everybody was starting to flag a bit, but the guides insisted on power walking up the hill. Erng found it very hard and we had to stop every 100m or so. When we finally saw the sign for 50m left to go we were all far too tired to get excited! But once we made it to the top it all felt worth it. Th views were pretty spectacular and it felt like quite an achievement to make it to the top when, half way through I'd felt like my legs were going to stop working. God knows what I'll be like if I try to climb up any proper mountains whilst I'm in Asia! I'm sad to say that the only animal we saw whilst we were trekking was a dog with a collar on that had followed another trekker all the way to the top and then followed us all the way back down again!

On Saturday, I decided to hire a push bike and do a bit of exploring on my own, as it's hard to get your bearings when you just jump in taxis and say 'take me to x, y or z'. I cycled quite far up the west coast of the island before finding a quite, shady spot on the beach to stop and work out where I actually was. Then I realised I was sitting underneath quite a few coconut trees, and it had been pretty windy the night before... after hearing all the stories about people who fall asleep under coconut trees and don't get to wake up again I thought I'd better move on and find somewhere for lunch. I managed to find a nice place overlooking the sea and thought I'd be brave and order a massaman curry, as all the times I'd had it before it hadn't been too spicy. By the time I was a third of the way through this one, my eyes were streaming and I was on my second mango lassi! I managed to eat most of it eventually and then made it back to our resort, despite the fact that my bike had no gears and poor breaks and the road home was rather hilly!

Sunday was quite a chilled day and we decided to go for a roast dinner at a pub called the Masons Arms. It's a big traditional tudor British pub built in the middle of the jungle, which was very surreal. But the roast was one of the best I've ever eaten (outside of my home of course).

Today was a Thai holiday so there was no school and we decided to head up to Koh Ma, which is a tiny little island that you can actually walk to from Koh Phangan because the water is so shallow at one point between the two. We went snorkelling around there and saw some really pretty fishes. The water was so clear, it was amazing compared to our resot!

Full Moon Party tommorow! I can't wait!

Hope everyone back home is good. Miss you all loads xxxxxxx