We were early off the coach around about 4am and hardly had any sleep. We both sat ourselves and our bags down on the floor as all the seats had been taken up, it was busy here this time. We started talking to a guy called Pat and two girls called Haley and Tash. Later on a second guy called Paul joined us, he had been sleeping. They all seemed like nice people and throughout the hours of waiting it was nice to have the company. We chatted about where we live, who we are and where we are going. We all decided to group together and look for accommodation and getting a good price, safety in numbers.

After the 3 hours on the Songserm express boat and a little nap, we reached Kho Tao. A new Island that we havent yet discovered. You come here for whats under the water rather than whats on top. Basically a hub for diving. Excellent we can continue our diving we thought.

After a little walk from being dropped off we finaly find a spot called called wind beach resort. Nice place right on the beach. However this comes at a price, 700 baht for a bungalow. This was a little out of our budget but we stayed here waiting for the cheaper rooms to come avaliable.

The evening was soon upon us and we decide to meet up with the others for a drink or two at the Lotos bar. This place was very nice and apparently they had cheap rooms which we will have to keep an eye out for! The Lotus bar seemed the place to be in Kho Tao at night. This is where all the real travellers come, along with the rahs. The bar was set on the beach with mats, triangle cushions and stumpy tables facing the oncoming sea, while Burmese fire performers stun an amaze us with their skills, and a western dj plays out all sorts of music.

The evening came to an end when we all decided to go for a midnight swim. We were to meet the others in the sea in ten minutes after getting our bathing suits on. I was a little pre-ocupied with an invasion of ants in my bag though. Once they had been evicted we joined in the drunken dip and not before long it was team wrestling on each others shoulders, then the lads doing backflips in the water which nearly ended up in Paul breaking his head, and myself belly flopping on the water. Then the frisbee came out, this was all ok apart from it was dark and soon enough that ended up with Lil passing the frisbee to me in the mouth! "ouch" I think is what I said. We dried off and went to bed.

The next morning (Monday) we discovered how much of the beach we had bought into the bungalow with us, Ooops! sand everywhere. Time to move, same resort but a cheaper room, 500 baht this time. We had found out that the cheap rooms at Lotus were 250 Baht, but they had none left so we would return to check tomorow.

We spen the rest of the day filling in the white bits. It was a lovely hot sunny day, we played frisbee in the sea and generaly lazed around. Later we watched the sun go down, then had some beers outside of Pat and Pauls bungalow. We had spotted a Raggae bar up the road so went up there to investigate later in the evening.

It was a very chilled atmosphere as you would expect from a Raggae bar. After a while I noticed a couple of locals sitting with the barman perusing gun magazines. Thinking they were for paintball I went and had a chat. There is a paintball site on Koh Tao so its fair enough that I would think thats what they were for, but these were real guns. It turns out that you can order any kind of gun through the bar from Bangkok.

Tuesday we managed to get a 250 Baht room at Lotus. We were quite tired from the night before so after the move we just chilled on the beach again. It turned out that after everyone went back last night Pat went out again, and was looking green for it this morning.

Wednesday we decided to go exploring on a motorbike. We were apprehensive about the roads after we saw the huge dirt tyres that were on all of the bikes. It turned out that we needed it though. The hills were hellish! we had to lean forward on the bike to get up them.

We started at the north of the island and went to the view point where we could see the Islands called Twins. Twins is actually three islands and is the only place in the world where three islands are connected by one beach. We made our way south and stopped off about half way to see a whale skeleton that was displayed at a guest house. It was huge! as you would expect from a whale. We carried on south and visited different view points on the coast. We could see Koh Phangan and Koh Samui Islands we would soon be visiting. Last of all we stopped at Shark bay and Lil had a little dip. We headed home and dropped the bike back.

We were sat on the comunal area later that evening and met Rowena and Izzy from Bath. They were lovely girls and we had a good old chin-wag.