We had a shorter boat journey to Koh Samui, which was good as Lil is not keen on the boats recently. As soon as we were on the pier it was the normal gaggle of "Hello Man, Hello Lady, TAXI". We spotted someone holding a sign for Hat Lamai, which was where we had read the best/cheapest accommodation is to be found. We hopped in and got them to drop us at Beers house, which we had a look at but in the end went with New Hut next door. It was a simple 'A' frame bamboo and palm hut right on the sand on a lovely long pristine beach. A picture perfect setting with an amazing view on your doorstep for only £7 per night. We got one for ourselves and reserved one for the girls.

On that first day we caught up on some finances and emails. We figured out our budget for the rest of the trip and had a look at flights to Bali. When the girls arrived at about 6:00pm we went hunting for cheap grub, and found a lovely lady who made amazing curries with rice for only £0.70p, and made fresh fruitshakes for £0.40p (eating out is going to be non-existent when we come home). After dinner we went for an evening walk into town, we found that the further into town we went everything got more expensive, so we had got ourselves a good location to stay and eat. The evening finished off with us strolling back across the beach, which turned out to be a little bit of a work out by the time got back.

Saturday morning we rented a bike. Izzy and Row decided not to come with us on this one as they were not so confident on 2 wheels. We decided to go exploring some more of the Island, as Koh Samui is the biggest of the islands in Thailand that we will be visiting. We started off by heading to a waterfall that sounded good, but they had clued up on the tourism a bit more here and were charging a stupid amount to see it. We headed off towards the coast at the south west side of the island, and took a coastal route back up towards Lamai where we were staying. We stopped a few times on the way, we saw some of the smaller uninhabited islands off the south coast of Samui, we saw some more temples, and Garath's worst nightmare - a boat graveyard. We stopped at a 7-11 to get some more water and had 'lunch', crisps and a 'Big Pao'. Pao is a warm white bready dough ball with minced pork and onions inside, I have become quite fond of Pao's and don't know how I'll cope without them in the UK.

We last stopped at Hin Tai and Hin Yai, Or Grandmother and Grandfather Rock. Grandfather Rock looks like a Penis and Grandmother Rock looks like a Vagina, Its strange how nature would put these only 200ft from one another. There were lots of Asian tourists all taking rude photos and giggling like children, so we joined in. We sat by the water for a while and in the shallow rocky bay there were lots of little cleaner fish swimming around. We walked back to the bike and headed back to the hut.

That night we had food at the nice cheap ladies place and then had a walk on the beach again. We walked back to the huts quickly as we thought it was going to rain, a storm rumbled somewhere near. We got back and the lightning had arrived, we sat on the beach for a couple of hours and watched it. Garath was determined to get some lightning photos as it was really impressive. There was nothing out as sea for it to earth itself on, so it just trailed along the sky like veins. Once the lightning did hit something and we were unsure what it was, until the next day when the binoculars came out and we could see that it was an oil rig about 3 miles off the coast. Garath did get some rather impressive photos, one shows how bright it was as it looks like daytime.

Sunday (our last day on Samui) we walked along the beach with Row and Izzy to Grandmother and Grandfather Rock, as they thought it looked fun from our photos. It took us 1.5 hours and deserved a dip when we got there. I had bought my snorkel with me so got to see some of the fish up close, we also saw sea cucumbers and a couple of Nemo's. We had a couple hours here lazing around then headed for the Sunday street market.

At the street market we found a group of very young girls who seemed to be selling off their older sister's clothes for £0.80p each item, I bought 2 tops and Row bought a shirt. We had a variety of amazing foods like spring rolls, corn on the cob, Fish cakes, and noodles. We saw a little boy doing Poi and fire staff whilst doing a tightrope, and 2 different groups of little girls doing dance routines. It was a cheap and entertaining evening. We could do with more local family orientated events like this at home. We finished our evening off with our regular stroll back along the beach.