We had an early start from Siem Reap to cross the border into Thailand, the journey took us about 4 hours on the bumpiest road ever, it was worse than any we encountered in India. They were doing work to try and improve the road all over the place, but apparently this has been going on for the last 3 years! We then went on a mission to find a bus to take us directly to Ko Tao, unfortunately we had just missed the last one, so had to make our own way to Bangkok to see if we could get a night bus from there. We had a 2 hour wait before we could get on a bus to Bangkok but after a 4 hour journey we were there. We arrived at the bus station at 9.30pm, luckily for us the last night bus to Ko Tao left at 10.00pm, it was a decent bus too so we both managed to get some sleep. We were originally thinking on going to Ko Phangan for the full moon party, but after a hectic 4 weeks in Vietnam and Cambodia we decided that rest was more important and after a 3 hour boat ride we arrived in Ko Tao at lunch time, we were both pretty tired after so much travelling, but once we saw the island we were happy that we had made the right choice.

What can i say about Ko Tao, it was beautiful, picturesque and so peaceful. Hopefully the photos will tell the story of how nice it was. We didn't really do much apart from top up our sun tans, swim and eat and drink a lot. Ko Tao is one of the quieter islands as the only visitors it really gets are people wanting to learn to dive, we didn't really have the time or the money for diving, but the water was like glass anyway, with no waves the water was so clear that it was easy to see the fish swimming around us without using a mask! We did walk to a few different beaches just for a bit of variety, but really we just relaxed and admired our surroundings. Oh and a dog decided to piss in our bag when we weren't looking, the little ba****d, we decided to throw the ruc sack after that little incident!

We did meet a guy called Ian who kept us amused for a few days, he was a really funny guy. Him and his wife are originally from Newcastle but sold up 9 months ago to set up a business on the island. We could certainly see why he chose here to live, he also told us that he has travelled all the islands in Thailand and that we picked the best one to come to first, we certainly did love it. We all got very drunk one night, well it was one of those 'a few afternoon drinks' that turned into a full night. I fell over on the way home, just to add another scar to my mosquito bitten legs.

Overall we really liked Ko Tao, it is definitely the best beach we have been to so far. Matthew wanted to stay here longer than we had originally planned as we liked it so much, but we had a plan to stick to and very little time so after 3 nights we set off for a different island.

Its a hard life!