Hello everyone,

Well we've been here for 9 days now. It's so lovely here and we have finally hit the location we've been looking for. We're right at the top end of the Island in a gorgeous bungalow surrounded by trees and greenery with the beach right on our doorstep (20 second walk!) It's very peaceful and it's just been so lovely to do nothing. We brought a couple of hammocks from a local trader who make them all herself. And the majority of our time has been spent just being in our hammocks while reading a couple of books, watching the world go by. And yes its exactly as your imagining right now :o) Its paradise. We're off to Ko Tao via a boat in about an hour for a couple of days. But we're coming back here, to the same location, when we're back for another few days before we finally leave for Malaysia. It really is so nice here and that’s the only reason why we're coming back in a couple of days time. Its only the 2nd time we've ever gone back on ourselves during the whole of our trip. It has to be really nice for us to do that. We think your getting the picture now of what it's like here and as soon as you see our photos of this place, you'll really see why! Sorry but we can't upload the photos now as this PC is not allowing us to do so. We'll try again on another PC when we're back from Ko Tao.

After we arrived here we wanted to hire a car. It's the best way to get around and there are a lot of dirt roads which we didn't want to ride motorbikes on. Also for that reason of there being so many dirt roads, we hired a 4x4 Jeep and did a lot of off-roading. It was huge fun and even Gemma had a go (Sam you would of been proud!) And yes, after 4 days, the car went back a lot dirtier than when we picked it up. But they don’t mind over here. We also managed to haggle the price right down for the hire of 4 days which was good as well.

There are a lot of Palm trees around us with a lot of ripe coconuts. They train gibbons to climb up and throw then down. It was very cool to watch. Certainly wouldn't want to be hit by one though. It's a big thud when they hit the ground and we don't think our insurance covers us for 'being hit on the head via a coconut that was thrown by a gibbon'.

We did go and see a couple of waterfalls but they were only trickling as you really need to see them during the monsoon season, which it certainly isn't now! But we did meet a nice couple from Australia which were here on their honeymoon. Brad (such an Auzzie name) and Rebecca.

On a down note, we had our bags gone trough by a member of staff on the bus on the way down here. The little s***e (really want to use harsher language but had better not) stole one of Darrens watches that he got in China and Gemmas really cool Disney pen that lite up from Disneyland, Hong Kong. It's not the value that annoyed us, just that they were souvenirs from our travels. But at least nothing of any real value or importance was taken. All the very important stuff like flight tickets, passports etc are always on us in our day packs. Also what upset us is that someone had gone through all our belongings and had touched all of our clothes, yuck! I suppose in all your terms, it was like someone breaking into your house as our backpacks (at the mo) are our life. Everything we own is in those bags and to have someone go through them was not nice.

Anyway, that’s about it. We'll update about Ko Tao when we get back here.

Love, lots of, Darren and Gemma xxx xxx