Hiydee hi, long time no hear!! Last time we wrote to you we were heading off to Railey Beach, seems like such a long time ago!! We’ve since been to a place called Pak Bara, albeit only for one night, and also stayed on the beautiful island of Koh Lipe, our last destination in Thailand. At the moment we are sat in our old favourite guesthouse, Shirin, back in Langkawi – although this time our orange hut was full so they’ve put us in a peach one – what sort of colour is peach!!!!! As returning customers surely we should get a better colour, at least blue or yellow or something!

Anyway back at the ranch, as we were saying….we stayed at Railey for 2 nights, in a cool bungalow, as u can see from the picture of the toilet there were huge gaps in the roof, we really were at one with nature! The beach here was nice, however, most people don’t come here for the beach they come for the awesome rock climbing. We watched a couple of people climbing the walls, it look pretty hairy that’s for sure. While we were here we stayed on the ‘muddy’ beach where there were a few restaurants and lots of reggae bars! It was really chilled out. It was Railey where we discovered Whiskey Buckets – they sound revolting, but it was the nicest drink we’ve had and it certainly did the trick, Thai whiskey, coke and redbull, mmm delicious….

We left Railey after 2 nights as we said, making our way down to Koh Lipe. All we had heard about this island was good reports so we thought we’d check it out on our way back down to Malaysia. Because of how the buses and boats were timetabled we had to make a stop in a place called Pak Bara, and wait for the 1.30pm boat the next day. There wasn’t much to do here; it was a very ‘local’ place, not catered for tourists like us.

So we made our way on the boat, which took over 3 hours, I’m sure we would have gotten there quicker if the boat hadn’t broken down – one minute we were sailing along, next there was smoke coming out of the engine and we had to proceed at a snails pace the rest of the way. What a palava! Well worth the wait though.

When we arrived we decided to stay on sunset beach, it only had the one resort on the beach, and it was really cheap, and a cheap name to go with it - ‘Porn Resort'. The island wasn’t very big, so we thought we could just walk to the other beaches. Sunset beach was great for the snorkeling, you could just walk in a couple of metres and there was coral and fish everywhere, obviously not a very good beach for swimming though as there were big spiky sea urchins on the sea bed! We thought…what a find?! How wrong we were! After the second night we decided we would have to find somewhere else to stay, we had been kept up most of the night with rats in our roof! Just when we thought we had come to terms with the bugs, and cockroaches, now we had rats. We saw them first before we went to bed, and then in the middle of the night we think there was something else up there with them because whatever or whoever it was decided to start fighting, and made very disturbing noises – it was awful. So the next morning we ventured off to find somewhere else, we found Mountain Resort and we booked in here for the last 3 nights of our stay, we just had to put up with one more night with the rats!

Our last 3 nights were amazing, the place we stayed in was cheap, and the beach was gorgeous, best beach so far in the whole trip. The water was the clearest yet, and the sand so white, plus there was hardly ever anyone on it! The weather was also great; it hardly rained at all! How are the Christmas plans coming along by the way back home, hee hee!!! We hear it is very cold! The island was very small, no roads or anything, and the electric was once again run by generators so in some places you only had electric for a couple of hours! To get from one side of the island to the other you had to walk through overgrown reeds and forest, it only took 20 minutes or so, but at night it was pitch black, no lights at all - you had to walk with torch light!!!

So after 6 days of lazing on the beach we had to leave, as our visa only lets us in Thailand for 30 days, can’t believe it’s been that long already. In fact we can’t believe how quick this trip is going sometimes. Well, apart from when we check the bank of course, but we try not to do that too often! So here we are back in Langkawi, thought we’d treat ourselves to some duty free alcohol before heading back down to Singapore. We’re flying to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow, and then heading up to the Cameron Highlands, before going to Singapore, where we then fly to Oz. This time next week we’ll be off to a whole new country….

Can’t wait to be down under….