Well we left Bangkok on 31st March, after a couple of nites on the lash!!! Well its hard when its 30 degrees at nite, the vodka buckets and ice are a welcome distraction.
We flew from Bangkok to Phuket with Nok air (jimmy saw a shark swimming off the coast, as we came into land!!! He was well impressed). We got a local bus from Phuket to Khao Lak. The drive was far from comfy but we had better get used to that (only took 2 hours) and all for 180 baht (less than 4 pound)...I was gutted on arrival to see a Macdonalds (I last was here 2 years ago and its appeal was that there was no western places.... but thats progress, I suppose :-(). We checked into Khao Lak Seafood and family house (the owner told us it was 1000 bt, which was a bit out of our budget but when we saw the rooms we couldnt resist....massive room, kingsize bed, lovely bathroom, huge balcony overlooking the beautiful gardens but after a sticky day travelling we were sold by the shower and the air-con!!!! Thats were we have been since (we did change to the cheaper fan-room for half a day but sharing the room with 1 million ants and the shower with cockroaches we quickly went back to our original room - there will be plenty of time for cheap and less-than cheerful!). Our first evening was spent sitting on the beach watching a storm at sea, under the moon-light, drinking Singha beer and watching th lanterns being set off on the beach.
On our second day we hired a scooter (Jimmy was desperately searching for something a bit bigger but there is no such thing here - at least my dad will be happy!!). So we have explored with our trusty scooter, we found waterfalls, wildlife and Jimmy found his long-awaited gym for Muay Thai training! We went to Chong Fah waterfall which was lovely but we got stuck in a huge storm before we reached it and the rain had obvious awoken the Leeches...I had 3 on my legs but Jimmy was obviously more tasty than me - he gathered up 7!!! Yuck! Another waterfall we found was Rainbow waterfall - we are regulars there now - fishing for catfish, shrimps and yesterday we found a snapping turtle. There are wild dogs up there too that seem to have befriended us (or is it the food and fish they like us for???)
Saturday 3rd April we took a tour to Similan Islands (visiting Islands 4, 7, 8, and 9)...90 minutes by speedboat and we were snorkelling with fabulous tropical fish and Jimmy swam with 3 turtles (I only managed to see 2 but they came close enough for us to touch - they must be pretty intuative because after 1 looked Jimmy straight in the eyes it made a quick retreat after investigating him!!! haha). We climbed Sail rock - a huge formation of rocks with 1 (sail rock) balanced at the top, the view was amazing from up there! There were hundreds of sticks under the rock (as if they are holding it up - so we HAD to add our own, but the rock has been there for 65,000,000 years so I reckon it was safe enough). We stopped at various snorkelling spots and each time noticed weird and colourful fish, the last stop was Honeymoon beach, it was gorgeous, white-powder sand (Got you some Ryan!) and fab for swimming and fish-watching. It was a great day and even the storm as we arrived back didnt dampen us.
Lastnight there was an amazing storm, with almost continuous lightening (neither of us have ever seen anything lik it), we sat and watched for hours, even got some footage.
Will try and upload more pics and videos now and will update you all again soon!