We had planned to take a short boat ride to the island of Phuket. However, had we done our homework we wouldv'e discovered that Monday is their day of rest and boats were not operating! So, instead we had to take a minivan which was due to take about 3 hours. 30 minutes into our journey the van started misfiring and we broke down. Almost 3 long hours later a replacement minivan arrived. The 3 hours would've felt even longer had we not had a travel version of connect 4 which some friends had kindly bought us as a going away present. We arrived in our resort of Patong several hours later than planned. Our hotel was generally ok, however the resort itself was pretty awful. We grabbed a quick bite to eat near the hotel before getting an early night and some well deserved sleep. The following day we walked to our local beach which was very nice and offered an array of activities such as jet skiing and parasailing. We had been advised by some friends that the resort of kata beach was very pleasant so the following day we hired a scooter for 200 baht (£4) and headed down there. The beach was much quieter and more to our liking. On the way back to our resort I drove over a nail which of course punctured the tire. Hours later we managed to load the scooter onto the back of a tuk tuk and had a new tire fitted at a local garage before driving home in the pitch black through patongs busy one way systems! Despite our stressful afternoon we braved it and headed out to the streets of Patong. I wish I had taken my sunglasses as I couldve easily damaged my eyes by all the bright neon lights! We did find a nice Italian restaurant serving reasonable food and then decided to head to one of the many local bars. We could not help by be drawn to this bar which as well as having 50 or so pole dancers (clothed) a giant plastic tiger was also sticking out of the first floor surrounded by neon lights! I was keen to try some surfing so the following day we headed back to Kata beach. After about an hour I had managed to stand up on the board a few times looking to the beach for Amys approval with each successful attempt. I'm not sure what i had done to offend the surfboard but moments before returning to the beach it decided to jump up and hit me very hard in he face cutting my nose and giving me a black eye which lasted for a week. On our last day we visited a national park and on the way home we were caught on our scooter in a heavy rain and hail storm several miles from our hotel! I cautiously had to navigate the scooters through traffic and flooding streets which were flowing with rocks that smashed into my ankles lightly bruising them. The following morning we waited in ernest for our transport to our next destination!