Tuesday was a long day of travel, first getting a mini bus out of Georgetown to the Thai border town of Hat Yai where we had a bit of a nervous hour and a half wait after we got dumped out of the minibus and left to get our connection without any kind of ticket or proof that we had paid to get all the way to Phuket. Luckily though we did get on our connecting bus without any bother, even if it was hot, sweaty and full of facinated locals openly staring at us! We stopped for some food in a random little town where we had to resort to pointing and hoping for the best, and what we got was nice but boy did it blow our heads off!! We were still trying to cool our mouths down 20 minutes later back on the bus - once we had re-found it that is!

After a long day of travel we finally made it in to Phuket Town and found our nice and chic hostel that we had treated ourselves to so that we could relax in comfortable surroundings before our Hollywood debut! Before we went to bed though we had an even hotter green curry served up by this small timid Thai guy, that made us feel like someone was literally pushing our eyeballs out from the inside!

And so, Wednesday 16th February was one of the most surreal days ever, even if it didn't exactly go according to plan from the start. We had been in touch with a guy called Danny from the casting department of the film 'The Impossible', starring Ewan McGreggor and Namoi Watts and had arranged a 9am pick up from a place just out of Phuket Town called 'Big C - Festival Square' - kinda cryptic enough to start with. We duly got dropped off by a taxi outside a big shopping centre which seemed to be about right but still felt slightly odd. There we waited, and waited, and waited as first 9am and then 10am came and went and we had seen nothing more than a steady procession of taxi drivers chancing their arm with us.

Feeling pretty disappointed we remembered that there was a contact number on the flyer that we had been given and so we managed to speak to Danny himself, who explained that the pick up time had been moved to 3pm but he had forgot to email because he had been so busy!! Not ideal!! Although a 5 hour wait at a random out of town shopping mall wasn't exactly our idea of a good afternoon, we felt determined not to let the opportunity to forge an alternative career in the film industry pass us by and so we decided to suck it up and wait it out, with a large chunk of the tine spent listening to the dubious KFC FM!!

Thankfully the 3pm pick up did in fact happen and we jumped into a pimped out minivan for our transfer - though it was nearly over before it had even begun as we almost crashed on the way out of Phuket into the back of a car which had stopped suddenly! We arrived at the site of the set in Khao Lak and was greeted by my mate Danny, who epitomised the 'Land of Smiles' that Thailand is known as. Straight away it was all very surreal as we were surrounded by big trailors and lighting equipment, all of which was a matter of yards away from a really gorgeous beach. The toilet vans were even the best ones we have had in Asia so far - complete with aircon, pictures, flowers and everything!

We were quite happy just sitting around watching everything going on around us for a bit, and then we got assigned our extras number and went through wardrobe to get kitted out in some very fetching tsunami-victim attire. Unfortunately neither of us were 'injured' and so we didn't get to have wounds painted on us, which was a bit disappointing! After dinner we had to wait around for a fair bit, which to be honest is what being an extra mostly involves doing! After a total costume change (apparantly the head of wardrobe didn't think our clothes were really us!) around 9pm we finally got the call that they were ready for us up on the mountain, and we really started to feel that nervous excitement!

We all dotted around this makeshift camp site where for the scene we were sheltering from a possible second tsunami, and EVERYTHING took AGES! It was really surprising just how long even the smallest thing took to sort out, but eventually we started with the rehearsals between which people got moved around and asked to do different things. Hutch managed to secure one of the more prominent roles - having to walk around looking for her lost family, though she got told to slow down and keep her elbows in!!! It seemed like they were finally happy to film for real when one of the worst things possible happened - it started to rain. Cue at least an hour delay and a scrapping of the scene being filmed, as we were all herded into a holding area further up the hillside away from the set. There we waited for a couple of hours whilst they filmed a scene that didn't require us minions, though it was pretty amazing to lie back looking up at the full moon, with the classical music playing as the background to the scene as lightning lit up the sky out to sea and in between the trees. If we didn't know that the scene being portrayed was so tragic, it would have been magical (although apparently there was a scorpion on the loose)

We got called back down at midnight for sandwiches and sticky rice, where a proper diva couple from Germany who had caught my eye from the very first time I saw them, had the ultimate hissy fit and had the disrespect to say to the Thai assistant director "I don't even care about the money, I'm not carrying on working. I can't work like this, I'm a professional actress." After they promptly stomped off and left the set, it was a far better place. That was probably the worst part of the experience - seeing how important so many people like to think they are and how they expected to be treated like royalty despite the fact they were just ordinary extras like us!

After the food break we resumed our positions and I managed to secure a slight upgrade to now laying a blanket down and sometimes drinking imaginary soup! And so it went on, filming exactly the same thing again and again and AGAIN, until shortly after 2am they called a wrap and we got whisked off to a hotel (though not in the directors van which we accidently tried to get in to!!) and finally got in to bed, shattered from a long and eventful day, at 4am!

We had a much needed lie in on Thursday morning and then killed the time until we left for the drive back to set at 230pm. It was the same routine once we arrived, though we also spent a slighly frustrating hour arranging our plans for the next few days in what turned out to be a team effort involving a few different people we had met. After another sweet sunset we headed back up to film again around 8pm and it was the same script of "first position, quiet please, standing by, cameras rolling, action, cut". In truth, it seemed we had even less to do on the second night than we did on the first, and so when they finally said we were no longer needed it was quite welcome. Except for the fact that they asked 5 of us to stay behind for the final scene, and us two were chosen, told we would be needed in 10 minutes. We had these grand visions of us being in the last scene as the credits role, bit instead we had to endure an hour and a half of watching the lead kid struggle to get his scene right, only for us then to be casually told, at 2am, that we weren't needed after all!! Sooooo frustrating!!

After getting changed and picking up our envelope we found Trish, the nice Irish woman we had met, still there waiting for us after everyone else has left, as she had hooked us up with a place to stay. The last little drama of a crazy couple of days came when after getting dropped off in Bang Niang we couldn't get in to our place and so Trish and her husband Richard kindly let us sleep in their spare room upstairs from their business!! Exhausted, we agreed to make a donation to the orphanage they sponsor and then fell fast asleep to bring to an end a hectic start to our trip in Thailand!!