First of all we must apologise for the massive delay in uploading anything new to this blog. Tom's mac has been poorly but we have finally got it up and running again. So here will be an attempt to summarise the last few weeks of our trip in minimal ramblings.

The first thing to mention is our trip to the Thai jungle for a few days, Khao Sok National Park, which apparently is the oldest rainforest in the world, home to cobras, tarantulas, monkeys, tigers and much more. We stayed in a treehouse not far from the biggest web I've ever seen, on which was living a massive spider, which I found out from Shifter is called a 'golden orb spider'. A fitting introduction to the jungle. We joined a guided walk one morning to find the largest flower in the world high up on a jungle mountain. They only last a couple fo days but when they bloom but they can grow up to a metre across! Also they supposedly stink of rotting flesh but this one wasn't stinking thankfully. The sound of the jungle was awesome, constantly buzzing and singing. One night we did a night trek, just us two and a guy who was an expert on spotting the jungle night beasties with a torch. We saw stick insects, chameleons, glowflies, scorpions, giant centipedes and grasshoppers galore and a tarantula in his hellish tunnel, but the best bit was a flying lizard. We didn't actually see the thing fly but managed to have a good glimpse when he caught it in his hand, tiny little thing. We ended our trip to Khao Sok with a swim in the jungle river and a slightly intimidating encounter with a gang of naughty macaque monkeys. We survived to tell the tale and the jungle turned out to be one of our favourite places in Thailand.

From the jungle we made our way to the island of Koh Samui for the arrival of Rach who we were really looking forward to see. I was also looking forward to a pot of marmite from home and Shifter his beloved Viz, thanks Rach! We spent a couple of days on Samui and discovered the truly sleazy side of Thailand within the local town...hoards of older and not so attractive guys leering at at women in the dozens of girly bars around the place - one was called The Camel Toe! Good food, a fire show and plenty of changs soon made the place easier to bare, but we swiftly moved on to Koh Phangnan ventured to a beautiful Bay called Bottle Beach. The place we stayed in was cheap and gorgeous, run by a guy called Mr Bong who was pretty much constantly stoned and had one of the strangest laughs we'd ever heard. Most of the staff just wandered about asking people if this burger was theirs, not having a clue. We chilled lots by the pool and generally did very little but relax, eat and drink. It was fab to have Rach around for giggles a plenty. We took a day trip to the marine national park one day while Shifter went on the "no woman no cry" fishing trip on a local boat. (He caught 2 fish which I know he'll want me to mention). Me and Rach spent the day on boats of varying sizes and degrees of safety exploring the park and we met some dusky langurs on one of the islands which were super cute. The place was the original inspiration for Alex Garland's The Beach and you could see why. A few more days on another beach completed our time on Koh Phangnan, no full moon parties for us, we must be getting old! We headed back to Koh Tao for the rest of Rach's holiday and indulged in further relaxing.It helped that Rach was staying in a gorgeous apartment that had an equally gorgeous swimming pool. I must admit I felt quite blue when the day came that Rach had to go home, we'd got really used to her being around. We ended up staying on Koh Tao for a few extra days when Tom cut his feet open on some rocks. He was laid up for a few days and was driven gradually insane by the easy listening they had on loop in the restaurant next to our place. We were ready to leave by that point.

Now we'd been on a fair few journeys up to this this point, but what was yet to come journeywise was 26 hours of boats, buses, taxis and trains to get ourselves up to the North to the temples of Sukhothai. It actually wasn't as hideous as it had potential to be, but we were borderline dead when we finally arrived. We managed to bag a cheap room with access to a pool though which soothed our pain. Our final week or so in Thailand ended with a bike ride around the ancient city at Sukhothai and then a week's stay in Chiang Mai city. There were lots more temples to explore so we hired some more pushbikes and went exploring. One of the most glorious temples had one monk sat inside in the lotus position, amongst statues of other monks. Now you'll see in the photo that this monk looks as real as anyone, and I spent a good while sat looking at him, waiting to see a movement or something, convinced he was real. Tom was sure he was just a waxwork and was thoroughly amused at me being spooked by this man/thing. But when we were outside after I just had to ask someone and no he wasn't real and had been created after the death of a monk there last year. It was so realistic though! It even had the age spots and random hairs that old guys get on their heads! Anyway I digress. The last jolly worth mentioning was the Insect Museum that we visited, run by a 79 year old guy called 'Mr R' who has collected insects and all types of specimens for pretty much his whole life. His specialist field is mosquitos, he loves them, and he had hundreds of them in display cases, apparently there are almost 500 types of the b******. He also had meteorites, dinosaur fossils, pieces of the Berlin wall, jewels, all sorts of treasures and delights. We have met so many unique characters in Asia, eaten such good food and seen beautiful and fascinating things...

....we're off to Oz now to meet a koala. Bye for now x K