Today we arrived in Koh Lanta wiht a load of Touts waiting for us at the ferry pier. After barterin for some accomodation, we finally agreed to stay at a guest house called Garden Home - which ended up being a great choice. The main backpacker is at long beach, but we had heard it wasnt Koh Lanta's best beach - so we stayed on Klong Doa a gorgeous beach the next bay up. Our room was basic but very nice and was situated right on the beach front, perfect!! The best bit was they had deck chairs we could use for free (makes a change)!

After being thoroughly pleased with our locationa nd beach we decided to check out some local cheap eateries. We found two places right next to our accomodation, which were perfect and so cheap which is pleasing now our funds have diminshed so much haha. We lived on red and green thai curries for days at only 80BHT for a really descent portion and the staff were very friendly which is always good. Especially when we kept coming back, I think we went there about 7 times in the end haha.

Our other great find was a restaurant right next to the other one, which to me was pure paradise. It was an all you can eat, cook yourself barbeque - for an amazing 99BHT (2 pounds). They had all the meats, prawns, curries, pasta and salad you could ask for and boy did we take advantage. There is no way they made any profit out of us, the two nights we spent there. Anyway as much as I love ot talk about food, I will leave it at that.

As we had everything at our doorstep, the next tw days were spent relaxing on our beach and swimming all day, we also visited long beach to check out the backpacker scene. At lunch time onwards the beach bar would play chillout music which was so relaxing. Kate went for a few runs, while I hate to admit it, had a foot and skin scrub which was awesome. My heels were battered andcracked from whereing flip flops all the time so I thought I would treat myself. The amount of skina nd crap they scraped of was gross but it felt like i had a new pair of feet afterwards, we couldnt believe the transformation!!

At night the chillout mas and pillows were laid out with the big bamboogarden fire lights lit and we just chilled out, drank and played some pool, it was very very relaxing.

On one of the days we decided to rent the bikes out and explore the island as we like to do, venturing off firstly to the mangroves. This was just a quick stop as we werent bothered about doing there boat tour, we just wanted a quick look. Shortly after we drove up into the hills to look at the viewpoint over the Andaman Sea - whcih had a gorgeous restaurantto get a well earn't cup of tea, while enjoying the fabulous view (although the weather was a little hazy). Next we moved onto the far south east part of the island to visit the sea gypsy village. The group of people here use to live at sea and did not come inland much for anything. But as time has evolved, they have had to base themselves somewhere. However they still do all their own fishing etc and their village was full of fishing equipment, cages nets etc. These villages were so basic, but all the locals here are very happy and content with their lives. There wasn't that much going on here but I think, at certain times of the day, for example when they have been fishing etc you would see how these people live and go about their daily life.

Anyway after having a quick drive through Old Koh Lanta town where they had a festival going on for the children we cruised around the whole island until we reached the far south west corner, whcih is where we were tld had the nicest beaches. After stopping at a few shops along the way, we arrived at an area where there are lots of expensive resorts (we forget the name) to get a bit of their beach action lol. It was beautiful here and the water was so clear. We spent the rest of the day here as we loved it. Kate sunbathed while I scrambled the rock pools walking all the way around to the next bay, which also looked amazing but smaller, although there was only 4 people on it.

We have really enjoyed our time in Koh Lanta and ended up staying longer than we had planned, but it was time to move on after having explored all that was on offer. So its of to the lush, green, jungled island of Koh tarutao national park tomorrow for some camping (this is where watching Ray Mere's will pay off haha!!).