I really can't tell you anything about Phuket as we only left our hotel room for lunch and dinner the 3 days we were there. I will post some pictures of the garden pool villa we had thanks to Trailfinders and you will see why, not necessarily what you were thinking. It would however be perfect for a honeymoon. Although from the outside the resort was underwhelmingly minimalist chic with municipal car park walkways, single villas and small 2 storey blocks surround...

60km out in the Andaman Sea lie the Similan Islands, originally 9 but 2 further north were added to the National Park, which closes to tourists for 6 months of the year to protect the wildlife and coral. Some trips visit several islands, snorkel and swim from the boat, but seeing little point in spending the day on a boat we went to Tachai, the northernmost, as you can go onto the beach. An hour and a quarter by bucking bronco speedboat, sea-sick tablets and plat...

Our second day trip is to Ao Phang Nga Bay in the Gulf of Thailand, famous for its hundreds of tall, steep-sloped islands. We didn't take the usual large scale tourist trip to see the one used as Scaramanga's lair in the Bond film, but a boat taking 20 to canoe into the hongs, beautiful tropical lagoons hidden within some islands, completely surrounded by limestone crags and only reachable by air or a narrow tunnel through the rock where the sea has eroded right ...

Picked up at 7.30 am, fortified by stir fried noodles, by a driver who thinks they drive on the right here especially around steep bends and a guide fluent in German with a little Thai/German accented English who passes some of the 2hr drive showing us pictures of his 60 chickens and cockerels, bred for decorative plumage, which sell to rich Thais for £40 - £3000 as live ornaments. He insists the neon pink eggs and chickens are real and not, as we cynics suspec...

A one hour flight south to Phuket and a preflight sticky rice snack is provided in the free economy lounge, lunch served swiftly en route, chicken with sticky rice and rice pudding dessert. With the pressure of the descent on landing I literally felt sticky rice was coming out of my ears. Khao Lak, one hour drive north on the west coast was devastated by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami with a small museum and police patrol boat washed 2km inland left as a memorial. ...