Hey guys, we left you with us arriving in Phuket, whoops we are now in Oz so some backtracking to complete. We stayed in Phuket Old town for 2 days enjoying the vegatarian festival, a homage to Buddism not herbivores, which was really colourful and interesting but after 2 more days of temple spotting we decided to head south to Kata Beach. We found a really cool guesthouse a few minutes walk away from white sandy beaches and clear blue, sea urchin but not jelly fish free waters.

After a full days sunbathing we felt that more adventure was needed so booked ourselves on a 2 day safari. We headed off bright and early the next day, picking up a very large Isreali family on route, and drove north to Khoa Sak National Park. The first activity was elephant trekking. This was something neither of us had thought about doing but absolutely loved it. We started off very sedately on the seat but by the end we were riding up on the elephant, Lokma's, neck. It was a really weird sensational and a lot more wobbly and prickly than we had anticipated. Elephants are really hairy. Anyway it was awesome and that alone made this trip worthwhile. This was followed by us kayaking through the rainforest in a monsoon, it was hilarious I genuinely think we would have been drier if we had swam. We then had a feast of a meal being going to bed exhausted.

The next morning we went into the jungle on a trek. Unfortunately the first wildlife we saw were leaches that somehow magically managed to climb half way up your body before you realised resulting in a lot of our group screaming their heads off and meaning we saw no other creatures the whole way round. It was still fantastic though and Tesco you would have been in your element.

We then headed back to Kata Beach and vowed to have a chilled day on the beach before heading back to the choas of Bangkok and thats exactly what we did. Our journey back to Bangkok, our last night bus, however, was far from chilled. It started at 1.30pm and was scheduled to get to Bangkok at 5am not a problem we've done longer. What we didn't factor in was a stop in Surat Thani for two hours where we got moved by tuk tuk to 3 different tourist offices in the pouring rain. Us and 30 others being shepherded around with no explanation and being told that our bags were secured. Eventually we made it into Bangkok in the early hours and headed to our favourite 6th floor appt only to discover that some heartless w*#ker had broken into our bag, without damaging the lock and stolen all our jewellery and Hattie's binoculars. Gutted goes no way to explain how we felt. First tears of the trip I'm afraid. Not sure why this paragraph is in bold, sorry....

We headed to Bangkok Police station expecting to be treated carefully and sympathetically only to discover they offer none of this. We had to pay to report the crime and I had to write the statement whilst they repeated the whole time that they would not be investigating it despite the fact that 3 others on the same bus had also had stuff stolen. Awesome service. Not the best end to our Thailand travels by any means so we had our last pad thai nd bottle of chang before heading to Kuala Lumpar.