We sadly left our beautiful tropical paradise and set out to cross the border with Thailand. We were pleased when we got off the speedboat at 8.45am to find out that our bus should arrive at 9 - 9.30am... 3 hours 45 minutes later it finally shows up! Mark fell asleep twice waiting and Kim learned the rules to Drafts from locals playing with bottle tops.

We stopped for a bite to eat before we crossed the Thai / Malaysian border where a passing man gave us some spiky lychee type fruit free 'from his orchard'. Kim was immediately suspicious and wondered if it was a plot to get us to smuggle drugs into Thailand...maybe they had been injected into the fruit...???? However after eating most of them with no ill effects we decided we were over-reacting....

The border crossing was uneventful and we arrived at the train station to find our train to Hat Yai was waiting. We got on the train and sat down - lucky Kim checked with a fellow passenger because we were on the wrong train... we ran across the tracks to the next train which had just been given the green flag to go. Mark threw money at the ticket man and Kim convinced the conductor to stop the train...phew!

The Sourthern provinces of Thailand are prone to some rebel/ terrorist activity against the government so we were slightly concerned about travelling through this area.... our minds were put at rest though by the hundreds of military men with machine guns we saw on our journey...at every station and even accompanying the ticket inspector on the train...!!!!!

Hat Yai was a fairly uneventful stop off although we did treat ourselves to an expensive western meal for the first time...cost us a whole 15 quid!