We awoke early in the morning to be picked up from our hostel and taken to the local pier. Here we were formally greeted by our tour guide for the day, 'Michelle,' who explained the route we would be taking in our SPEED BOAT!!!! Unfortunately there were another 10-12 people who were also going to be on the boat with us but fortunately we still managed to reserve ourselves front-row seats.

Our first stop was at Maya Bay where the film 'The Beach' was filmed. As we approached, we witnessed the dark blue waters beneath us develop into crystal blue shores. The white sand glistened as the boat docked and none of us could resist jumping straight into the beautiful transparent water. Very refreshing!

The next stop was a small lagoon, also very pretty. Here, we were all given a snorkel and were told we had half an hour to go look at all the fishes. So that is exactly what we did. As Panda feared for her life, the rest of us swam gracefully around the millions of tropical fish and reef, trying to block out the loud piercing screams of joy/fear from the Pand in the background. Eventually she settled down and has now decided she will become a professional diver. Michelle on the boat found it hilarious as she threw small pieces of bread into the sea, encouraging a mass of fish to float alongside us. All in all, great fun.

Following on from this, we were shown a small cave called Viking Cave which unfortunatley you were not alloed to explore and therefore from some of our point of views, seemed a bit pointless showing us. However, they did make a very good point that the reason people were not allowed in there was due to the protection of some of the birds - not good enough as far as some of us were concerned. Haha.

Monkey bay - need we say any more?! As we approached the shoreline, Michelle informed us that we will not be stopping here as the monkeys are not always that friendly and warned us not to take any photos directly at them with a flash. Those cute cuddly little monkeys seemed rather tame for the first few seconds of the trip. Until, a flash went off behind us and all of our hearts sank as a killer monkey boarded and attacked our boat. Screams and complete chaos was to follow with Jordan beginning to crowd surf to reach personal safety. This left the remaining four fearing for their lives, until the captain of the boat acted quickly and started moving the boat away from the shore. This then prompted the monkey to panic and we all watched with a sigh of relief as he jumped off our boat and swam back to shore, throwing evil looks back at us as he did so.

We then arrived at mainland Phi Phi for our lunch which was a buffet of local Thai food. Very nice although not quite as nice as the buffet we had on our elpephant trekking trip. We stayed on the island for just over an hour and had a little explore. The devastation from the tsunami was much more apparent here than anywhere else, howver it was still a stunning island.

Finally, we went to paradise. A small sand dune island called 'Bamboo island' with white sandy beaches perimetering. Clearly there were no shops, hotels or any sign of human living. Instead it was purely an island get away for sun, sea, sun and sea....

This of course was heaven for us all and we enjoyed sunbathing and dipping ourselves in the refreshing waters to cool down. We stayed there for about an hour until Michelle called us in and then greeted us with fresh fruit salad. Our journey was over and now we needed to embark on the trip back to mainland.

Since we had been out, the weather had began to change as the wind picked up the waves got bigger. Therefore, the speedboat crashed through the waves which felt more like a theme park ride. En route, we strongly believed we had spotted a shark and excitedly began to shout and point 'Shark!!' That was until we discovered that the shark was in fact two flags on a buoy and the entire boat found it hysterically funny that we had mistaken a flag for a real-life shark!

We had a slight de-tour on the way home as we had to save another speedboat of tourists who had broken down at sea. This involved our boat towing their boat back to the nearest island in order for them to save themselves from there. Eventually we got home safely and content.

In the evening, as it was our last evening in Ao Nang/Thailand, Jo and Tom decided to have a Thai massage. This was out of this world, amazing and completely topped off the entire Thai experience for them both.