Hello everyone,

Well, we have made it home safe and sound!!! After almost a year of travelling we finally caught sight of the green fields of Ireland again on the 24th June.

We had a brilliant end to our trip. We spent 7 nights on the islands in the south of Thailand and then 3 days in Bangkok shopping like lunatics! Ko Samui was our first stop for three nights followed by Ko Tao for a further 3 nights. Both islands are located one hour south of Bangkok by plane. Our plan on the islands was to completely relax and that was exactly what we did. We found lovely accommodation close to the beach on both islands so spent our days swimming, reading, eating and drinking. Ko Tao is particularly famous for snorkelling and diving so one day we headed out on a boat and spent the day snorkelling at different spots around the island. There were loads of different types of tropical fish and some really cool and colourful coral to keep us entertained all day! Because of the hot sun we were afraid of burning our back while swimming so being the conscientious people were are, we wore T-shirts in the water all the time. Of course we were so concerned with our backs not getting burnt that we completely forgot about the rest of our body. Our legs got roasted!!! We could have fried eggs on them that night! Couldn't believe we got burnt through the water!

We flew back to Bangkok and did all the things we didn't get time to do the first time we were there. One highlight was a trip to the floating markets outside of the city. The town was set up like Venice with rows of canals connecting the different shopping areas. We took a boat trip around the canals to see all the markets. Women sat in boats filled to the brim with all sorts of fruit and veg for everyone, while street sellers shouted for our attention from the banks. The colours were fantastic!

Of course among the shopping and sightseeing we tried to get as much yummy Thai food into us as possible! We'll definitely miss that!

Our trip came to a surprisingly comfortable end when we sweet talked our way into an upgrade from economy to business class for our flight home! It was the perfect end to a brilliant trip!

Although our trip has come to an end, we still have one more blog to write. In the next few days we will hopefully put together a 'short' summary of our year mentioning a few highlights along the way.

Love to you all,

Ger and Linda