Hi all So we jumped in a 'taxi' and shot off to meet Kimbers and the guy she's travelling with, Emmett. After a shouty huggy reunion and a polite how do you do for Emmett we went, obviously, to a bar for a getting to know you drink. This turned rowdy after about an hour and really rowdy an hour or two after that. A Swiss girl Emmet had met before told us she was going to watch the football and who were we to decline. I'm proud to say I was more into it than the Swiss were (apparently thery didn't know any Swiss football songs so I taught them England ones and just changed the name of the country...clever huh?) before drinking the sun up whilst attempting to chat up some gay guy (just to keep my hand in...so to speak). Then back to Kimberley anmd Emmetts room cos we couldn't be arsed to get a taxi. The next day was our first taste of The Magic Garden bar where we sat nursing hangovers (me and Mand actually fell asleep for most of the afternoon. If you've seen the pictures you'll understand) before getting our first taste of the Whiskey bucket. This is the SangSom whisky which is about 70 per cent, with 2 cans of monster redbull in it and two bottles of coke. The redbull is like treacle and has an effect like speed. Trashed is not the word. We spent the entire day eating and drinking on this giant blue bed with orange pillows. How we didn't find this combination vomit inducing is beyond me. Eventually this fat gobby Canadian fella walks up and asks if he can join us. Fine. Then he starts telling us how much money he earns and how he can do anything he wants in this country blahdy f***in blah, but he did get his weed so we could have a joint (not for me or I really would've chucked up). Eventually he casually mentions that he should pay our bill as a welcome to Thailand which meets with more approval than anything else he's said all evening and we're off out the door with two english guys (from Haslemere of all places) in tow leaving him to pick up the tab for us all. Sweet! A full day's drinking and eating for nothing! Suits us! After another bar, we realised we weren't going to get back to White Sands tonight either and booked in to the same place as the other two and got off to bed. Same price as ours, but a clean bed, air con, tv and dvd player, and a hot shower. Shame it didn't quite have the view that ours did but we decided to move all our stuff up the next day. This we duly did and spent the next couple of days getting trashed and eating loads. We got to know one of the local bars particularly well, despite the first night we went in and there was a drunken copper walking around with his gun strapped on still. The bar was run by a gay guy called Bee who took an instant liking to us (in more ways than one...particularly with me...nipples and stuff...trust me not good). And on a more food based note the woman who ran the restaurant where we were on the first night who was called Mallaika. She had two Cambodian kids living with her who she'd rescued. They looked about 5 and 9 but it turned out they were 13 and 14. Christ they breed them small over here (still bigger than Stuy though to be fair). Anyhoo eventually we got a little tired of partying and decided we should see some of the island and rented a couple of mopeds for the day. Never, ever, ever get on a moped with Mand. She spent the first 20 minutes screaming in my ear as we reached speeds of up to 15 miles an hour, and the rest of the day refusing to lean when we went round corners unless it was the wrong way 'to keep the bike steady'. But we soldiered on and made it to the waterfall whose name I think was Khlong Plu and had a wicked time swimming in the cold water pool near the bottom. Then back on the bikes and off to White Sands for dinner. Then it started to go a bit t*** up. We got back on the bikes and off we set. About 200 yards later we ran out of petrol. No probs, they sell it in bottles out here, but when we got back on the bike felt decidedly wobbly. With Mandy hitting panic buttons over some small noise the thing was making, we pulled over and much to my serious dismay she flags down a taxi. Time for a mini fight which she eventually won and we loaded the bike into the taxi (see, they are good for some things) and off we went we me being as mardy as possible cos she'd ruined all my fun. Turns out the bike had a puncture so I'll be damned if Mand wasn't proved right again. I hate it when that happens. Suffice to say the mopeds were not a roaring success. The only other thing to report from Koh Chang was the f***ing England game, which we watched at a Beach Bar. We'd spent the previous evening at a 'Fashion Show' in the Treehouse which turned out to be an excuse to get all the travellers in one place for a party. Sweet! Steamboats after about 20 minutes having a right dance up, and constantly rescuing Mand (and a random Canadian girl called Tiffany) from the amorous intentions of the locals. The next day saw us rather predictably nursing hangovers back on the big blue bed at The Magic Garden. Many many wonderful drinks later we walk through the torrential rain for about 20 minutes to go to a bar called Nature Rocks where apparently everyone goes to watch the England games. We got there and it was like walking into a library. Not to worry. Although we'd missed the national anthem by then, I proceeded to sing every England song we knew at the top of our voices encouraging everybody in the process. Believe it or not (and trust me I wouldn't lie about something as serious as this) there was a scummer sat behind us who'd already refused to talk to Mand when he found out she was from Pompey. This f***in idiot then has the front to ask me to stay sat down because he couldn't see the tv whenever I stood up. Hmmmmm many expletives later and I think I'd got my point across. I'm not going to dwell on the game other than to say i didn't think we played too badly, Rooney's sending off was a load of old w***, Beckham needs to f*** off and die and take Ronaldo the whiny whingy diving cheating scummy little p****with him. Can't believe I'm sitting here sweating just thinking about it. Obviously there followed much much sorrowful drinking in Bee's bar and the morning found us in Mallaika's drinking whisky buckets for breakfast. To be fair we also had some muesli. This turned into a proper Sunday session, which turned into Monday morning by the time it finished and if I'm honest I remember about 20 minutes of the whole day. But I have seen the footage! Mand has got me singing Lola in Mallaika's (this was after only the third bucket - about midday ish) and if that's what I look like when I'm being a rock god I might just give up on the whole thing. To make it worse everywhere we went that day we had to apologise to people and the looks and the laughs we were getting was shocking in it's uniformity. Can''t believe we had to do The Walk Of Shame! And so it was decided that if we felt ashamed, we probably knew the people too well and therefore we'd been there too long. So we bought our tickets for Bangkok to leave the following day. The only other thing worth reporting about Koh Chang was a brown dog we adopted for the time we were there, who we imaginatively named 'BrownDog'. He wasn't the only dog. There was also WhiteDog and BlackDog, but BrownDog was our protector. Never has a more faithful hound been found. Wherever we went, he was there to eat anything we had left. He even slept outside our rooms to ensure we didn't have any food going to waste at night. Right, that's finally it for Koh Chang and sad as we were to leave (we could've got even more stuck there than we did) Bangkok was calling. Mandy and Neil xxxxxxxxxxxxxx