We stayed up drinking until 5am on our last night in Langkawi, which wasn't the wisest move considering we had a full day of travel ahead. The cabbie had to pull over on the way to the jetty so that I could throw up by the side of the road and I had to keep sitting down on the floor in the ferry terminal whenever I felt too dizzy. Classy. The actual boat journey back to Penang was surprisingly fine; it was a nicer boat than the one we'd had on the way over and I'd taken a motion sickness tablet which may have had the added bonus of curing my hangover sickness too. We only stayed one night in Penang then were up early the next morning for our flight to Phuket, Thailand.

We flew rather than bussing it because UK citizens get 30 days visa-free entry to Thailand if they travel by air rather than 15 if they travel by land. You're meant to have a flight booked proving you're leaving the country within the 30 days but neither the airline or immigration asked to see proof of this, which was a relief as we didn't have it! There was a crazily long queue for immigration and for the metered taxis (literally half the price of the non-metre taxis so worth queuing for) but eventually we made it to our guesthouse in Patong. Our room is nice, with a TV, DVD player, fridge, aircon and ensuite bathroom. We'll be here for Christmas so decided against slumming it for once.

Patong is full-on, in-your-face madness. It is packed with tourists, Thai prostitutes (either on the arms of fat middle aged white men or lying languidly against bar stools being eyed up by sad fat middle aged white men), many many bars, restaurants, massage parlours, roadside food stalls, pop up travel agents and above all absolutely mad mad mad traffic made up of thousands of mopeds and what can only be described as pimped up milk carts (complete with disco music and flashing lights) masquerading as taxis. There's quite a nice beach but it is rammed with sunloungers as far as the eye can see and swarming with old fat Europeans in quite scary budgie-smugglers/thongs so it's not the most ambient scene. The sea is lovely though, cool and clear and calm.

After sunbathing yesterday we tested out the DVD player and watched an entire film in Thai with English subtitles before realising, once the credits were rolling, how to switch the language - not surprisingly it was by pressing the language button on the remote. It's quite worrying that we've been trusted to navigate the globe alone when we both completely lack common sense.

Today we lunched then dived into the markets to pick up some new clothes. You have to haggle over the price of everything and the trick is to pretend not to be interested so that they REALLY reduce the price. Of course, their persistence is a little irritating when you genuinely don't want the item and they are chasing you down the aisle shouting out '300 baht! 250! Good price!'. The desperation on their faces also makes me feel very guilty and like I am going to hell for not supporting local businesses, even if they are selling toot. I took to browsing stalls with my eyes from a few feet away so as not to raise their hopes by absent-mindedly fingering a dress or a top, and hiding behind clothes rails listening to other customer haggle so that if I was actually interested in something I could cut the crap and just tell them 'look I know you sold it to them for x baht' rather than going through the whole pantomime and having them blatantly overcharge me then look offended at my counter offer. One man tried to sell me a dress for 500 baht (£10) when I had just seen him sell two for that price! I would have felt cheeky coming in at 250 if I hadn't overheard him. I left with two tops and a dress. Must throw some things out to make room for them in my backpack...