Well i feel like the last week i have been on 'Challenge Anika'!... I got the taxi from Kota Bharu (where i last left you) and was curious as to the speed my driver was doing...evidently so was he, as nothing on the dash board was working! To give you some idea, we covered 20km in just under 8 minutes!! At one point we went over a bridge about 7 foot wide (with no sides on it) at what i guessed was 60-odd mph! I squeaked in fright! Then i had the boat trip across to the Perhentians. This boat had two 250cc engines on the back and as i was the only person on the boat, i joked to the guy that we could go faster...he did! I was lying down saying to myself "go floppy, go floppy!" that is the worst thing to do and i went tense and felt every wave...after what was probably my tenth loud "Ugh" he slowed down a bit! Spent a week diving on the Perhentians and it was great to see so many faces again. I just missed a couple of old friends by 1 day...gutted! Never mind, i made lots of new ones. :o) On one of the days a new friend (LisBeth) and i took a boat trip to Redang Island about 2 hours away. We did the first dive of the day and it was ok but i had a bit of a problem with equalising so thought perhaps i might sit out the next dive. Should have gone with my instincts...i went down on dive 2 which was planned as a drift dive round a couple of peninsulars and the boat is meant to keep an eye on the bubbles to be available if there are problems. Within 2 minutes i was in quite a bit of pain in my ears so decided to abort the dive. I told the DM and went up (id only been to 4m). The boat was disappearing round the peninsular...i used my air horn and whistle but the engine was too loud. I also had my luminous "Safety Sausage" inflated fully, but no luck! By this point i had lost the divers too, so i started to swim in the MASSIVE swell and only feet from the rocks. After half an hour i was totally wrecked and made the decsion to try to navigate my way thru' the rocks onto the uninhabited island we were diving beside. Well that took me 10 minutes and also much of the skin on my legs and arms. I will admit that by this point i was crying, starting to panic and praying for God's peace and a slight break in the waves; both of which came. So i hacked my whistle off my kit with a rock and whilst being bitten to death abandoned my kit and went for a climb to get to a vantage point where i could get the attention of the boat crew. I managed it and in a nutshell survived, although covered in blood. My Malay mate Chris who was on board said i did it all with style! Well i try! ;o) I was pretty shaken up though and didn't dive again that day...besides, i had a tan to work on! So, grateful to be alive, i dived a bit more the next couple of days and spent afternoons on the beach with a really hilarious Dutch Opera singer called Morschi. He was a bit off a nutter but kept me entertained... (Hi M! :o) Anyway then i got a taxi to Thailand with a couple of Irish folk who were heading to the Full Moon Party at Ko Phan Ngan and as i was going all the way up to Bangkok i wanted a bed on the train. There were none on their train so myself and a guy called Amir from Middlesborough have just survived 27hours in the tiny and rather dingy border town of Sungai Kolok. Our train is in a hour. Phew! Last night was the most MASSIVE thunder storm i have ever witnessed; the roads were flooded in 10 minutes and within an hour, some parts were almost knee deep. I sat most of it out with five little old men on a street corner...they gave me a chair and kept offering me wierd Thai cigarettes! And that has been my week...sorry this is long. Going shopping for journey food now. Would love to hear from some of you. Much love. Jumpa lagi. (See you) Liv. x