Super early start this morning for my trip out to the Similan Islands. I got into another speedboat and was taken about 100 miles off the coast of Phuket. At about the half way point it started to rain and then the rain turned into a storm. It was very rough and everyone was getting soaked. People cried, screamed and some even threw up over the side. Where was I, I hear you ask? I was on the very back of the boat near the engines, with Manowar playing through my headphones, laughing like a crazy person.

After about an hour of that madness, we reached the first of the islands, it was still raining and we landed on the beach. The sea was still quite rough, so it was a flying leap into the water, which was still clear blue, even though the sky was black.

The island was quite small, the sand on the beach was pure white and the surrounding area around the beach was made up of huge boulders piled one on top of each other in the most illogical fashion, giving the impression that they would topple at any moment. Even though it was really coming down, I insisted on swimming anyway. Why not? I was as wet as I was going to get. There was no point crowding into the islands only shelter with literally hundreds of other people. I was shivering when I got off the boat, but the clear blue water was lovely and warm and soon I was no longer cold.

I went to have a bit of a look around further up the beach, there were a few over hanging rocks and a wooden swing but not much else. I then went to investigate the picnic area where we were having lunch. I got talking to two nice girls from Turkey, I always seem to attract people from Turkey and Egypt on my travels. I had a nice lunch and then went for a sun bake on the beach as the weather had now cleared up. The beach, which looked really nice before, looked amazing now. The water was a luminous turquoise and the green of the islands jungle, combined with the funny looking rocks made for truly spectacular viewing.

We left this island and traveled for about fifteen minutes to get to the next one. This one was also really nice, I went for a walk off the beaten path where I saw a large monitor lizard and suffered the worst mosquito attack of my life. They literally swarmed me, I felt them biting on all parts of my exposed skin, and it actually stung. I gave up on my jungle walk and went back to the beach, where I almost fell asleep and got horribly sun burnt.

We again boarded the boat and traveled for another hour back to Phuket, where I had a quick shower and inspected the awful damage caused by the sun and then jumped on the back of a motorbike and went down to Jung Ceylon, the big shopping centre for dinner. I had KFC and then ice cream, this sundae called the Fantastic Four. At the ice cream place you could either get two scoops for 150 baht or the sundae which had four scoops for 145 baht. No brainer!

After dinner I went and did a bit of shopping, I bought some colourful fairy lights in the shape of balls and lanterns, as well as some pretty Thai silk pants. It had now started to rain and I was not keen on walking back to the hotel in this kind of weather, nor was I keen on paying a tuk tuk driver 200 baht for a five minute trip. I decided, probably against my better judgment to get a motorbike taxi back. It wasn't really that scary, but again my mothers infamous words echoed in the back of my mind, Don't do anything Stupid. As far as I was concerned the entire day had been a bit nuts.