On my first day in Phuket I had decided to go to Phi Phi island. I got picked up and taken down to the marina to get the boat, the bus was full of Russians who thankfully got on another boat to mine. Why is it always Russians? I'll bet the only place I won't encounter rude Russian tourists is in Russia!

I boarded the boat and it took us about an hour to reach the beach, where they filmed the movie of the same name. I listened to my ipod the whole way, mainly as it was rather bumpy and I was trying to distract myself, I have been known to get seasick on occasion.

We reached the island and my immediate reaction was one of shock and awe. It was so beautiful, Hollywood had not embellished this place at all. There are just no words to describe how beautiful and pristine this beach was. The sand was white and soft and standing facing the sea, there was a magnificent bay, enveloped by high, oddly formed green cliffs and the water was an amazing clear blue. There were a few Thai long boats parked up the beach a bit, with colourful streamers flowing from their bows, they looked amazing against the backdrop of this place.

We hung around on the beach for about and hour, I swam in the crystal blue water and marveled at where I was. If there had been a few less people around I may have even felt like I was in the movie.

After leaving the beach we got back on the boat and sailed around to view some more beautiful bays on the same island. Including a cave in which local people were living, I could see I young man washing his shorts in the sea. We also had a stop on Monkey Beach, a small strip on coastline with small macack monkeys playing on the sand, I fed them some water melon. We all kept in the water, thinking the monkeys wouldn't follow us in, but they got brave enough to wade in up to their knees, which looked rather odd.

We jumped over board to do a bit of snorkeling, which was fun, but again nowhere near as good as the Red Sea, although I did see a lot of dangerous looking sea urchins. Our next stop was Phi Phi Don, the sister island to Phi Phi Lei which we had just come from. This is the island you can actually stay on, so we had a nice Thai lunch there and I sat with this couple from the Philippines, John and Carla and chatted with them. After lunch I went off to explore the island a little, there were a few shops there as well as this man walking around with a Gibbon in overalls! I had my picture taken holding the strange creature, who I thought was incredibly cute.

We left Phi Phi Don and headed for Khai island for more snorkeling and sun baking. We had two hours here, so I did a bit of snorkeling, I went out beyond the shark net, which turned out to just be a length of rope with no net. To keep the tourists happy I suppose. The fish here were very friendly, I think they liked the look of my sparkly camera and they kept trying to eat my red hair.

I went back to the beach to do some relaxing and John had a flask with tequila and coffee mixed in it. This actually sounds like it doesn't really work, but I tried some and hey it does! I sat in my sun lounger looking at the beautiful sea and colourful beach umbrellas. A man came up selling ice cream, why not, I thought and he came back with a sundae for me.

Just before leaving another man came along with his three pet mackak monkeys, all wearing little board shorts. I had my picture taken with them also, one of them sat on my shoulder, I only needed him to start smoking and I would have looked really cool. When our time was up here, we headed back to Phuket and I said goodbye to my two new friends. I was driven back to my hotel and then went out for a quick dinner, well I thought it was going to be quick but they took absolutely ages! Memories of restaurants in Africa came flooding back. Hey, I can still say TIA here, instead of Africa it can be This is Asia! I sat and watched the tourists in the place get really angry with the wait staff, especially when they had to wait for the bill. When I had finished, I thought to myself, watch this people, this is how you deal with this kind of thing. I proceeded to get up, walk over to someone and ask for my bill, which I stood there and paid while they waited. I walked out feeling smug.