We left Krabi and took a local ferry across to Phang Nga Bay and the small island of Koh Yao Noi. This was my first real experience of muslims in Thailand. Up until now most of the people we had met were Buddhist, but southern Thailand has a large muslim population and the village where we caught the ferry was a muslim village. Apart from the visible difference in the people and their dress it also meant we had to dress differently and to respect their traditions we had to cover our knees and shoulders.

This island of Koh Yao Noi was hit pretty badly by the tsunami two years ago and it is still trying hard to recover. It's a small island and relies heavily on local fishing and tourism for it's survival. When we arrived we took a short tour of the island to see rubber plantations and how they get the rubber from the trees into a big sheet that can be sold to market; we passed thorugh a fisherman's village and saw the huge fish traps they use to catch all the fish, very clever design with a relatively large hole for the fish to swim into but not being the brightest of animals the trap is designed so they are unable to find the hole to swim back out again! We also went up to a viewpoint right at the top of the island which was absolutely beautiful, looking out over limestone islands for as far as you can see.

We stayed in some great little beach bungalows, although I got slightly scared when I was stuck in mine alone in a big thunderstorm. I didn't want to put the light on as it was thundering and lightening so badly so just laid on my bed under the mosquito net until it finally stopped about an hour later!

I also went on another boat trip, this time on a longtail boat to three islands (and today there were only three!). These islands were more deserted than the one's I visited from Krabi, but the snorkelling wasn't so good. I still saw lots of fish but only two really notable ones - I found Nemo (!) and also saw one really huge fish, it looked something like a grouper, but not really sure what it was. We also had a monitor lizard come and say hello while we were having lunch on the beach. It just kind of appeared but nobody noticed where from - maybe out of the sea where we had all been swimming (!) or maybe just from in the caves surrounding the beach. Either way it was soon chased back into the dark caves and away from the tourists!