Hello everyone!
Hope you are all ok! Sorry about the lack of blog entires, but the sun (and the shopping are just too good to miss (mostly! ... more on that later!)

Well, since we last updated you, we have moved around a fair amount, from Koh Tao to Koh Samui to Rai Lei to Koh Phi Phi to Phuket and we are now in Singapore!

Firstly, I have to apologise, we uploaded some pictures from when we went to see Muai Thai in Koh Tao, but didn't tell you anything about it, hmmmm ... what can I say about Muai Thai, it's like kick boxing, but they are allowed to use their knees and elbows aparently! So it's rather more violent! In fact, I think it was possibly the most violent thing that I have ever seen! They didn't seem to be particularly evenly matched fights so we saw knock-outs in the first round in the first 3 fights, including 1 broken nose and one guy who had to b dragged out of the ring because he couldn't stand up ... at all! Aparently it is quite uncommon to see knock-outs at all in an entire night of Muai Thai I can see how it would have been good, the atmosphere was certinly great, but this seemed to be a rather back street affair, you could see from the pictures that I put up, we were virtually sitting in the ring! Not like the big stadiums that they have for it in Bangkok and places like that. Well, enough violence for now, Muai Thai is something that has to be seen out here, but I won't be going back again!

We ended up staying on Koh Tao for 10 days, it was heaven! We loved it there, gorgeous beaches fantastic scenery and then chilled bars and restaurants for the evening! Our bungalow was great, very close to the beach, however we came back from dinner one night to find that we were sharing our bathroom with a RAT! Not the nicest of experiences, I scared it off but in the night we could hear it running around on the roof! Sarah woke me up thinking that it was actually in the bungalow with us! In the morning we had them come and deal with it, and we never heard from it again! However, the guys next door said that everynight after that, they hear something scratching around on the roof, so, it seems that Philip (as I named him) moved house!

So, then we chilled out for the rest of the time on Koh Tao, sunbathed, swam in the sea, played Pit Pat (bat and ball) and frizzboz (frizzbee) oh and visited our friend Matt in hospital after he had a rather serious accident involving getting a motorbike handle bar stuck in his leg!! Quite a comedy injury, but he wasn't laughing so much at the time! Luckily after a few days he started to find it funny!

Then we decided to leave Koh Tao and head for Koh Samui (if we hadn't done it then, I think that we would have spent the rest of our trip there!) Now, from the reports that we have heard, Samui is supposed to be built up and commercialised, with Starbucks and MacDonalds, and so we only planned to spend 2 nights there before moving on again, but looking back, we wish that we had spent another couple of days there. We seemed to hit the jackpot as far as Samui is concerned and ended up on a deserted beach (we were actually the only ones on it!) and a nice little group of bungalows. As we were only staying for 2 nights, Sarah and I decided to push the boat out and get a bungalow with a HOT shower and a TV!! The only draw back was that it was the "Honeymoon Suite" and so, only had 1 BIG bed!! But it was luxury! We had our own little kitchen (not that we had anything to cook or that there were any plates, saucepans, cutlery etc provided!) And we found that after shelling out for the posh room with a tv, there was only 1 english speaking channel ... Kiwi Nickelodeon! So, as this place was deserted and there was no nightlife at all (the only restaurant closed at 8.30!) We ended up watching quite a lot of SpongeBob Squarepants! hahaha! But at least the bed was extremely comfy, and it turned out that it was so big that I could roll over 4 times and still not reach Sarah on the other side!

So regretfully we left Samui after just 1 day on our deserted beach (with very comfy sunloungers too!!! No where else has sunloungers! THIS WAS LUXURY!) we headed off to Rai Lei on the other side of the Gulf of Thailand. After a journey that seemed to go on forever on a ferry, then a bus, then another bus, and then another ferry, (it actually only took about 4 1/2 hours but when I was feeling extremely travel sick, it seemed like FOREVER!) we arrived at Rai Lei. Rai Lei is actually part of the mainland of Thailand, but because of the huge cliffs and mountains, there is no way of getting there by land, it's long boat from Krabi only, which means at low-tide, which it was when we went that we had to drag Backpacks, wheely holdalls (unable to wheel them and they are really heavy!!) over rocks and sand, and wade through water out to the boat seemed to be about a mile out! (probably not quiite that far really!) And then after 10 minutes on the boat repeat the whole process at the other end! By the time Sarah and I got checked in and got to our room, (drag the bags THROUGH SAND AND UP A HUGE HILL AND THEN 2 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS!) I thought I was going to die! Sweaty was not the word! But, we found that we had a really nice room with a tv AND a HOT shower again, so after I lie down our beds for a while, we recovered enough to go and explore the beach and go for a paddle in the sea!

Handing over to Sarah, I'm bored of typing and my hand hurts! ...

The next few days in Rai Lei were fairly uneventful. At the pool on our first day we met a couple of really rather boring boys with as Naomi said 'annoying voices'. The next day at breakfast one of them appeared from no where and asked us if we wanted to join them on a boat trip for the day (the last thing in the world we wanted- after recent boat trips and the boys serious lack of banter!!) but me, being me, agreed anyway on my YES autopilot- and before I knew it we were having breakfast with them in Ma's Kitchen and spending the day on a boat!! Naomi ended up having to fake illness and we had to pay the boys off, to get our deserved relaxing day by the pool. And I have to say Naomis performance when the boys got back from their boat trip was Oscar winning- there was all sorts in there about tap water, teeth cleaning and the cheese on toast she had for breakfast ... while I hid my face behind my (shaking) book wetting myself!!! That night began the earthquakes just off Sumatra and the Tsunami warnings to go with them! Rather scary I have to say, there was definitely tension in the air around the locals that night. People were obviously scared of a re-run of 2004.

From Rai Lei we moved onto Koh Phi Phi, where we spent 4 rainy days (pak-a-macs at the ready 24-7) and ended up spending a lot of time in bars watching Friends (which we found funny for the first time in years- a sign we have been away too long!!) We hired a DVD player, but found the wires were too short to reach the plug (strategicaly placed near the ceiling!!!!) And ended up havind to balance the MAHUSIVE TV on top of the bedside table- on top of the TV table with a DVD player on top! Not sure we'd get away with that in an English hotel!? We didnt get to see much of Phi-Phi, we got all of 20 minutes freezing our butts off on the beach wrapped in our sarongs- before the rain came down AGAIN!! Naomi said the clouds coming over the mountains looked nice (in case I wanted to write about that?!) So that was it for Phi-Phi.

Onto Phuket, and the SURF!! The beach in Phuket was nothing like any of the other beaches we had been to. The sea was unlike the calm turquoise warm bath like seas of the rest, and was rather more like the North Sea, cold and with BIG BIG waves!! The guesthouse we moved into when we first arrived in Kata reminded us of an old hospital! It seemed we were the only guest there and everything was white, and the room was big enough to be a ward and the bathroom had no ceiling which was random! We ended up moving after the first night to be closer to the beach to Flamingo Bungalows- which were 500 bhat (about 8 quid) and air conditioned- LUXURY!! The bungalows boasted a 'spa and a swimming pool'- surely that green vile smelling pond isnt the pool?!! YES YES it was, and the spa doubled up as a laundry room, no sign of any spa-ness going on! On our second day in Phuket we had a surf lesson for two hours between us. I had planned to do these two hours and then to go out on a board for the rest of the day, I had no idea how tiring it was!! We both managed to stand up (and quickly fall off again!) But undefeated we hired a board the next day (happened to be the roughest waves for weeks) and ended up drinking a LOT of seawater, Naomi took a board to the head and I ended up covered in bruises! Ever the optimist we got a board out on our last day and again came out of the sea with cuts to the hands, which Naomi 'first aided up' for me (we do love Nurse Naomi!!)

From Phuket we flew down to Singapore (despite recent events we thought it was still a better option than the 26 hour bus journey!) After arriving in Singapore and mastering our way from the airport to Bugis on the MRT and we found the local taxi rank (biggest queue ever!), just our luck we ended up with a taxi driver that didnt seem to know where he was, let alone how to get us anywhere!! After stopping for directions, attempting to master his satnav for 15 minutes(I thought at this point Naomi was going to climb in the front and programme it for him!!) and generally dithering muttering and not really going anywhere Naomi saw the sign for the road our hotel was on!! The hotel was about 100 yards from the taxi rank (i exagerrate not) we arrived at cosy corner guesthouse!! In cosy corner the rooms are kept 'cosy' by having no windows, a really strong smell of fresh gloss paint in them and being smaller than I am long (this is obviously Sarah the 'green bean' writting not Naomi the 'kidney bean'- yes we have gone a bit weird and stir crazy with just each other for company- better though than the girls we met in the internet cafe, who had reverted to giving themselves fake Hebrew names?!!! WEIRD!) After the first night we moved to a fanned room with cute bunk beds. In the two days we have been in Singapore, we have spent a total of two days shopping, we are yet to find the other sights!! We will do tomorrow... promise!!

Update you more soon, although this may be our last blog entry before we arrive home as we only have just over a week left!

Missing you all! Can't wait to see everyone when we get back!

Lots of love,

Naomi and Sarah xxx