So..... The final blog comes around! It really doesn't seem like 6 and a half months have passed, but then when you think about where we've gone and what we've done it seems akin to a roller-coaster.

The last month has been a tour of the Thai Islands with many a drunken night chucked in. Not very cultural I'm sure you'll cry, but amid the chaos of thousands of drunken teenage Americans it is still possible to find a real slice of Thailand on the paradise of Maya beach on Phi Phi Ley or an early morning longtail boat ride around Koh Pha Ngang.

I think we left you during a rainy bus ride to Bangkok from the Cambodian border, the day before my birthday. For my birthday we went to a restaurant called "Lovetaurant", very romantic, but we're going back there again tonight it was that good. We spent three days in Bangkok organising which islands we were going to visit, which shops Alex was going to shop at and generally relaxing.

We got a pretty terrible overnight bus down to Krabi on the West coast of Southern Thailand and took a boat to the famous Koh Phi Phi. Phi Phi is only 2 miles long and most of that is taken up by mountains, when you arrive you can see the sea in the other bay over the spit of land it's that small! You may recognise it from the videos and photos of the tsumani as it was this town that was completely wiped out. The popularity of this island has led to planning since then that now looks a little bit like the inside of an insane persons mind; overcrowded just doen't cut it! It's a real shame because you can still see the beauty of Phi Phi by hiking up to a view point early morning or early evening to view the sunset. We started our island tour in typical style by sunbathing and shade bathing. Guess who did what! We also went on one of the tours to go and see Maya beach on Koh Phi Phi Ley the sister island where no one is allowed to stay on and that was made famous in the film "The Beach". It was a whole day of sight seeing, snorkelling, kayaking and then a walk to THAT beach, which really was as spectacular as they make it out to be. Alex had never done snorkelling before, never used fins and does not like the water or fish. She was brave enough, however, to jump into about 5 metres of water with hundreds of fish all around (because the crew of the boat were throwing in food) and then promptly freak out and got back on the boat afetr suffering a mild panic attack!

Our last night at midnight was the start of Songkram, which is the Thai new year. They celebrate with a three day water fight, oh and chuck in some flour and other pastes for good measure. The evening also involved the best fire show we've seen and at 12 a gigantic water fight, the walk back to our room was essentially a bath where Alex made the mistake of wearing a white dress that promptly went see-through.

The next day, we thought, wrongly, that most of the festivities would have died down. If anything they had picked up because all the kids were out. We had to travel to Koh Lanta and so had all of our belongings with us. When I said water fight earlier, everyone has gigantic water guns, but there are barrels of water outside every pub, bar and restaurant with people with buckets soaking poeple as they walk past. There are also people with hose pipes getting those spots on you that may still be dry. This goes on for three days and the day before we were told that the price of water had just gone up! Mad.

So the journey to Lanta and then to our resort were interesting to say the least. Our resort on Lanta was called the Riviera Lanta and through a bit of complaining about more cockoaches we got upgraded to a really nice room (Alex's complaining is sometimes useful). The resort had its own swimming pool, restaurant right on the beach and was the first time we finally thought we were on holiday. We spent five days here and would have spent longer had we not realised that the date we had for the full moon party on our next beach (Koh Pha Ngang) was two days earlier than we had though. So on 17th April we took a tuk-tuk, boat, bus, bus, boat, tuk/tuk, boat combo to Bottle Beach at the northern end of Koh Pha Ngang and checked into our basic beach front hut, very tired!

Within half an hour, with a very jumpy Alex sitting at the restaurant, i had managed to kill about 10 giant cockraoches which i had thoughtfully bagged up and took to see the manager. We had invested by this time in some serious insect spray but even this took about 10 minutes to kill them; they are monsters on the islands. Another room upgrade saw us to a sealed deluxe garden bungalow with only a couple of cockroaches. At this point i would like to take my hat off to Alex who would leave the room for a penny spider before we left but up to this point had dealt with some pretty awful things. Finally, her patience was spent and for the remainder of the trip a full room inspection would have to be carried out before her entering. The remainder of the stay and bottle beach and in fact the whole trip we have not seen any more cockroaches. One night, we did come back to a very guilty looking frog in our bathroom, which was extremely odd considering the lack of access.

In the morning of the first day we awoke to the sight of the most beautiful beach (bar Maya beach) we stayed at this whole trip. The next few days in the run up to the Full moon party we swam, sun bathed and played lots of beach sports. The sea was sandy all the way out of the bay at a depth of about 1 metre and was perfect except when i got a jellyfish sting on my arm during an early morning swim.

On the morning of the full moon we travelled across the island, to meet some friends of ours from Uni and a few travellers they had picked up along the way. The only down side to Bottle beach is the fact that you have to take a boat to anywhere else on the island. The party started with flourescent paint and some Sansom buckets and ended with a gorgeous 6am boat ride back to our resort. The buckets i am referring to are little child sand castle making buckets that get filled with a whole bottle of Sangsom (local whiskey) loads of coke and M150 (apparently 15 times the strength of red bull and illegal in England) and ice. Obviously you can change the theme of your bucket and i think Alex's happiest moment of the night was buying a Gin and Tonic bucket!!

We were now part of quite a big group of people and we all travelled to Koh Tao, because alot of them wanted to do their diving courses. We had heard that Tao is all about diving but that it is a really nice island in its own right. Wrong, if you dont dive you get ripped off! Eventually we found a nice resort but it took a huge amount of searching and even then it was very over priced. In hind sight we should have stayed on Bottle beach for a few more days, but the effect of people you havent seen for 6 months is a bit intoxicating. The weather also decided to be terrible for the whole of Thailand for the next week and a half so thank goodness we got a T.V, and had discovered buckets. I also went on a snorkelling trip around the island for a day. The first stop was shark bay to see....., you guessed it, swiming above a 2 metre black tip reef shark is pretty much at the limit of my fear.. but it did justify not paying for a PADI diving course. At the next bay i saw the best coral i have ever seen, but it started raining and didnt stop until we got back to the resort.

So, after a fond fairwell to all the people we'd met ( most of them are doing the trip we've just done but in reverse) we're now back in Bangkok, and have just undergone two days of intensive shopping and massage! We'll be back in less than 48 hours and i think we both find that quite hard to take in right now!

Thank you for reading the blog. I hope it has reassured, inspired, informed and maybe even amused. We dont know how long this will stay on the net but keep looking at the photos and ask questions or make comments on the message board as we'll keep checking for as long as it stays here.

We can both already say that this trip has been the most incredible experience and that we have tried to make the most of every moment. Thank you to everyone who made this trip for us possible and for those of you who we will be seeing in the next few days get ready for hours and hours of going through photos!

Lots of Love Tom and Alex xxxxx