Hello again everyone,

A quick blog to update you on our activities since leaving Koh Tao; We jumped on a boat to Koh Samui early on Monday morning arriving at roughly 11.30am. We then got onto a minibus and were taken to our prearranged accommodation at Sukasem Bungalows where we had paid for a cold water room but Kie managed to rearrange some pipes so the water was warm. Once we'd settled and dropped off our bags in the room we ventured into Lamai Town. We have to say first impressions weren't great having just left beautiful Koh Tao. However, we found a nice place to eat; Restaurant Italiano which, although we didn't know it, was to become our daily lunchtime restaurant. After eating we headed back to the room to chill out after our early morning wake up.

The next day we decided we would have a beach day and, after breakfast, headed down to Lamai Beach which is a beautiful long stretch of clear sea and white sand lined with numerous restaurants and guesthouses. The sun was so hot that after only a few hours we had to pack up our towels and go for some lunch, deciding it would have been silly to go back out in the sun we made our way back to the guesthouse and chilled on our balcony catching up with all the goings on via the internet and Facebook.

On Wednesday we hired a moped and made our own privatised tour of the island firstly heading into the main touristy town of Chaweng. Here we purchased a snorkel and a mask each (to fuel our new found love of snorkelling) Kie also took the opportunity to inspect some running trainers so he can start to get fit again once we reach Australia, NZ and Fiji (to fuel his increasing want to be fit for rugby when he returns). We then headed north of Chaweng to the islands Crocodile Farm although we arrived an hour or so early for the first show we were able to spend the time looking around the 200+ crocodiles, 3 monkeys, racoons, otters, a huge lizard, snakes, tortoise and a talkative parrot. We were then treated to the crocodile show where the two trainers showed off their crocodiles tricks and gave us a lot of information about crocodiles themselves e.g. Did you know crocodiles have the ability to regrow broken teeth as many times as needed?!? Jackie, the biggest of the crocodiles, was amazingly well trained sitting with his mouth open for the entire show after splashing around for a while at the beginning. People, the smallest of the main 3 crocs, was bad tempered and snapped at the trainers quite a lot whilst Tom, another large one, was well enough trained that the trainer was able to put his head into his mouth!!!! We were invited to get in with them for photos but both wimped out - regretting so later on! Although we did get to hold, and have photos with, one of the baby ones which made up for it a little bit.

Once the show was finished we headed back towards the moped deciding that we would give the snake show a miss as we had already seen one and Kie isn't the greatest fan of snakes. Before leaving we changed our mind as we had spent £10 each to get in we thought we may as well get our monies worth. We were definitely glad we did as not only was the snake show very good but Kie managed to face his fear and jumped up to hold one of the large snakes around his neck. Sophie proving she isn't to be outdone jumped up too, although she did wet herself a little bit when the snakes head and flicking tongue moved towards her face!!

Three hours after arriving at the crocodile farm we finally hopped back on the moped and made our way towards the next attraction, the Butterfly Gardens; this was at the south end of the island and was a bit of a drive from where we were. Once we arrived we headed inside and, to be honest, what we found was a little disappointing. We expected there to be hundreds of different species of butterfly flying around us in the netting enclosed garden but what we actually saw was a beautiful garden with very few species of butterfly (mainly just a blue and black one) and maybe only 20 butterflies in total. It was still a nice bike ride and enabled us to see a little more of the island than we would have done otherwise.

Our last day has been spent lazing on the beach upping the ante on our tanning competition and feeding our new found addiction of The Apprentice (thank God someone uploads it to YouTube) before getting a ferry to Koh Phangan in the morning where we will be attending one of the famous Full Moon Parties on the 21st prior to going to the Andaman Coast for the rest of our time in Thailand.

We hope everyone is ok and you're not missing us too much.

Lots of love Sophie and Kie xx