On the way to Phi Phi we stopped at Ao Nang not the nicest place, very resorty not somewhere we fit in right now.

We took a day trip to James bond island which is where The Man with the Golden gun was filmed and we also canoed around mangroves and limestone carsts.

Lunch was at a gypsy village and then we went to an elephant park where we saw a show and I had a massage by an ellie!! We had a short ellie ride and held a baby gibbon. The park itself wasn't anywhere near as good as the elephant sanctuary near chang mai and we felt the elephants were just there for performing for spectators which was a bit of a shame.

Following day we left for koh phi phi which had been described to us as paradise, on arrival it wasn't quite what we'd been promised! True it is a small island with no roads and great scenery. Apart from this Phi Phi was a let down, there was a sewerage works close to where we were staying cleverly disguised as a flower garden but the smell was unfortunatley not disguised. We went out and had dinner that night and went to bed early as the heat and boat ride had taken it out of us.

The next day we spent at the beach, that night we decided to have a few drinks to see what the nightlife was all about, it didn't start off too well, we got stitched up by a 2 for one bucket deal which was actually one bucket split between two. With annoyance we swiftly necked the cocktail then left and headed for the well known boxing ring, basically where any Joe Bloggs can get in the ring and fight his mate at Mai Thai. We had a few drinks here watched a few numpties trying to fight each other and a couple of Thai fights which i did enjoy even though it was blatantly staged.

Another day at the beach was followed by a trip to Phi Phi Ley and Maya beach which is the location where the beach was filmed.

We got there early and there was only a handful of people on the beach, the sand was powder fine, amazingly crystal clear waters, we went snorkelling saw loads of huge fish and NEMOS!! ( Clownfish) when the hoardes of boats started to turn up it was time for us to move on.

We returned to our longtail boat and headed round the island to a bay, the sight that welcomed us was amazing, there were thousands of fish which you could feed and swim with, it was quite hypnotic.

After that we were taken to a lagoon and then to Monkey island for 10 minutes which was nice before returning to the not so idyllic Phi Phi.

Phi Phi as i'm sure you can guess from what we've just written is not the amazing island that many people make it out to be and there is still many signs of the damage caused by the tsunami.

Off in search of beaches new and seas of blue!