Oh and haven't we made the right decision to come to Ko Lanta instead of Koh Phi Phi? Yes we most certainly have. No doubt about it. Not for us. Not a single, solitary one. This was in part due to talking to some locals in Phuket (including Mike from the dive shop) and to trusting our gut instincts. And we started to think we'd made the right choice even before we'd arrived on Ko Lanta! Our journey from Phuket involved a change of boats at Phi Phi. The first boa...

So we arrive back to Kata-on-Sea at 1900, tired and wanting to just collect our rucksacks and shower in out bungalow before heading our for a Valentine's meal. We had responsibly left our bags at Kata-on-Sea resort, accompanied by our reservation for our room for when we returned. We had triple checked this before we left... but of course, on our return, the owners were out celebrating Chinese new year have left two helpful but non-English speaking ladies on the ...

Thank you to Mike and Zoe for suggesting this. It was a truly great experience and also a tiring one. We were picked up at 0600 to start the drive to the port on the mainland where the speedboat to our liveaboard boat took off from. On the trip we had the "pleasure" of driving through Patong and that just confirmed to us that staying in Kata was the right thing to do- Patong appeared to be our holiday from hill destination. The speed boat took about 1 hour to g...

Well, our first Thai island of our trip is not as overly- or as badly-developed as people say (when tourists refer to other, smaller Thai islands, they often say "I just hope it doesn't turn into another Phuket"), however we're not staying in Patong, which is the main cheap package holiday tourist trap. But neither is Kata the lovely little town mentioned in Lonely Planet. Something's happened in the last few years so that there has been an explosion of bars, cl...

Not much to say here- we only stayed the night here because it was the cheapest way to fly from Saigon to Phuket. But it should be noted for two reasons: first, our hotel, the Silver Gold Garden, which is really close to the airport and gives you a big room with great bed and aircon for about £17 including transfers from and to the airport; and second point of note is that, after having searched high and low in Vietnam for suncream, we got to Bangkok and imm...