On Thursday we had a chilled out day exploring Chaweng, which although it's got the nicest sandy beach on the Island, is also one of the busiest tourist towns on the Island. It seems that there is a massive demand for cheap tailored suits, fake Billabong bikinis and Thai massages, because these appear to be the only shops along the main "drag"! Of these three, we were most interested in the Thai massage so we went to a fairly reputable looking place next to our hotel and ordered two of their finest oil massages - and we were not disappointed! They were very good all over body massages which lasted an hour and cost about £6!! Afterwards we headed for some Thai food and once again were spoilt for choice with everything costing around a pound!

The next day we decided to do a snorkelling trip to the Island in the Gulf of Thailand considered to have the best coral reef - Koh Tao. We were picked up early by bus and taken to the Bo Phut dive centre where we boarded their speedboat to take us to the Island. The majority of the people on the boat were actually going diving rather than just snorkelling so it was with some embarrassment that when we were grouped on the boat as the snorkel group we realised it was only us, the wife of one of the divers and their five year old child who would be snorkelling! However, there were some advantages to going out with these guys. Firstly the number of people on the boat was small and all of us had experience of swimming/snorkelling (this differs from some of the other snorkel only orientated boats. They take out a lot more people who on the whole can't swim - resulting in Titantic-esque scenes as tens of people in life jackets splash and splutter their way around the snorkel site!) Secondly we had access to some decent underwater equipment, including a camera that one of the dive instructors lent us. After a 1.5 hour speedboat trip over to Koh Tao, our first snorkel spot was on the East side of the Island. We immediately noticed the improved clarity of the water around this Island compared to Koh Samui and when we got into the water discovered some amazing coral and fish (including great schools of tiny fish that would circle us and I'm sure, like in Finding Nemo, were trying to communicate with us!). With the underwater camera we've managed to get some shots of us in the water, which is great given that we've done so much snorkelling on this trip (western Oz and on the Perhentian Islands) that we've not yet been able to capture on the blog. Our second site was just off Koh Tao by the Island of Koh Nang Yuan. The coral here was a bit deeper but with our duck-diving skills we were able to investigate this area well too! The whole day was fantastic fun and we rewarded ourselves in the evening with an amazing fish platter including lobster, crab and some huge prawns - expensive by Thai standards but only costing us about £15 each!

Today we hired a great little Jeep 4WD to get us around the Island. Our first stop was Bang Nor Beach, which was a nice quiet change to Chaweng. We then stopped at a great little market which was about as Thai authentic as we were going to get in Koh Samui. We got BBQ fish on a stick (60p) and a very spicy Papaya salad (also 60p) from here we headed over to Big Buddha beach to eat these (so named because of the huge Buddha statue on top of a temple here). We then headed through the bustling Chaweng to Silver Beach near La Mai, which again was lovely and quiet. A great place to have a final cocktail before we leave!

Tomorrow we're taking a flight up to Bangkok airport (a good few miles from the city thus avoiding the protest trouble) then over to Trat and on to our final destination of the whole trip - the Island of Koh Chang!