Friday 5 September
So here we are, at our last location, the Thai island of Ko Samui, just over an hour's flight away from Bangkok and it....is....heaven!!

After arriving feeling very tired and worried about one of bags not having arrived with us (the one with all our bike gear in it!) we are now in fully chilled-out mode. Thanks to British Airways not thinking it was important for all our luggage to be with us on the same flight, the missing bag turned up three days after us. What a relief! We are here now for a total of ten nights in our beautiful "Secret Garden" bungalow on Big Buddha Beach. The Secret Garden only has nine bungalows but has a public restaurant right on the beach which serves the most exquisite Thai cuisine. When now asked the question what is your favourite food, it will have to be Thai.

We hired a car for a couple of days to investigate the island, as Ko Samui is only 20kms across and 23kms in length, two days just about did it. Although the most popular type of transport here is moped, we were advised by John, the Manager of the Secret Garden that the best way to venture out was by hire car and NOT moped. After about five minutes in the car it was quite evident that we were correct in taking John's advice. Thai people have no qualms in overtaking someone who is overtaking someone else, overtaking on the left or even overtaking right into the line of oncoming traffic!! They are lovely people but put them in control of a vehicle and they are CRAZY. On the second day of our hire car, which was a 4x4 Suzuki jeep, we decided to explore the interior of Ko Samui and thought that we would quite like to venture into the mountains. We found the road from Nathon, the capital, to the "best mountain view" and followed it up and up. The jeep was down to first gear for the ascent in places. We caught up to a Toyota hire car and followed it until the road then turned to a dirt track and the Toyota kept on going through what looked like a modest puddle but was actually 2' deep! The Toyota bottomed out and just managed to get out. We went through in the jeep and followed the track up. By now the track was getting rougher, steepr and narrower with no place to turn around. Four wheel drive was selected and we went on to find a turn around as we were not supposed to go "off road". The low ratio box was now selected as the road was turning to a goat track. These small 4wd's are quite gutsy and rugged and it needed to be!! Eventually we found a spot to turn around but had to make a six point turn on a left hand uphill bend to descend back down. Remembering feet off everything and low first gear selected we hung on as the little Suzuki banged and sometimes slid down the hill which was a slimy mix of sand and sludge after a recent tropical downpour. We made it back down and Neil admitted to having an internal sigh of relief. We decided a thorough was of the jeep was necessary before it is returned to alay any belief that we had been "illegally" off-road. We found a flat road that still had some flooding and drove through several times to wash the underside and wheels.