Hello again! Well I promised that the adventures had begun - and they certainly have! It's now Easter Sunday (Happy Easter everyone!) and I have been up for bloomin' ages! We left Koh Tao last night at 11pm on the car ferry to Chumphon, on the mainland. Someone had kindly thought to throw some mattresses on the floor of the deck so that we could all have a little kip! I have no idea how but, dosed up with a few Singha beer, I had one of the best night's sleep I've ever had, lying on the floor of a diesel-smelling, noisy old car ferry - bizarre! We arrived in Chumphon at about 5am this morning and got ushered into a minibus for the 2.5 hour journey to Ranong, near the Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) border. On arrival in Ranong we had to go to the Immigration Department to be officially signed out of Thailand and then get back on the minibus to take us to the pier. We then got on a manky old fishing boat for about 45 mins before arriving in Myanmar - except that we didn't really arrive, because we didn't even need to get off the boat! The boat guys just collected all our passports and whisked them off to the Myanmar Immigration Department before returning them to us. So all we needed to do was just sit there and hold our noses to shield us from the stench of whichever river we were on! After the return boat trip we then had to get back on the minibus to go back to the Thai Immigration Department and get signed back into the country and be given a new visa, before making the 2.5 hour journey back to Chumphon! What a bloomin' palaver! And, if you live here you have to do that horrific trip once a month because you can only get visas valid for a month - nightmare! So, having been in the same clothes for pretty much 24 hours we are now back in Chumphon on the mainland (although when I move my head too quickly I swear I am still on the boat!). We've now got about 6.5 hours to kill before our overnight train to Bangkok - can't wait! There's nowhere to have a shower so I probably stink to high heaven but we've all decided that we have to just embrace each other's mingingness and get on with it! THere's no point moaning cos we can't do anything about it - apart from have a wash with a "family size" wet wipe - hmmm.. that really works! So, by the time we arrive in Bangkok we will all have been in the same clothes for over 48 hours - lovely! Anyway, I shall stop moaning now! We're all a bit sad today cos Cath isn't coming with us because her parents are on Samui and she's going to stay with them for a fortnight and laze around the pool! We're all soooo jealous! We're going to all meet up again when we get to Chiang Mai, in time for my birthday, but it's going to be strange without her because she was the first person I met when I arrived here and we've barely been separated since! Snarf!! We're planning to have a couple of days in Bangkok so the girls can do the sights and then we're heading off to Kanchanaburi, to do all the Bridge over the River Kwai stuff - am sooo excited about doing something cultural! Right, had better be off now, am going to search for somewhere to have a little snooze I think to pass a couple of hours! Hope all's well with everyone - will email again as soon as I can - take care - bye! xxxxx