MATT: We are on the beach.... Yeah......

Kel: So on 6th Dec we left Bangkok early morning and made it to one of the main bus stations. There were about 100 desks and loads of scam salesmen around but we managed to find the one company that went directly to the place we wanted to go.

The place is halfway down the mainland between Bangkok and the main islands and we read about it in a thai travellers website travelfish.org It sounded ace - quiet, local getaway, not touristy - however when we read about it in lonely planet it really poo pooed it. So we were a bit unsure but thought we'd go for it all the same.

After a 6 hour bus journey we made it. I got off the bus and asked a lady about a taxi. She laughed. Five mins later M and I are on the back of motorbikes again. Backpack in front, then driver, then us, for about a 6km drive - eek. We got to a beach bungalow, they had a room free, no food, we wandered down the beach to find this cute wee bar all lit up (like tom cruise in cocktail without americans and without tom cruise) and the two of us had a serious high five moment. It was pretty exciting to find such a lovely place toute seule. Well done us.

So we spent a lovely week on a deserted beach enjoying some sunshine, warm sea and lots of reading. The wee boy came out in Matthew pretty quickly. He made sandcastles, found sticks to bat things with, and then spent about a day resurrecting a kite (sewing included) The kite made a get away though and got stuck to a tree far away.. quite funny.

We met lovely local people including a couple called Bob and A who took us to local night market which was absolutely brilliant. In the food section they were selling small sharks, conch shells (including inners), funny massive crabs, frogs and just about anything else you can imagine.

We had the most amazing meal on our last night there too. Sweet and sour fried fish with king prawn fried rice (the prawns were so fresh they dyed the rice pink). As there wasn't much electricity around we were so stunned when we left our apartment (soon after a full moon night) to leave for dinner in pitch black to realise there was no moon out! It came up a few hours later (all orangey and pink) but I guess these are things you don't notice usually when you're living in cities.

We were supposed to stay a week but decided to stay a little bit extra before we hit the tourist trail of Koh Tao and onwards. A fantastic start to Thai beach life.