At last we are home again, back to the sun and being able to afford to enjoy ourselves. We thought the humidity would hit us more but we were ok.

We stayed a few days in the same guest house KL, which has gone down hill quite quickly. We visited Bukit Bintang, a shopping centre that Ed and Kat loved. We bought some dvds and went and had roasted duck and rice, one of my favourite meals of the trip.

We were ready to move to an island and hoping for some good diving, we went to Tiomen Island the following day. The weather was strange as it was very hazey but still very warm. We did get burnt straight away as our skin was now used to jumpers and rain coats. We were staying on the quiet side of the island and after 2 days we were ready for a bit more. We sat at a beach bar and realised that they were playing the British Grand Prix that was just starting, we had checked out the area earlier in the day but had found nowhere that was playing it. We moved round to the more busy area which we actually prefured as there was a choice of where you go for dinner or who to dive with. We chose a company to dive with the next day as they seemed like really nice people and they seemed more professional than the others.

The diving wasn't really all that, we were told it was a diving island but we weren't really impressed. We met a woman from Oxford who thought the same thing. The visibility wasn't very good and there were no fish there, one thing we did like were the swim throughs, cave like tunnels through rocks. They are really cool as its dark and fish normally hang out in them.

We decided to leave there to head for the Perhentians Islands, where we knew the diving would be better. When we got to the mainland we found all the buses were full as it was a Muslim holiday. So we changed our plan and headed to KL to re-route to Thailand again. After 3 buses and 30 hours of non-stop travelling we got to Krabi where we fell asleep before our heads hit the pillow. The next morning we caught a ferry to Phi Phi island, and hit the rain on the way due to it being the rainy season there. We were very lucky for the days we were there as we saw no rain after that. We went back to the dive shop that we did our advanced with to see if our instructor was there and were dissapionted to hear that he was tanning himself in sunny Portsmouth. We booked up for diving anyway and had a really good time on both days we were in the water. It was really exciting to see sharks and all sorts of other fish as the diving on Tiomen and in Oz had been a bit of a let down. Whilst on PP we did the beach trip, where the movie "The Beach"was filmed. We had seen the beach in high season from our diving boat and it was full of people, you could hardly see sand, luckly this time was less busy and we had a really nice day.

Last time we were in PP for 5 days and ate 4 times at the same place, this time was very similar. The one meal we didn't have at Papaya was pathetic. On the last night i plucked up the courage to ask the guy how they make my favourite meal. We went round later that night for a demonstration by his Mrs how to cook it.

We left PP and headed for bangkok on a night bus, we have done lots of these recently as you don't waste a day and save on accommodation. We timed our trip to bangkok so that we could go to the weekend market, where we went a bit silly. Boo was not very well but perked up a lot when she found the stall she was looking for. We bought lots of tops and t-shirts, plates that we had seen a few different places and held off in case we got them cheaper there. Ed, Kat, Andy and Jenn are going to hate us as we bought Sam and Lexi the most annoying presents in the world.....sorry!

We are now in Koh Chang again, dodging the rain and spending a lot of our time in the internet shops, as you can tell, 2 write ups in a week. however I'm sure you have all realised the writer of these blogs is no A grade student. This is the hardest I have had to work all year and in fact she is working even harder than me, I think we are just about ready for a massage. As Carol and Mike already know she is applying for jobs now as the process of hiring takes a bit longer in her field.

Its weird, we still have the length of a normal person's holiday (apart from Mike and Carol) left but it feels like we are just waiting to go home. We've had so long out here and now we have 6 days left and 4 of those are travelling days. naturally we have mixed feelings about coming home, excited to be with all our lovely families and newer members, but also gutted to becoming a normal person again. And really not looking forward to working. All good things come to an end................next stop Africa.