Tuesday 10 April to Saturday 21 April - Ao Nang and Phi Phi

Tuesday 10 April:

We caught the free shuttle bus to the boat where it took two hours on a narrow boat back to Kuala Tembeling. Then we caught a bus to Jerantut, a train to a place called Pasi Mas and then a taxi to Rantau Panjang which is on the border of Thailand. We had been travelling all day, leaving Taman Negara at 9am and arriving in Rantau Panjang at around 9.30am. It had been a long day and this place seemed to make it worse. We got checked into a hotel and walked around looking for food. I don't think these people had seen a tourist in quite a while because they seemed to be amazed by us. They couldn't speak English either so we decided to go back to our hotel. As we walked past one cafe this guy waved us in so we sat down and talked to him. He ordered us food and made us feel very welcome. His English name is James because it's just easier to say.

Wednesday 11 April:

We met James for a coffee at 10am and then walked to the border where we crossed into Thailand on foot. It was a really strange feeling to be in Malaysia one second and then Thailand the next second. Once we got through passport control which was easy and friendly we walked to the train station where we caught a train to Hat Yai. The train journey was three hours and forty five minutes. Thailand are an hour behind Malaysia so England is now seven hours behind Thailand. We checked into the Grand Plaza hotel and went out for what we thought would be a couple of beers.

We started off at Pubb and only stayed for one drink and then moved on to Post Laser Disc Pub where we had quite a few. Carl ordered a litre of beer for himself. We then wondered back to Pubb where a band were playing and they were absolutely brilliant. They played anything you requested and because we were the only Westerners in the place and the band loved groups like Guns & Roses, they always played our songs. We got really drunk. We only intended to stay our for a couple but because the band were so good and we had such a horrible, long journey we needed to let our hair down. I had to carry Carl home and he can't even remember.

Thursday 12 April:

We were both feeling a little fragile this morning but especially Carl when I filled him in on his antics. We took a taxi to the airport hoping to fly to Phuket but they didn't fly there so then we got another taxi to the bus depot and got a bus instead. The bus journey was horrible. As we were the last couple to get on the bus was heaving and the driver expected us to sit on little plastic child chairs in the aisle for the seven hour journey. We got off the bus refusing to get on because there were no seats so one of the guys who worked on the bus kicked a man and woman off their seats and made them sit on the little chairs in the aisle so we had two seats together. It was awful. And then the guy came to the back where we were sitting and spoke to everyone so we couldn't understand and everyone just laughed at us. I was crying and Carl was trying to comfort me while trying not to be sick. It was not a very nice situation to be in but after a while when everything had calmed down it was fine. We decided to get off at Krabi as that was only five hour journey and we wanted to get off asap.

From Krabi we caught a tuk-tuk to Ao Nang. It's a beautiful place and we started to feel much better about travelling through Thailand. It's on the west coast and is lined with shops, cafes, bars, etc. We checked into Krabi Seaview Resort which was a little more than we should be paying but it was lovely and just what we needed to unwind. We were in our own lodge which was so nice and everything was wooden. We could also get free wireless internet.

Friday 13 April:

It's Chinese New Year. The whole place has gone mental. The roads are gridlocked. Horns are blasting. People are loaded up on trucks with big water barrels. Big water barrels all over the side of the street with people standing over them. Talc and water flying everywhere. This is a street festival for the Chinese New Year. One huge water fight. There was no way you could walk down this road without getting soaked through the skin by buckets of water or water guns which were being sold everywhere. It was so much fun. The roads were jam packed with trucks and people on the back soaking the people on the street and the people on the street were soaking the people on the trucks. We just walked up and down the street, soaked, watching all the fun. It was amazing and went on from about 10am until about 5pm and then everything went quiet - back to normal.

Saturday 14 April:

We took a boat to Phi Phi which took about one and a half hours. This we will call our second holiday - Carnarvon Gorge being the first. Actually, as we are now doing the islands of Thailand for about three or four weeks, let's call the next month a holiday.

Phi Phi island - nothing like we ever expected even though we knew it would be beautiful. This island is lined with lovely little cobbled streets filled with little craft stalls, bars, guesthouses, internet cafes, DVD shops (pirate of course) book shops, etc. It's such a lovely place and really relaxing. We checked into October Mini Boutique Guesthouse which was really nice. Small but really nice. We had a great view of the sea and also a DVD player so we watched Saw III in the evening. I'll talk about that when I get back home. Wow! What a great ending and the Jigsaw has managed to do it again but for the last time.

We went to the sports bar (there's one everywhere isn't there?) where we watched Arsenal beat Bolton.

Sunday 15 April:

We checked out of October Mini Boutique Guesthouse (no double beds) and into K House where we got a special rate which is a secret. We plan to stay here for about a week now and may do our PADI here as it only takes three days and is cheap.

There's nothing much else to say apart from the fact that we sunbathed on the most beautiful beach and lay in the most beautiful, warm, still, clear water ever! We then had a relaxing night watching a DVD which was also a pirate. They're all pirates out here and I wouldn't normally mind but they chop out half the film and the bits they do chop out are the important bits that need explaining.

Monday 16 April:

Bloody t'internet. All day. Luckily it had been cloudy all day.

Tuesday 17 April:

It was another cloudy day today so we wondered around the craft stalls that lined the pebbled streets looking for our next buy. The list was long.

The bars around here show movies, new and old, on the big plasmas. They are good pirate copies so we spent the evening watching Hannibal Rising. There's also English translation on the movies. If you were deaf you would definitely loose the plot of the film. A line such as 'I'm going to fry your liver and season it with pepper' would be translated as 'Isn't it such a lovely day today. Let's take a boat out and cruise the river'. Completely useless.

Wednesday 18 April:

Today we took a sunset tour which started at 11am and finished at 7pm. A very long day. A very old boat took us to the main beaches where we would stop for no longer than an hour which was a shame. The boat driver was deliberately slow, probably because we had to catch the sunset later and as he wouldn't allow us to spend a longer time on the beaches he had to waste time between the stops. We got talking to Andy and Emma, a couple from Manchester, and Jamie and Liam who where two youngsters out on the piss every night. We visited Maya Bay where they filmed The Beach and it was stunning. Didn't look as big as in the film but other than that, everything else was the same. There is where we had our longest stay which was only an hour. The boat driver was deliberately taking his time in between stops and all other long boats were overtaking us. If he had travelled a little faster we could have spent more time on the beaches. We got to the sunset point about 45 minutes early so we had to wait in this tiny boat for that long. Because larger boats were passing us our boat kept swaying sometimes making the edge of one side of the boat disappear under water. It was at this point that we all discussed the film Deep Water which didn't make us feel any better. The sunset was rubbish. It disappeared behind the clouds.

Later in the evening we met up with Emma and Andy and went to Reggae Bar which had a boxing ring in the centre. If you arrived there early, around 10pm, then you could watch the locals fight but after about 11pm all the drunken idiots you often see on the street at 1am in the morning get into the ring and fight each other. And some of them are legless and don't stand a chance.

Thursday 19 April:

As we didn't get in until the early hours we didn't get to see the morning. We made sure we had an easy day to recover and by the time the evening had arrived we came back to life and ready to party again. We made another visit to the boxing ring watching the losers fight each other.

Friday 20 April:

We got in even later this morning so decided that it was time to escape the noise of this part of Phi Phi. We took a boat to Long Beach which was only round the corner and happened to be the relaxing part of the island. We checked into our bungalow on the beach, took three steps from the door and laid our towels down on the white sand where we stayed all day. It's tiring to have to do nothing every day. The water was amazing and so clear, warm and deep so you could have a good swim. In the evening we watched a fire show in the bar along the beach. Four boys had fire sticks and one boy had two chains with fire balls on the end. He was really good but at one stage the fire balls stuck to the boy's back. He didn't look like he was in too much pain though. Earlier we bought the film Apocaypto so after the pub we settled down to watch it. It's a fab film but the film didn't fit onto the disc so it cut off five minutes to the end. Very annoying.

Saturday 21 April:

Sorry - another day on the beach and another night in the bar.