Island Hopping

As Rob is such a perfectionist / slacker he has not finished his blog entries yet - so I thought I would just give you a brief up date of what we have been up to, and let Rob fill in all the details!

We have been to lots of the Thai islands from Ko Samui to Ko Phangan (the place of the infamous Full Moon Parties - which we missed by 1 day) We will I promise publish some photos soon - but we're in an internet cafe at the moment as we haven't found anywhere round here for the laptop.

As you will have all read we did a cookery course in Ko Phangan and also we hired a 2 man canoe and went from our beach (Thong Nai Pan Noi) round the island to the next beach Bottle Beach, which was great fun. We did it with Matt and Dorina - who were very much better than us at the whole sea canoeing thing!!! After getting there enjoying a quick dip and a drink we canoed back - it was great - even if did get a little sunburnt in the process!!

We also found a great place on the island to eat - other than the Bamboo Hut of course!!! The guys from the restaurant went out to the fishing boats each evening and came back with a fabulous selection of wonderfully fresh fish which they then pack on ice. You come along and choose your fish / shellfish and they BBQ it for you, it was delicious - Rob had squid which has to be one of the best tasting squids I've ever had! And I had red snapper - lovely.... it's going to take some beating to have fish that good again!!!

After Ko Phangan we went to Ko Lanta. The drive was a rather crazy one - driven by a complete nutter who refused to do less than a ton all the way - and offered me and Rob these crazy leaves that tasted like stewed tea! (much to the amusement of all the other thai passengers - we were the only westerners on the bus!) Any ideas of the nature of these leaves would be appreciated!!! This is where i had the mozzie attack! Once I had recovered from that we hired a scooter - and Rob at the helm did really well - considering he had never ridden a motorbike or scooter before - he wouldn't let me drive!!!! Sensible really I guess..... We went round the island seeing the Sea Gypsy town and the went to the mangroves on the island. We found a community project who offered boat trips around the groves. We were sailed around the groves 0n a traditional thai boat - wonderful! We stopped by a little clearing and after our driver whistled a little and threw a few bananas a few monkeys appeared and came right up to the boat - wow! After spending some time observing the monkeys we went to a floating fish farm and saw all manner of crazy large fish, which lived in the mangroves. It was such a wonderful trip - looking forward to showing you all the photos.

In Ko Lanta we also found another fabulous restaurant to eat - it was wonderful food - but the best thing about it was the in house entertainment - the frogs!!! The majority of the eatery was outside and as a result was plagued by flying creatures of all shapes and sizes!!! It was a little unnerving - but then out of the corner of my eye I spotted a frog - and then another and another and a few toads for good measure too! they came in like a little army and began cleaning up all the bugs! Hooray for the frogs - they were great entertainment and Rob has some fabulous photos.

We went then from Lanta to Phuket. This was by far the most touristy of all the islands - feeling bit like a beautiful Blackpool. We found a nice Bungalow to stay in and did some exploring of the Old Town which was an interesting one as it was very European architecture and felt more like being in Spain or somewhere.

We also went on a day trip - but I will do a separate entry for that as we did loads in a day - and I definitely want to tell you those stories with the aid of pictures.

As you can tell - we did quite a few of the islands and loved each and everyone of them for their unique character and charm. Shall miss the sea for the next few weeks......