Surat Thani and the eastern islands

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I'm only halfway through this part of the trip so i'll add as i go to this one :)

Met the Southern group on our train back from Chiang Rai. They seemed very nice. However i'm getting ahead of myself. I had steak in a box for dinner. We met a nice couple from Australia/New Zealand/Berlin who were very cool. And a man called John who is from Newcastle but lives in Hong Kong. We drank gin and rum and danced in the dining car where some people got very worried i was gonna fall out the window even though there was no danger of such. We played a drinking game with cards, which i'm blowed if i remember, and i talked to John for aaaaaages and ages, we had a mutual love of old wartime music. We arrived in the morning a little the worse for wear, and couldnt get into our rooms for six hours. Urrrgh. Anyway the day of the next afternoon we got ANOTHER overnight train, this one with Tong's ladyboy friend Natalie in the dining car, sadly the karaoke machine was broken. We did the macarina fine without it though. We then had to have breakfast then get a bus.

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We arrived in the jungle deep in the mountains and our little wooden huts. I am not sharing a room with a wicked canadian girl called Christine. Our group is lovely, Amy and Matt and Tomoko from the last group, two french canadian girls, one canadian girl and five english ones (including my good self). We chilled in the jungle that day, and at one point i lay alone beneath my mosquito net reading my Stephen King and it started bucketing down for a couple of hours. Big leaves and coconuts crashed down through the trees. It was quite magical, the rain on the wooden roof and the croaking geckos. We went to see the monkeys come down from the mountain in the afternoon to play. They didn't come that night but the next. We walked back through the jungle in the pitch darkness to get home because we'd forgotten torches, then went back for the others with rescue lights and ended up at a bar.

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The next day I did nothing while everyone else went elephant riding. I'd seen it and done it so thought the 900 baht an unnecessary splurge. That evening was SOOOO GREAT. At lunch there was a massive toad as big as my head. In the evening we had a buffet all you can eat at the RASTA bar and restaurant. They cooked tempura, and fish and chicken and rice and green curry (which i'm getting quite a taste for) and this really cool spikey green and red fruit which inside was basically a lychee.

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The rasta bar played the wickedest music, and me and hannah chatted to the DJ and got invited behind the bar to look at his CDs, inadvertantly becoming bar staff at the same time. Later on the DJ offered me a drink and a dance. I accepted the former and declined the latter, he was slightly creepy (but who turns down a free margharita - not as good as my grandad's however) :)

We got up at 4am, no lie, and got a loooong dusty gritty Sawngtaeuw (spelling?) ride, then a looooong aircon bus ride, then a noodle chomping ferry ride, then a mini bus ride complete with gerry halliwell soundtrack and finally arrived on KOH SAMUI ISLAND !!!! Its GORGEOUS :) our hotel is little beach huts (on the beach no less) the sea is hot as a bath and the sun is hot as an oven (i burned but not too bad).

I think i'm changing as a person, in a good way. Thailand is quite an amazing place. More on this subject later.

I'm gonna come back to this hotel with Christine and Amy and Matt and Janelle and Jo for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th and hop over to Koh Pa Ngan for the full moon rave on the 2nd which should be wicked fun, but as to what i'm doing after the 5th of april i have no clue.... everyone is leaving me for australia, new zealand and england.

Out we go to a beach at night and a market, my shoes keep breaking and i want another dress :D xxxxx

We had a nice western meal (guilt) and then shopped a bit, then went down to the beach and sat on these big bed things and drank margharitas and then we sent one of these big balloon candle things up with a wish. It was almost a religious ritualised experience and contrasted violently with the loud music noisy drunken dancing tourists and i can't say more because i've got 2 minutes left... today we did a tour of Koh Samui and i had a traditional thai massage and drank cocktails and sunbathed.

Koh Tao is paradise. Utterly. Let me paint you a picture... simple little double bed fan cooled clean tiled rooms 2 minutes away from a beautiful beach perfectly angled to watch the incredible sunset, lined with bars which light up prettily at night and restaurants serving the most incredible dishes including a lot of mexican food for some reason. The sea is like bathwater and very shallow... We head to the beach for the morning sun and the afternoon sun, avoiding the heat of midday with lunch and shopping in the little stores along the beach road. Koh Tao is quieter than Koh Samui and Koh Pa Ngan tourist wise, and everything's pretty much walkable. It's sooo relaxing, really is paradise. I made friends with (and fell a little bit in love) the most beautiful little black puppy on the beach, that ran up and jumped in my lap then proceeded to kick sand all over me trying to bury itself to get cool.

The next day we went snorkelling. It was incredible but i swallowed a large amount of salt water and felt ill. But we first went out looking for sharks, and saw three (or the same one three times). It was amazing. They were quite near us. The coral is like another world under water, its beautiful. I felt like David Attenborough.

We had our last evening meal all together as a group (the tour ends today, april 2nd) then went to a beach party (of which there is one every night) and drank gin and tonic buckets. There's photos of us with buckets somewhere, its the done thing around here. Share a bucket of booze.

So today, me and amy and matt and christine leave the group and go back to Koh Samui while they go back to bangkok, and we remain in paradise just a little longer and hop over to Koh Pa Ngan for the full moon party tonight. It'll be tourist central but we'll see. MY ankles hurt from flippering in fins round snorkelling. Then dancing all evening. xx