Goodbye India-Hello Thailand

After spending four amazing days in Verkala Beach, Kerala, it was time to move on to our next country. Verkala was one of the best places we stayed in India and we stayed at a great guest house called Jickey's. It was perfect. Hot water to start with and the location, set-up and manager were all brilliant. Joe and Ben threw themselves into Yoga (Lauren was ill in bed for 2 days unfortunately) and fell in love with it! We highly recommend Verkala and hope that it doesn't become too touristy but like every piece of paradise it's envitable.

We said goodbye to Joe and after an interesting over night stop in Sri Lanka (maggott in food, strange hotel, very early flight) we landed in Bangkok for a fast paced day and a night. What a difference from India. The city buzz, the clean streets and not how we imagined it would be. We also had a nice surprise when we arrived when we found out that our friends Charran and Darhshan had arrived that morning too.

We were desperate to try the local food stalls in Siam Square that Lonely Planet had raved about so when we eventually found them down a winding alley we weren't disappointed. Two plates of rice noodlees, vegetables and prawns for 2.50 -unbelievable and delicious! After meeting up with Chaz and Darsh, we made our way around the centre on high speed tuk-tuks and eventually ending up at the restaurant Cabbages and Condoms. It was a good introduction to Thail food but aimed at the tourist so we weren't hugely impresses, we still craved our food stall find!

The next day Ben and I took the 6am flight to Koh Samui (it was the cheapest!) and spent two hours once we arrived in the blazing heat trying to find somewhere for us all to stay. Chaz and Darsh had sensibly opted for the 4.30pm flight! 5 guest houses/hotels later and after no luck in finding anything that lived up to Jickey's standards, we bump into Kurt, a larger than life Brit looking to sell us time shares for 5* resorts. Unfortunately for him we were under 30 so didn't qualify but maybe out of fate he showed us to a family run guest house/bungalows called Rattana just 2 doors away from where we meet him. He said that when he first got to the island he practically lived here so we thought we would have a look (skeptically). It turns out that Kurt has sorted us out in a big way. It's brilliant, very cheap and a minute from the most gorgeous beach I think I have ever seen. Plus they do laundry for 40 bhart so I'm happy! So we're all currently set up here, planning to move to Ko Tao to dive tommorrow but the boys stayed up and watched the football last night and crawled in at 7am so we'll see!!

Until next time......