I spent 4 nights in samui...and it rained horrifically for all four of them...so by the time we left...the roads were flooded and we didnt think we'd ever get off the island. I didnt really rate samui to be honest...a bit to western and touristy for me. There were 3 mcdonalds within 500m, a burger king, a subway and a boots chemist...not to mention all the other chains too!! The town was full of european balding middle aged men walking around with 20 something thai brides!! Most people here were holiday makers not travellers and when we saw the prices for accommodation and food we soon realised why....the cost of living on this island is double what we were paying on koh phangan...which is crazy because it is only a 40 minute boat trip away!!

We've learnt the hard way not to book any accommodation in advance because if we hadnt we could have left samui earlier instead of hanging around on the wettest and priciest island weve stayed on yet!!

Flooding aside...we decided to make the most of our time here so we hired the oldest jeep on the island for a day...cost 800bt (about 15 quid)...so between 5 of us it was a cheap day out!! We went to samui zoo...but it was closed because of the floods!! then we went to a couple of buddhist temples...including the mummified monk...which was nothing short of creepy!! but the best part of the day was being blessed by a monk at the temple...he sang this prayer to me and then threw water at me with a stick....i just hope that he was wishing me good health and not condeming me to death...but because i dont speak thai...ill never know!! He gave me a bracelet too...which is something nice to keep.

On our way back to the hostel...we had to drive through some of the worst floods...im surprised the jeep got us back in one piece...at one point it water was coming in through the doors and the footwells!! haha...we had a great time though!

Early the next morning we had to make a hellish 10 hour trip over to koh phi phi. It started with a 3 hour boat trip to donsak, an 1 hour coach trip, a 10 minute random and unplanned ride in the back of a truck, a 2 1/2 coach ride to krabi and a final 90 min boat crossing to phi phi. When we arrived in phi phi we were knackered and our backs were agony...and because we hadnt booked anywhere we had to walk around trying to find reasonable accommodation. We eventually found somewhere affordable and went out on the buckets. There was a beach party down by the pier and buckets were buy one get one free...needless to say...i rolled in very very drunk at 5am...covered in sand and uv paint!! good times!!

Unfortunatly with a good night out on the buckets always comes a bad day after with a hangover from hell...which was made much worse by the fact we'd booked ourselves on a boat trip around phi phi national park!! lizzie was much much worse than me...but we were both dead rough!! something we probably wont do again. haha...famous last words!!

The boat trip was fantastic though...saw some amazing places and snorkelling with fish of every colour and sharks was awesome...hungover or not!! the pictures sum up how beautiful this place is.

After the boat trip we had an early night to recover from last night. Plus we were up early because we needed to catch our overnight train from surat thani to bangkok.

Thats all for now folks...need to dash and catch my train. Hopefully ill make it to bangkok alive and more to the point...i hope i survive the protests when i get there.

Until then chao x x x