We were all sitting in the restaurant area at 8am, ready to leave. The spider we'd managed to remove had found its way back into our room over the course of the evening and was running around on the floor while we were packing. Edd and I looked like we were dancing in fits as we dodged the mutant spider; it was time to go.

The boat arrived at 8.20am and another couple from the same 'resort' as us, got in. We made friends with a couple from London that were on holiday. I gave the woman some tiger balm as she'd rubbed against fire coral the day before and the backs of her legs were burning.

It was a 40 minute boat ride back to the main land and we said goodbye to the London couple, parting ways in search of breakfast. We stopped at a local place, ordering things that weren't entirely on the menu: I wanted beans on toast, Cip wanted toast, beans and a fried egg and Edd ordered a meal that was actually printed. We figured you couldn't screw up our breakfast as it was pretty straight forward.. Wrong. The beans were straight out of the can, ice cold. Just when you think something is idiot proof, someone finds a new and improved idiot. We ate our warm toast with cold beans, paid and left. Now we needed to get to Marang jetty.

Apparently there was a bus, but there was no bus time table and no one could tell us what time it was going to arrive. We found a Malaysian taxi driver that quoted us a reasonable fare, but he and his friends were confused as to where we wanted to go, Edd kept repeating himself saying: 'Merang, we need to get to Merang to get another ferry' and they'd look at him blankly and mutter between themselves. Then one piped up and said 'Marang, you go to Pulua Kapas?' The 3 of us looked at them confused as to what the difference was, our taxi driver then explained that there was a place called Merang, but where we were going was Marang, pronounced Maaaaa-rang; this was in the opposite direction, hence the confusion.

The trip to Maaaaaa-rang was 2.5 hours long and our driver was quite chatty, even though his English wasn't as good as our last taxi drivers. Cip was sitting in front, so Edd had a nap on my pink neck pillow and I put my earphones in and listened to music. Apparently Cip got his own personal tour of the mosques of Malaysia, he was riveted.

We eventually got to the next jetty and were greeted by a man that knew Edd's name. It turned out our next accommodation had contacts on the main land and he bought our next boat ticket from this guy. I went in search of another sneaky fridge magnet and played with some local cats. One little black dude in particular, he was sneezing a bit but reminded me of my furry loves - he ended up following e around for a while, meowing for more stroking. Very sweet. Edd came back from the bathroom and told me of 2 tiny babies that were sitting at the entrance to the toilet; I went to investigate and found a black and white kitten that looked like he had a mustache and a tabby runt, their mother was a beautiful black cat that came to investigate me stroking her 2.5 week old babies.

Edd then called me back to the other side of the road - it was time to leave. We got on board a speed boat and headed for Pulau Kapas, we knew this place was going to be great and were all looking forward to a week of well maintained accommodation.

We arrived at Turtle Bay, Pulau Kapas and were greeted by the Dutch owner and a Swiss volunteer that worked there. The Dutch woman asked us if we wanted lunch, but we'd had a late breakfast and none of us were hungry. So she took us to our rooms instead and explained how everything worked: the fan, the hot water and the mosquito plug. They run their resort off solar power, which was very expensive; the moral was: if you're not in it, switch it off.

She left us to unpack our bags and Edd and I got our snorkel gear out for a little gander at the new reefs. I'd fixed our underwater pouch for the camera, having discovered shortly after purchase that it had a whole in it, with the super glue Edd had purchased in Kanchanaburi when he'd had is gummy sandal crisis. The camera was waterproof in theory, in practise it kept getting fogged up, so there was an issue somewhere - we didn't want to ruin it completely, so I'd bought the underwater pouch as a precaution.

The reefs were beautiful, but Edd was on the hunt for turtles. The water wasn't that clear as the wind had come up and we were swimming against the current. I got incredibly tired very quickly and eventually insisted we turn around and float back with the current - my feet were sore from the paddling and I was glad to be back on land, it had been an unsuccessful snorkel as we hadn't seen much. We washed our gear and had a shower, all heading in the direction of the restaurant area for a drink. It had been a long day!

We had ordered our dinner when we arrived, the menu changed every day and you ordered dinner at breakfast so the Dutch lady (who owned the resort and was the cook) knew how many people to cater for, for each dish. Edd and I had chosen lamb chops with baked potatoes and veggies for dinner while Cip had decided to try the duck breast. There was simply too much food and Edd had to finish my last lamb chop for me!

My throat was sore and after half an hour of chilling out on the purple bean bags in the chill out area, I went to bed. Edd followed closely behind me, he'd gotten irritated with the wifi that kept going off and had finally given up. We went to sleep with the sliding doors open, the fan was on and the mosquito nets weren't necessary. He'd lit a coil and we had the mosquito plug that belonged to the resort - any mozzies that attempted to eat us tonight, would get seriously bad hangovers from all the anti-mosquito fumes.