It's Charlotte here with next installment of our jouney as we left Koh Tao in serach of some Samui fun!!

So no jouney is complete without maximum hanging around and maximum pain caused by STUPID RUCKSACKS, but after 2 hours of feeling like an illegal immigrant we arrived by boat on the island of Koh Samui. Here we were met by a man with a minibus who was to take us to Chaweng Beach. The ride was comfortable, air conditioned and we knew we were in safe hands when even Hanna couldn't distract the driver with her conversational skills as he was 'looking after our lives'. His words not mine.

We were dropped off at the Island Resort and Spa which we soon realised was slightly over budget, so we set off with rucksacks in tow to find ourselves somewhere cheap and cheerful to stay. This proved to be somewhat of a mission so we thought it best to leave the kids (anni and hanni) in starbucks with the bags, yes you heard me STARBUCKS, and the Jux and I continued on the search. Samui Coral Resort appeared and with it's beach front location and promise of air conditioning, what more could we want? The eager owners showed us a beach front 'villa' (imagine ur grandads garden shed with little room to swing a cat and that's your villa) not quite up to our standards so we viewed a room and were pleasently suprised with a large, clean and modern room at a bargain price. So we picked up the kids and returned to let ourselves into our homes for the next two nights... not quite like the showroom but had added extras such as DAMP and was missing features like FULLY FUNCTIONING AIR CON. But comfortable enough.

That night we headed out to dinner and found a lovely restaurant on the beach. We had slight regrets about leaving Koh Tao when a storm started brewing but apart from the gale force winds it stayed dry. Anni and Hanna weren't feeling too good and after some fireworks nearly gave Anni a coronary they decided on an early night where Tasha and I spent out evening window shopping and bartering before seeing the night in with an hour on facebook!

The following morning Tasha and I were awoken with knocking on the door by a very tearful and puffy looking Hanna... she had woken up with a hugely swolen right eye and had told Anni she thought she looked like the elephant man. Quasimodo sprung to my mind. So we headed to the pharmacy where Hanna was told it was a bad reaction to a bite and given a concoxtion of drugs. Over breakfast we confirmed that we definatley should have stayed in Koh Tao... Hanna was convinced that would have never happened to her eye otherwise!

We made the best of our day though and relaxed on the beach and hired lilos for the sea. Tasha and I decided to swim to a deserted island across from chaweng beach so we trekked along the whole beach to get to the narrowest crossing point to realise that the tide was completely out and we could just walk across at any point. Good walking though. So we waded our way through the seaweed, avoided the rocks and crabs and we arrived on our own desert island to be greeted with a sign warning us of a fine for being caught on the island as it was private property. Oooops. There was also a deserted tin shack and we could definately hear someone rumaging around inside so we quickly took some picks to prove we'd made it across and then ran back home before we got murdered chain saw massacre styley.

That night we went for dinner on the beach and then went back to pack as we had to be ready at 7am the next day to start our journey back to bangkok.

The first part of the journey involved trying to check out of our rooms without having paid for the 2nd night... we completely thought we'd got away with it until a member of staff chased us and demanded that we stay still until the owner got there, so no didn't get away with that.

The journey from Koh Samui to Bangkok went a little something like this....
7am: minibus from resort to harbour
8am: 4 hour boat to Chumphon
1pm: 8 hour bus ride to Bangkok

All in all the journey involved lots of giggles, much interupted sleep (one occasion involved me being woken up by the english guys behind us as I was dribbling and about to spill my open bottle of water all over Anni's belongings, not embarrassing in the slightest)
But lots of fun was to be had and at 9pm we finally arrived back in Bangkok!!