It seems ages ago now that we left Helen and Tim in Phi Phi so i'll just do a summary of what we've been up to since we left them.

Well afterwards, we headed over to Koh Samui for a few days of lounging around enjoying the sun and enjoying our last few days of beach life! Koh Samui is very nice - we stayed in Lamai which is fairly touristy and with loads of nice bars and places to eat. Where we were staying we had the hardest bed known to man so not the best nights sleep really. We also saw a Massive snake as we were walking through the grass to the pool area! We were not keen on it!

After Koh Samui we went to Koh Phangan which none of us were that bothered about really but we had time so thought we'd go check it out. Whilst here we had to check out the famous Moon Party - we were there for the Half Moon party which is set in the Jungle. We started the night quite normally with an Irish couple in the Bar where we were staying. We soon got quite drunk though and starting covering ourselves in neon face paint. We didnt actually get the taxi to the party until about 1am and by this point I was far too drunk really. We got in to the party and it was mental - thousands of people all dancing to trance electronic music. Pretty much straight away me and Liz got seperated and didnt see each other all night. I have vague memories of dancing with some random people and then going to sit down later as I needed to be sick. Always classy me. I ended up jumping onto the back of a taxi at about 5.30am clinging onto it for dear life as it bombed off to where we were staying. I met Liz outside our room about 6.30am as she had the Key. The next day we were ROUGH! In fact we spent the whole day in bed. We're getting a bit old for this kind of thing me thinks! Ah well its not often you get to dance to trance in the jungle! I think it was a good night.

From here we got a train all the way up to Chiang Mai which took about 34 hours! It was tough. The first part we had an overnight sleeper carriage which wasnt so bad. We had to wait in Bangkok station for a connecting train at some stupid time in the morning and we were both just dosing off and all of a sudden the Thai National Anthem blasted out and everyone jumped to their feet to respect the Royal Family. So we did the same. I had no idea what was going on! We finally got to Chiang Mai and we spent most of the first day wandering round all the old city seeing the temples. They were really cool but there was far too many to see them all!

The next day we signed up to do a 2 day/1night trek. Day 1 was mainly just walking. It was quite tough as a lot of it was up hill through the jungle. It was very satisfying to get there to our camp though and paddle in the fresh water stream to cool down. At night it all went a bit wrong for me - we had just had tea and were about to take part in some thai dancing when my stomach started to feel wrong.. very wrong. I then spent the next however many hours vomiting in the delightful little hole in the ground that was our toilet. The worst thing about it was that there was a few of us all sharing a room on the floor so i kept everyone else awake also throughout the night. I finally stopped being sick at some point during the night and got some rest before the next day. I have to say that its probably the most amazing place I have ever been sick - i thought that as i spewed for maybe the 10th time and I looked up at the sky and saw thousands of stars - it was very peacful really. A kind cat also came and rubbed himself against me but at the time I wasnt so keen on him when i was hunched over on the floor and he was purring for a stroke! The next day we had to do about an hours walk which i thought i was going to pass out on - i didnt though luckily. We then had an hour of elephant trekking - at this point i started to feel slightly better which was good and it was ace to ride around on the top of the elephant - we went down a river for a while and then headed back. Was definately an experience worth doing! After that we did a bit of bamboo rafting then I could take no more and so while the others did some more rafting I sat in the van and tried to sleep - i was so happy when we got back to the city and I could go to bed.

After that we headed back to Bangkok for a few nights. Bangkok is a crazy city but I liked it lots! I still felt quite rough for most of the time I was there but we managed to enjoy it. Liz also started to feel rough and was sick as well.. think she caught my bug. Aside from being ill we managed to see a lot of the city - we went on a walk around the Grand Palace and also went to the huge Reclining Buddha. We got on many tuk tuks that just bomb it through the city. We went to MBK shopping centre and looked around the shops and bought a few souvenirs from the craft markets then headed to the cinema for a break from the heat of the city. We also went up Moon Bar which is an open top bar right on the top of a skyscraper! It was very cool and gave you 360 degree views of the city from 61 floors up! We stayed on Th Khao San which is very very busy but a good experience - its ace for shopping and like you'd imagine has so many backpackers everywhere!

So from there we got a flight down to Malaysia and we are now in Kuala Lumpur which is fairly like Singapore - i shall update of here and China at some point also. Less than 2 weeks til im back now which im very excited about. It'll be sad for it all to end but I think im ready to see everyone, enjoy the cooler weather and have a good cup of tea! x