Sunday night we cooked ourselves again...Chicken and salad. (It was damn good.) We had bought a good old pirated DVD (eclipse) and we definitely got what we paid for....rubbish quality filming of a cinema screen that occasionally went out of focus. and lets not forget the subtitles that were completely wrong. this did make the movie more entertaining! Thank god we only paid 10 Ringit and not the full cinema price!

We arrived in Koh Samui yesterday morning. After a good long wait in passport control and a funny little old thai man flirting with Emily (was definitely on the creepy side) we got to Shambala, where we are staying. It's very rustic and authentic and right on the beach. Our room is small but we walk out and can be on the beach in less than 10 steps! We dumped our bags and went on a hunt for a restaurant for lunch. Found a little thai place and had the usual - fried rice or noodles. We then headed back to the beach and read. It was a bit cloudy making the temperature bearable. The massage woman from the hotel had a good time pestering us and we insisted we would come back to her in the next few days. However, she managed to convince us and finally we all decided to go for a traditional Thai massage. Not as hardcore as we have been told however still very interesting! She did some pulling of the limbs and twisting of the body...sometimes putting us into compromising positions...although it was still nice!

We found out that renting a car from the hotel was possible so we went for it - for less than 20 quid for a 24 hour rental we were given suzi, our suzuki. This was probably the most 'relaxed' (if thats the right wod??) rental ever. It was just "here are the keys, heres the car, heres a form...fill it out when u have time." We went to Chaweng, another beach on the island, which is much busier than Bangrak (or Big Buddha beach) where we are staying however it was almost reaching the naf side. The beach is absolutely stunning and it has loads of gorgeous resorts on it, the road side however...not as nice! We found a little restaurant and had some good thai curry right next to the waves!

The drive home was a little bit interesting. As all we had to navigate with was the most rubbish map on the planet with a few roads on it, and because Thai people don't like to signpost apparently we were forced to find our way home by looking for landmarks or names of hotels and finding them on the map. We took one wrong turn and ended up in the dodgy part of Chaweng - many a lady boys were dancing around......this was our first sighting of a lady boy however making it quite exciting! After a long drive around we finally found our way back to our hotel!

We got up pretty early this morning so we could head out for a trip around the island. We first headed to the waterfalls. There are few but we went for a specific one thats meant to be the most beautiful. We had a quick walk up to the base of the waterfall which was amazing but we decided to keep going. About 25 minutes later up some pretty steep rocks and pulling ourselves up with tree roots we finally made it to a little swimming pool - very cool water making it an excellent reward as we were all sweating pretty profusely by the end of our trek!

We just relaxed in the water for a bit and the guy said we could jump (i was the only one with the balls to do it ;)). Then we headed back down to suzi to head off to our next location. The trek took longer than planned so we decided to go to Lamai for lunch before going to any more sites. Another lunch of the usual food and then a swim (and a nap for me) was very chilled out on Lamai - the water was almost too warm though. Like a bath!

We then headed for a temple. This one was interesting as they had a mummified monk in it! This man apparently predicted the day he died and they put him in the position that he always meditated in -as requested by him - and he was just there...sitting in a little glass box wearing a pair of raybans. One of the wierdest things we have ever seen! We tried going to another temple which has an ivory buddha in it altho when we got there it looked more like a school so we decided to bounce.

We then headed to Hintai and Hinyai - the grandfather and grandmother. This is more or less.....two rocks...one looks like a penis and one looks like a vagina. (Wilfred we had no problem finding these!) What a great tourist destination!

We finally ended up back in Chaweng as we all wanted to do a bit of shopping for some cheap clothes to go to the Full Moon Party. We were all successfull :). Then we went to Bophut (Kingfisher's Village) and ended up going for a quick drink at the Bilabong Surf Club. Once we got home we had a shower and then were planning on finding somewhere to eat along the beach but couldnt find anywhere within our budget or that wasn't full of creepy old men or what could be lady boys, we went back to our hotel and decided to all go for something western - a burger and chips! (Our area is much more quiet)

Tomorrow the plan is to sleep in as long as possible, roll onto the beach when we wake up and then just lie.........all day! We are planning on taking the 6.30pm boat towards Koh Phangan which will get us there in time for a bit of dinner and then the Full Moon Party!!! It's going to be a long night tomorrow - our first option for getting home the next day is 9.30am...lets see how this works out! Either way, thursday is going to be painful!

Anyhoo......an update will be coming ur way on Friday i suppose when we are meeting up with the parents and hitting up Phuket!

Emma