Wow! What a 9 days we've had on the island of Phuket. When we arrived in the small town of Phuket right in the centre of the island we got that horrible feeling when you think to yourself, "This is going to be s***!" How wrong we were. Where can I start? The island is surrounded by beautiful coastline and on the first couple of days we tried to visit the most common places by bus. This cost about 20baht (30ish pence) which is very reasonable but very uncomfortable considering the 37 degrees plus and 80% humidity on a bus with no air conditioning. So eventually we thought "Phuket" (f*** It) and took probably the biggest risk of our lives and hired scooters. The roads here are lethal and there are a reported 200+ deaths per year on its roads. However, being the idiots we are we decided to brave it and what a risk it was! Over the course of 3 days we managed to scoot the entire island, travelling to the most secluded places and drinking only the finest wine! lol It was such fun, so much so that we managed to gather a convoy of 10 scooters with people from the hostel to join us in our quest. It was brilliant. At the end of the day we all parked up, went for a meal and basically got pissed!

We travelled to James Bond Island on the most mental boat I think I have ever been on. Only in Thailand would they take a wooden Banana boat, attack a V12 rolls royce engine to the back of it with a propellor on a wooden stick, and transport 30 tourists across the sea at the most riduculous speeds imaginable! The scenery is amazing, the sort of stuff you dream about and still don't appreciate as much as you should do when you're experiencing it!

The Monkey rehabilitaion centre was great. You basically got to walk around the jungle and would be surrounded by the monkeys where they had been brought after being either mis-treated of ill and nursed back to health. I was a bit cautious tho as there was all sorts of weird s*** crawling aound my feet including a spider which had horns (yes horns!) about 6cm long.

Oh and iv'e got to tell you about my encounters in the hostel. Fast asleep on only my second night, I woke with that funny feeling that someone is touching you on the face. I thought, "What the hell!" and swipped my hand across my neck where I found a cockroach the size of a tennis had been crawling! MADNESS! So i completely freaked and went downstairs to watch TV for the rest of the night. Then the following night, I went to lay my head on my pillow when a huge hornet popped up and decided to attack me! Battling to fend it off I managed to puch the damn thing into the wall and kill it off. Luckily these were my only dodgy encounters. But it's funny when I look back at it!

Finally, Im so glad I met so many cool people here. Ive got that many contacts that I cant even remember who's who! But thats what travellings all about I suppose :-)

See you in Aus,

Rich.