Ok so fourth day in Phuket. I didn't finish off Indonesia very well before. So I will now. Indonesia is a country of 240 million people (the fourth most populated in the world), up to 20000 islands, over 300 languages and various religions. We travelled over 1400 km but didn't even scratch the surface of this amazing country. It showed us varied experiences and varied people.

Now we are in Thaland, predominately Buddhist and the biggest rice exporter in the world, exporting over 10 million tonnes in 2008. We flew into Phuket on Monday and already had some great adventures.

We are staying in Phuket Backpackers which is our first proper hostel with bunkbeds etc but we are in a private room. It is a really cool place with ridiculously helpful staff, a common room with tv, dvds and a shared kitchen and bathrooms. It has hot water, Janec cheers next to me - he loves his hot showers, he was in there a while. The first night we had a quick mosey round Phuket town but generally didn't do much as it started raining and continued till the end of Tuesday (our second day). On Tuesday we decided, due to the weather, to get some housekeeping done which has been overdue. We posted some postcards we brought in Ubud and the receipients may get them before we reach Moscow or not, they're travellin economy air (Im mot sure what that means for post, do they get drop kicked onto the plane or no meal during the flight). We also posted a parcel of stuff back home, stuff we wanted to keep but could no longer carry, which cost a small fortune to post but thats only going by economy air too so Cathi it may need a meal when it gets there.

We bought some items we needed, me flip flops as the fast boat killed mine very uncerimoniously. Traded books, all good. We also had our first proper street food (for those of you unfamiliar of the concept this does not mean we went rummaging in the local 7 11 bins), we had thousands of spring rolls. Like actually thousands after being full and fat, Janec researched the pricing of beer and found it to be satisfactorily cheap so drank it. (all of it - Phuket was dry on Wednesday).

Due to the weather we had a chat on Wednesday morning (we are English discussing the weather is what we do), we also consulted the Thailand metorological website and because I didn't trust that I also looked at the BBC website. The BBC was more cheery about the weather prospects for the next two days whereas the Thais predicted a black cloud for every day from now till the middle of next month. Thankfully it has transpired the BBC were more accurate ( a rarity I know). Anyhow after discussions we decided to go see Big Buddha, which if you are to believe Lonley Planet is impossible to reach without a motorised vehicle in your possession. We thought screw Lonley Planet and began enquiries, we discovered we could catch the bus to Chalong and the walk to Big Buddha was 6 km so we thought yay, easy we are young, fit people, we'll be back for lunch. So we left and instantly ran into a taxi tout we've been having regular bouts with. He declared that to walk was impossible, 10 km at best, then 15km, then a million. it was difficult to keep up it kept changing. Janec got rid of him and we declared we are young, fit and it'll be easy!

Ok so we found the bus after a little deliberation and talking to a man who had a picture of Clifton Suspension Bridge on his wall (he knew it was Bristol-not sure hed gone personally though). We headed for Chalong, we were left off at the juction with a poster of said Big Buddha and we could see him on top of his hill and we thought great, it doesn't look that far away, we are young and fit we'll be up there in a jiffy. 45 mins later we were stopping for a break from the midday sun before finishing the climb we stopped at a restaurant with the most stunning views but it was so cheap. Refuelled and with some new water we left and it took a ffurther 40 mins. It was a bit tiring but it was worth it when we got to the top, we did however get chased a bit by some oud barky dogs which I didnt enjoy. Big Buddha was huge and it was amaazing to see Im gllad we did it. We got a lift from a TUrkish bloke down past the scary dogs but he had to chase off his scary dogs first. We headed back to Phuket for a street food banquet and got chatting and drinking with some guys from the hostel.

Our 2nd Phuket adventure was to go to the GIbbon Rehabiltation Centre, we caught the bus and it got us to the turning we had to walk for 1km to the centre. We got chased and barked at by some more dogs. We got there though with all our limbs and saw the gibbons which were very active and noisy. We then walked further into the "national park to the waterfall. It was really beautiful and we sat and watched for a short while. Now we had to walk back;Janec is scared of dogs and Thailand is giving me a fear of dogs. A Thai guy offered us a lift to the main road for 300 baht but we were like its a km, he thought it was 10 km. Crazy man! We went back to the gibbon rehabilitaion centre and they told us that there was another road so we took that one. The dog that lived at the national park followed us all the way; she was lovely. The views on this route were stunning. We got to a village, got given motorbike rides to the bus stop and got the bus back to Phuket. WE found an amzing restaurant which cost 3 pounds for dinner. It was very good.

We are now in Ko Samui after a 8 hour journey by coach. Our hostel is very nice. We went out last night for investigatory walk and had food and got some sang som and got a wee drunk. We are going to try and go out tonight after a day on the beach.

Sorry about the brak in this one my hour ran out at tha last place but its finished now.

Much love ruth and JAnec

xxxxx