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So, here we are back in Bangkok. It was sad to leave our paradise Island yesterday....we were treated like royalty to say the least! We finished our diving which was great, although the visibility wasn't brilliant. We saw a shark and barracuda on our last dive. The island was pretty quiet mostly, as there were only a handful of guests staying, but each day hoards of visitors would come over by boat to stay for a few hours, snorkelling and sun bathing mostly. It all turned into a nightmare one day on the beach, when a 53 yr old Thai lady who was snorkelling (in a life jacket) was frantically dragged out the water. Springing into action, and with two brilliant A&E nurses (from George's, London) we attempted resus on the drowned woman. Within minutes we managed to coordinate an entire beach into getting oxygen, rebreathe mask, Epipen (having a nut allergy sometimes comes in handy), and a speed boat to the mainland. Sadly it wasn't looking at all good for her, despite our attempts. Worse still, another Thai lady who was helping us, realised only minutes later that the woman was her cousin. We took her over to the bigger island, where we halted our efforts. It was a shocking ordeal, and hard to believe that someone could drown like that in calm, shallow water, with all her family and friends around her (about 20 of them came to thank us afterwards). For the next few days we were sad and reflective. That same afternoon two whales swam past our island, just a kilometre or two from that same shore, where events had been so frantic. It was all pretty spooky stuff. We built up a very good rapport with staff in the following few days, and they couldn't do enough to make us more comfortable. We were moved to a deluxe room which was heavily discounted, and the manager of the Island accompanied us to Bangkok, making sure we had the best seats on the bus and offering to arrange some sight-seeing for us too. Its definitely a place we would go back to and recommend to anyone.
We had mild-sunstroke for a day or two, so we took the oppurtunity to do a bit of forward planning for our trip. We were slightly worried that we were struggling to find any accomodation in Melbourne on Boxing day (bloody Cricket fans!) - but on our sixtieth attempt we succeeded - we'll tell you about our experience in a shared/mixed dorm in the new year! We also booked our campervan, which looks brilliant - take a look at escaperentals.co.nz to see the uniquely painted 'hippy vans' - as Jen calls them. We are also looking into changing our plans to avoid Fiji, which is having some trouble after another coup. So we leave for Melbourne in 4 days, meeting up with Pip, Paul, Peter and Karen (David's family) and then Julie & Jake in Sydney for New Year - hopefully our liver's will survive.
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