We've just spent 3 days in Railay, which is part of mainland thailand but is like a little quiet island with 3 bays surrounding it.

Our first night was extremely traumatic and I'm sure robin will take the piss out of me on his blog about it! We arrived on a long tail boat with no accommodation and had to wade to the shore with our backpacks then make our way to the backpacker side of the island to find somewhere to stay - this, I was fine with. We found a really nice resort to stay at and after being offered a 1000 bhat room I asked if they had anything cheaper, he gave us a 700 bhat room and I was very chuffed with my bartering ability and robin was pleased I was prepared to stay somewhere cheaper.

The room was erm, basic to say the least, and not the cleanest. Which I was still fine with, until I went in the bathroom, which had huge holes in the wall for bugs to crawl in, huge cobwebs and a spider by the toilet. I spent the whole night on edge (mum - it was kind of like the beetle incident when we went away!). I screamed when Robin was in toilet as there was a huge spider crawling across the wall, he came running out to find a large spider-like paint mark on the wall! I made him stand in the bathroom with me while i cleaned my teeth then got in bed as thought that was safest place... the blanket had mould on it, fab. After spending the whole night rigidly glued to Robins side we got up the next day and I bravely went to the bathroom by myself - and a huge black moth flew at me I ran out screaming and refused to wash until we found somewhere else to stay!

Moral of the story is look at the room before checking in! After looking at 2 other hotels we found a nice room for 1000 bhat (although a Geko did come in on the first night, they only have 4 legs do I don't fly so u don't mind them!)

As for the rest of the trip to Railay, we saw monkeys in the trees, ants in my cereal, a crab right next to my ass in a bar and a rather amusing fire show where a) one of the performers was about 60 and kept dropping the fire batons, b) they chucked one of the fire batons in the air and it got stuck in a tree - luckily it had rained that day so the whole tree didn't go up, c) they threw the baton at the audience a couple of times accidentally!

We left Railay at 2.30pm yesterday and just arrived at Bangkok airport 6.30 this morning via - boat, minibus, a 14 hour coach ride and a taxi. The coach dropped us at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere at 5.30am and we got ripped off by a taxi driver (our only option) taking us to the airport, which as we know from our last stay in Bangkok taxi drivers don't like going to! He drove like a maniac at 100mph the whole way, nearly hitting two cars, I'm pretty sure your not supposed to emergency break every 2 mins on the motorway?! We've now got a 9hr wait until our flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Oh yes, and I had $300 US stolen at some point in the last 3 days and yet again we cannot withdraw money from our joint account - and my phone bill was £106 following two previous calls to bank...marvellous!!