The Gap Year Adventure....

helllooo!! well a lot has happened in the few days since i last updated you all...

Monday was spent travelling in a combination of minibuses and then a public bus that seemed to be made entirely of shiny tin. This had no air conditioning and was PACKED! Our tour leader told us that the journey was supposed to be 2 hours but it turned out to in fact be a 5 hour journey, NOT the most comfortable experience!! Due to the time that we arrived in Nakhon Si Thamarat all we did this evening was eat and sleep.

On Tuesday we got up early and went to Wat Phra Mahathat the biggest wat (buddhist temple) in southern Thailand which was really cool - there was so so much gold everywhere and loads of Buddha statues! We met some monk chioldren who were there on a trip and had some photos taken before leaving to get a bus and ferry to koh Samui. We arrived in Koh Samui at about 4pm and went straight to the sea!! It is such a beautiful place - a real paradise island as im sure you will have seen from the photos!

Wednesday was a day trip to some of the nearby islands where we went snorkelling in the marine park, lazed on the beach and went to see the emerald lake. The snorkelling was AMAZING, the gides gave us bread to take in with us so the fish were eatign out of our hands and there were hundreds of them!! We were completely surrounded by fish that were swimming on toip of each other, all we could see was fish! We had lunch on the beachof a random island before going to another small island to visit the emerald lake. This is a saltwater lake supplied only by an underground tunnel frrm the sea and is THE most amazing green colour. It was quite a trek to get to it though, loads and loads of really steep steps up over ths hills and then back down to the lake - it was worth it though! That evening we went into Chaweng (the main place in Koh Samui) and went to a ladyboy cabaret show which was fantastic!! Once you got over the initial shock it truly was a great show - the costumes were really cool! Obviously there were lots of very very very strange looking people there but most you could not tell that they weren't 'real' women - much to the worry of the guys in our group!! We had such a great night, it was such a laugh and something i would really recommend doing!!

On Thursday Tom and I along with the other couple (nick and Trish) ventured to Chaweng - the main beach and shopping area on Koh Samui. This is the tourist area and the whole essence of Koh Samui and being in paradise was spoiled by evertyhing being exectly as it is in spain - i truly could have been on Calpe beach!! I much preferred our beach which was beautiful and quiet and hardly touristy at all. I had a wonderful Thai massage next to the pool - i have NEVER been stretched in so many different ways, it was really bizarre!!

Friday was our day of leaving :-( We caught the ferry back to the mainland before getting a bus for 1 1/2 hours to the train station where we caught the overnight train to Bangkok. This was a really really long journey - 12 hours on the train!! I was much much better than we expected - we had been told to expect cramped, hot and noisy conditions however we found ourselves in a carriage with really big spacious seats, roomy bunk beds and so airconditioned it was cold (i had to put a jumper on!) Also pretty much the entire carriage was asleep in their bunks at 8pm so not noisy at all!! Despite this none of us slept well at all due to the fact that the train bumped along the tracks so much we thought it was about to/had already derailed!!

Saturday was spent mainly sleeping and recovering from the lack of sleep from the night before then some shopping on Kohsan Road!!