Beach time: Southern Thailand

We spent the last two weeks of our South East Asia trip effectively on holiday, relaxing and diving in the Thai islands. Flying in to Phuket, we stayed a few nights on Ko Phi Phi enjoying a more upmarket beach resort on 'Long Beach' that Ali's parents had kindly covered as his birthday present where there were magnificent views of the steep limescale cliffs that made this island popular in the film 'The Beach', and a beach front restaurant with good food and fireshows. Ali was also impressed by seeing several blacktip reef sharks whilst snorkelling in front of the resort!

Back on the mainland we headed to Khao Lak by the local bus where we stayed for a couple of nights. Here we took a nice coastal walk and managed to get laundry done only after scouring the town for the least overpriced place. It really struck us here that with their huge popularity the resorts in Thailand seem to be getting away with European-level prices for food, accommodation and even transport that it is very hard to travel on a budget, compared even with northern Thailand.

However this was our starting point for our two-day liveaboard boat trip to the Similan Islands, reputedly the best scuba diving in Thailand and it did seem to justify the premium. The islands are a protected marine park and there is an abundance of fish that swarmed around us whilst diving, including large eels, parrot fish, bat fish, scorpion fish, as well as a turtle, and even a manta ray on the surface. It is a great place to dive and we had very good conditions although unfortunately we weren't lucky enough to see the whale sharks which are occasionally present.

On our way crossing from the Andaman sea off the west coast to the Gulf of Thailand off the east coast we stopped for a couple of days at Khao Sok. This is a large national park with some well marked jungle walks and many monkey spotting opportunities and we found a family of langurs as well as several of the more common macaque. We took a trip to a lake house deep in the park which floats on a large reservoir formed in a valley flooded for hydroelectric power. We stayed in a small floating hut, relaxing and swimming in the lake. The scenery is incredible as you travel around an archipelago of small jungle islets looking for wildlife and we finally managed to see some gibbons swinging between as well as more langurs and macaques at home cleaning and preening each other. From a long distance we also saw a great hornbill flying between trees.

We finished with five nights on the east coast, staying on the island of Ko Phan-ghan, famed for its hedonistic full moon parties. Unfortunately we weren't there at the time of the full moon - and to ensure we weren't going to go too wild we stayed in a quiet family beach (Haad Salad) on the opposite side of the island. As luck would have it, there is a big party at the half moon as well, and we managed one big night out when Leila dug out her most luminous top and we had a good dance in the colourful outdoor club. We could afford one more dive trip and went to at Sail Rock, in between Ko Phan-ghan and Ko Tao which is known for its big fish although unfortunately the visibility was poor and the whale sharks eluded us once again. Otherwise our last few days were spent relaxing on the beach and working on the tan.

Our trip home took us via Kuala Lumpur where we stopped for the day and it was sombering that the Malaysian flight had gone missing after leaving there only a couple of days prior. We booked our next flights out to Panama for two months in Central America and have just one week back in the UK to get organised!