Well I guess an update has been long overdue...

We had an amazing time in Pai, meeting lots of people and being pretty lazy and chilled out. Once we managed to get out of a hammock, we hired some motorbikes one day and took a ride out of the town. We visited some natural hot springs (like taking a hot bath outdoors - so good), a waterfall or two and a canyon. Lovely sites and good fun to ride about! We stopped at an amazing coffee shop on the way called Coffee in Love with panoramic views overlooking Pai.

Towards the end of our stay in Pai we discovered the art of Muay Thai - thai boxing, and so two gingers and a curly girl took themselves across the rickety bridge to kick some ass....
The warm up was funny...we were told to start skipping to build up our heart rate etc but we soon got bored of the serious stuff and started revising old playground skipping, even managing to convince a set of Thai twin girls to join in the fun while their Big Mama was in the ring! So we mucked about for a bit before donning the gloves, then we each took it in turns one-on-one with the gym instructor in the ring. I'll have you know I was giving some good kicks - I never knew I had so much agression in me! Boxing was a pretty good work out (despite us not taking it step by step!) and by the end of the three hour session we'd collapsed in heaps of giggles trying to keep up with the pros and their "cool down" press ups!
The manager and the staff at the gym were so friendly and we often sat with them having drinks in the evening. On the Saturday evening after boxing we were invited to a barbeque hosted by them which was great...at one point someone told us to check out one of the empty bungalows on the way back home - where we discovered that a dog was giving birth to puppies!!! She had a litter of 6 by the time we got there and the puppies were all squeaking and just being adorable! But then we got angry as we wanted to know where the father was in the situation! tut tut.

On our final morning our Thai friend Jacky cooked us a lovely lunch meal to send us off on our way - we all tucked into rice, omelettes, thai soup and chilli noodles, so grateful for the gesture! Jacky was such a legend, we really miss her, thank goodness for facebook hey! We then set off on our mammoth bus journey from the north of Thailand down to the southern islands in search of the Full Moon Party. The journey involved two overnight buses and a 12 hour stop in Bangkok...bloody knackering but made all the more fun for picking up a new friend from Pai called Kamalee - a French Canadian who was also on her way to get down and funky on Haad Rin Beach! So we hunted down some luxury (but cheap) bungalows on a beach called Haad Yao on the main island of Koh Phag Nan. We were staying right on the beach and it was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l! Masses of white sand and blue blue sea! So off we ran, flip flops a flapping and off for a good swim! We had some amazing food on the seafront too - barbequed red snapper was a particular highlight.

We went out the night before the proper Full Moon Party to warm up - beach was buzzing with loads of different bars all blaring out music and advertising the notorious buckets (of cocktails). We met a group of irish guys and had a brilliant night trying everything out, from inflatable hamster balls on the water to podium dancing and fire limbos! The Full Moon Party the following night was a lot busier but still good fun. We watched the sunrise and carried on dancing!

We also did a great boat trip around the various beaches on the island. We met an Australian and Israeli couple and went snorkelling together. I don't know why we bothered with suncream really as we all had the most hideous sunburn afterwards but seeing all the varieties of tropical fish made it completely worth it. At one point we had pieces of pineapple with us to feed them, and ended up with hundreds of beautiful fish swimming round us to grab the pineapple! Awesome.

We left Koh Phag Nan a few days ago and made our way to Koh Phi Phi, which we were meant to do all in one day but since the sea was somewhat "choppy", to put it mildly, we had to stay overnight in Krabi. The ferry the next day was still quite a rough ride, so much so that Gemma decided to share her toast with the rest of the boat...poor girl. Koh Phi Phi is the island that was mainly affected by the Tsunami Disaster. Sarah visited back in 2005 about 8 months after the event, and helped to make Memorial Gardens and clean the beaches. Coming to Koh Phi Phi four years later, she could not believe how much has sprung up where once lay open stretches of beach...in fact I kind of find the masses of shops and bars a bit claustrophobic...it seems that there's been a rush to build their lives back up and get tourism thriving again, but we think they've overdone it somewhat! Something we were impressed by is that there are no motor vehicles on the island - everybody walks, cycles or gets a boat to get around! Very refreshing.

We took another boat trip yesterday to see other parts of the island - including the spot where the film The Beach was filmed. A bit more snorkelling and sunbathing rounded off another good day. Oh but you can all have a laugh because I have a sunglasses mark and a burnt face from being in the water!

We are now trying to decide what to do for the next few weeks, and researching how to get to Malaysia...