Leaving Pai and back down South

We began the return journey from Pai to Chiang Mai with a clear head, more able to stomach the cork screw turns of the road. This brought us to Chiang Mai airport to catch a flight to Phuket in the South. All in all the journey took a total of 9 hours and we were glad to be at our hotel. We stayed at the Baan Suay in Phuket which is run by a British guy Daniel and his Thai wife Suporn - both of whom are extremely friendly and incredibly helpful.

We were about a 10 minute walk from Karon beach, and on the first morning we headed in that direction. The beach was decidedly "white", lots and lots of tourists but bizarrely, around 3.30pm, the beach seemed to empty almost entirely. This left it rather peaceful and made the sunset very enjoyable. On our way back to the hotel we bumped into two other people we had met on the Chiang Mai cookery course, who just happened to be staying in the same hotel as us. We gleened a couple of tips about where was good to eat that evening (they had a friend in Phuket and had been there almost a week) and listened to stories about diving which sounded amazing.

Although very tempting, diving is quite an expense when you're on a budget, so we had to make the decision not to do any. It is a shame, but I hope to come back to Thailand for that very reason, get all necessary courses done and do some serious diving. But until then, it will have to wait. Thailand hasn't been expensive, but the money is rapidly disappearing.

We only had 24 hours in Phuket, we had heard that it was very hectic and touristy. As it goes, a couple more days to explore wouldn't have been a bad thing. Nevertheless, the following afternoon we were packed up and ready to go. After a lovely chat with the propioritors of our hotel and a good seeing off, we bundled into our blisteringly hot minivan and headed for the pier to get our boat to Koh Lanta.

The best thing about the journey to the pier was the driver, who informed us he could speak, read and write English and clearly wanted to chat. We were sat right at the front next to him and were treated to our very own whistle-stop tour of Phuket, including sites such as the local Catholic school and "culture" buildings. As a means of proving he could also write English, the driver had a habit of spelling out words after each sentence: "Here this is old town, they are culture buildings: b-u-i-l-d-i-n-g-s. Buidlings yes?" Bloody brilliant. He also had a CD compilation of various British pop, rap and r'n'b as well as some techno remixes of old classics. He would occasionally break into song along to these and was quite pleased that I knew the words to most of the songs and was singing along also, to the point where he kept turning up the volume until it was so loud we couldn't hear the people in the back of the van.

And so to the boat. The journey took around 5.5 hours; I recommend taking lots of books if you ever do this journey and plenty of water too. It was a relief to finally get to Koh Lanta and we soon jumped into an adapted motorcycle taxi (a motorbike with a sort of side carriage on it which had seats and enough room for two of us with big bags) and made the bumpy, windy journey to Mook Lanta resort where we hoped Tom (owner) would have come good with the accomodation he had sorted us. This came pretty good in the end and we had ourselves a little bungalow in which to reside for the 5 days in Koh Lanta. Sorted.