Well guys,

finally a real update hey! it's been a fantastic 2 weeks. After kanchanaburi, we headed down south to Kao Tao, a little island down in the south of thailand. beautiful.
long journey there - 10 hours on a coach, lot of waitinf around wondering if we'd ever get picked up! then a 2 hour boat journey that made everyone feel like breakfast was a bad idea!
Worth every second tho. The beaches were beautiful, and the island so small that nearly everything was walking distance.
both of us tried diving for a day but on different days and different courses as Ali already has his padi qualification. really good fun but expensive so we spent much of our week in Koh tao just lazing around on the beach, and snorkelling. We did fit in a round of mini golf on our last night.. obviously i won :)

From koh tao we took a boat to koh pha-ngan. Much more to do there as the island is double the size. We stayed in the north which was quite quiet but we met shane and lauren, a couple from England 9although lauren is south african) and we hung out with them for quite a bit, including at the full moon party on the south of the island - Haad Rin beach. That was amazing, you can see from the photos we had an awesome time. Drinks were served in bucket form.. literally a bucket of ice, a can of coke, a red bull and a 35 cl bottle of rum/whisky/vodka! They whack it all in and unsurprisingly, everyone gets wrecked. ali was skipping about like a schollgirl! people ere passed out all over the beach! There was even a designated sleeping area! but most people just passed out randomly, I think one girl may actually have been dead, but we weren't too concerned cuz we were busy! lol (i'm sure she was fine).

The beach we stayed on was fantastic, our hut literally looked out onto the beach. we tried a bit of kayaking and snorkelling but Ali was afraid of sharks, and I was afraid of crabs and slugs so it was more of an adventure than it sounds! seaslugs... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

PARENTS - LOOK AWAY NOW (if you didn't it's your own fault and u can't get mad..)

The second day we wanted to do things around the island, so we rented a jeep! Yep that's right.. we drove ourselves around ina jeep with a broken speedometer and handbrake! and yep, neither of us have a license! but they didn't ask.. and we weren't going to tell them! the roads are bad in koh pha-ngan but not busy at least. sorry parents, we're being safe.. honest.. we wore seatbelts :) andit's better than falling of a motorbike.. not that i did that! Ali has a tattoo anyway. (phew, that took the heat off me for a sec)

having the jeep saved us loads of time and money, we saw a chinese temple, fed some elephants, got our legs waxed by crazy thais (err ok that was just me) and had some lunch in the main town. it was the best way to see the whole of the island.

so.. south was amazing and we're nice and brown. now we're in bangkok waiting for the sleeper train to take us north to chang mai. my friend richard joined us yesterday and is with us for 2 weeks. so we'll update you soon.

missing you all, let us know how u all are and what u think of our pics. it's only a shame we cant put more on - it was hard to choose which few to post!

love to you all
Tara and Ali (who is actually here this time)