treasures of the south

in phuket, cant believe im home in 4 sleeps!! hold your horses emma :)
so anya franciszka lukover has stopped following me and is now in singapore and flying to aus 2moro but now i miss her. but she is coming to duns in january woohoo! loaded up on dvds in bangkok for abbey and went and saw a temple (just for a change haha) then left bangkok on monday arvo on the overnight train to sutarathani then three hrs by bus to krabi, THEN half hour sangthew (pretty much sitting in the back of a truck) to ao nang.. lots of travel. very smelly :D. ao nang was cool, stayed there 2 nights, first arvo we went by longtail to railay which is SO beautiful, you can only get there by boat and the weather was beautiful, swam worked on the tan etc.. :D
then tuesday we had a full day cruising around islands by speed boat (hard life) the weather was beautiful sun was shining on the water everything looked like a postcard. went snorkelling saw dory which was cool, stopped at the bay where the beach with leonardo dicarprio was filmed, and where he jumps off the mega high rock. the bay where it was filmed is a tourist hot spot, and when we pulled up there were already about 20 other boats on this 100m stretch of sand, so many fat white hairy bodies ergh ruining my picture perfect beach ha. i blended in well HAHA. had to say it before someone else did :D kept cruising around more islands, did some open water diving, ko phi phi don for lunch which was cool, wandered around there for a while. cute island, real backpacker crowd would be cool to go back and stay for a few nights i think. phi phi got hit reall hard by the tsunami, everything was destroyed pretty much. some places are still getting rebuilt but you can tell that everything is new. also around all the islands there are tsunami warning signs and evacuation route signs everywhere, bit of a scary reminder of what happened. anyway then went to bamboo island and the weather started getting crap but we played voleyball and had fun, as per usual with any sport i spent most of the game on the ground :) the trip home was rough as guts the guy was fanging it too and the seas were a good 5m we all had to wear life jackets it was fun but. fun too looking at everyones faces haha. then we moved to ko yao noi, a smaller much less touristy muslim island. really pretty but the weather was pretty average, not rainy really but just cloudy. went on snorkel trip there too but you couldnt see much and apparently there are sea urchins everywhere so i was unkeen to be stabbed in the foot. on the way back the long tail boat broke down like 3 times, it was warmer in the water so i jumped in then did bombies on the thai guy who was trying to fix the motor in the water. good. he enjoyed it ha. when we got back me and one of the girls from the tour hired a motorbike (for about 7 bucks) and hooned around the island all arvo, so much fun to drive had a ball. got stared at HEAPS went and watched some thai boxers train which was cool. sung buffalo soldier and saw buffalos so we were impressed. then had a massive seafood feast for dinner for 20 bucks with shitloads of crab prawns and fish would have cost 100's at home it was nuts. thismornign we came to phuket, slept on top of the boat it was cool, then went and checked out a gibbon rehabiltiation centre, bought you a present abbey :) they are so cute and make the loudest noises. they are endangered because hunters come and kill the dad and the brothers and sister gibbons then the mum runs up the tree with the baby so then they shoot her so she falls down and they can get the baby and use it on the streets of bangkok, but only one in three babies survive the fall down, so when you see a gibbon in the streets you know about 3 families of gibbons have died for that one to be there. so they rescue the gibbons (with no support from the govt) and rehabilitate them to release them back into the jungle. one of the gibbons had been tortured and had her arm and leg cut off it was really sad. but abbeys present went towards there rehabilitation so that was good :)
in phuket now staying at karon beach, its a nice beach but phuket is pretty busy, probably wouldnt come back. but its nice to have last few days on the beach. just hung out on the beach thisarvo, going to a lady boy show 2nite so that should be good!! cant believe how quickly three months has gone, im broke as and in debt so gonna have to get a job so quickly when i get back but it was DEFINAETLY worth it. had a ball :D