The five of us spent our second day at the Villa Cha Cha trying to decide where to go next in Thailand – our initial idea had been to go to an Island off the west coast called Koh Phayam. We had little information about it and most of what we had read said that it was still borderline monsoon season and we did not want to spend all our time together getting wet. We had looked into transport via the TAT office and we did not feel like an expensive 9 to 12 hour bus journey – there were cheaper bus options but as Gavin, Tehya and I had been travelling non stop for several weeks before meeting the girls! We did not relish the idea of a long bus ride. So we started to check out flight details. We could fly to Phuket for about £30 each with Air Asia so we spent some time on the inter-net and booked our flights south.

Our second night at the Villa Cha Cha involved a girls night out……. after a few hours of stressed out decision making and flight booking we thought we deserved a few beers – that turned into a few buckets and several hours of dancing at a strange ‘dance’ club on the Khoa San rd. We staggered home in hysterics and collapsed into our beds, exhausted and laughed out.

In total we spent four nights at the hotel and spent our days eating great/cheap Thai noodles, curry, rice and seafood from the street stalls – drinking lots of cold beer/Thai Whiskey and of course clothes shopping at the numerous market stalls on the Khao San rd.

We hung out at the hotel on our last afternoon in Bangkok and then headed for the airport on the four o’clock mini bus – it cost 150 Baht each (Tehya was free) – we got there in plenty of time to get our Air Asia flight. It was amazingly quick – taking off from Bangkok and landing in Phuket in 1 hour 15 minutes.

You might think that after flying so much this trip that my anxiety levels would be decreasing with each occasion but this is not the case – I was completely petrified and threw up half way through the flight because of the stress. My heart was racing as we took off and unfortunately things did not improve during the flight – I felt in blind panic for the whole time and at one point almost called out to get off the plane – Gavin told me afterwards that this would have been a problem and probably would have cost us a lot of money – so just as well I some how managed to keep that part of my body function under control. I cried a lot – there was little I could do about that!!!

We spent a night at a rather grubby hostel in Phuket town (500 Baht a room) but as we arrived late and were leaving for the ferry (1000 Baht a ticket – return with mini bus – Tehya was free) very early it seemed pointless to spend money on comfort. Gavin and the girls all slept relatively well but I was haunted for most of the night by strange dreams about flying with my family – I am sure you can hazard a guess at the type of content! No more to be said!!

We were picked up by our mini bus 15 mins early, this meant that I was still in the shower and Tehya was still asleep. We have become experts at letting her sleep as long as possible on early morning starts – we just pick her up and drop her into her clothes. I am blessed with a child who 99% of the time wakes with good humour, especially if we are travelling somewhere. She has an amazing knack of finding this part of travelling exceptionally interesting and exciting!!

We got to the ferry port and milled around with the 1000 or so other tourists waiting to board the many boats headed towards Phi Phi Don and the other islands. Gavin spirits instantly sank about 100 feet to the bottom of the ocean. We knew that the islands would be busy but we were dismayed to see just how many people had also planned to head the same way. The journey took a couple of hours and was calm and easy going. We stopped part way for the day cruisers to look at some of the views. Phi Phi Lay the smaller of the islands and the one that has the infamous ‘beach’ was on the list of sights. It was pretty shocking to see it when we arrived. The beach was definitely not the isolated beautiful island it was portrayed as in the movie of the same name. There was no sand to be seen in between the hundreds of bodies that covered the beach and the water was a mirror of bright rainbows from the petrol that has been spilt by the hundreds of boats roaring their way through the water – racing each other! Scantily clad 20 some-thing’s relaxing on their bows. I might sound idyllic to some but it was like a horror movie for Gavin and I.

We arrived at the dock side on Phi Phi Don and left Gavin and Tehya to eat some breakfast at a cafe while us girls headed up the mission for accommodation.