The End

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Hello All,

As I write this I'm now back in Manchester sat in my sisters house. Debbie's gone back to her parents. Don't worry,we're still speaking. I apologise for any garbled English as I'm a bit jetlagged from flying. The photos will be added later as Debbie took the camera back home with her. Here's a summary of our last week.

We flew into Ko Samui and had someone waiting for us with my name on a big sign. We were took to our hotel, which was kind of a beach resort with our very own bungalow. Don't get the wrong idea, this place had a/c, en-suite, satellite tv, fridge etc and was a stones throw from the beach. A bit different to the one we stayed in Fiji. We found a place opposite called the one dollar cafe to eat for less than £1 for a really nice thai meal. We ate there every day as it was so good. Some days we lazed around not doing a lot, Debbie got a thai traditional massage on the beach. I wouldn't try one as I wasn't sure if they'd misunderstand and try to do something else!

We arranged to do a one day safari to try to see a bit more of the island. There were only 6 of us in our jeep. Us and a family from Melbourne. First off it started with an elephant show where at one point they were massaging people, we then watched some monkeys as they picked coconuts from trees. After the second show we then went Elephant trekking! We had a guide who was actually "driving" the thing though she seemed to just go where she wanted. It's quite strange being on an elephant as they take it quite slow with very deliberate steps. After surviving the elephant we then went to see grandma and grandpa rock. They are so-called as they look like male and female "parts". They do look pretty lifelike as you can see on the photos (to-come) and our guide insisted on taking some pretty funny photos. We then visited a temple with a mummified monk (he's only about 30 years old) before going on a real off road safari to see a waterfall. We then went for food at a place with an amazing view only accessible by 4WD. The food was good but still not as good as our local cafe. After lunch, we made our way up to a place called the magic garden, it looks timeless but I found out it was built around the late 70s. We finished by visiting the Big Buddha, another hour of crazy 4WD but good fun. After a few more lazy days (staying 4 nights in total) we left for Bangkok. We'd intended to do most of the journey between Singapore and Bangkok by train but so far we hadn't used it. It was our last chance so we went for a night train trip first class between Surat Thani and Bangkok. To get there we'd need to get a bus, then ferry, then bus then train. It was a bit confusing at times as we got dropped off at some random place after the ferry when we were trying to get to the train station. After about 30 minutes at a cafe a guy just took us to the train station in his private car. Anyway we got to the train station unscathed and we had our own private cabin. We didn't sleep that well on the train but it was comfortable and we got to Bangkok at 8am. The subway connected with the train and we then got onto the skyrail as the hotel was supposed to be nearby. For once it was nearby and the hotel let us check into our room early so we could get a bit more sleep.

The street on Bangkok where we stayed (sukhumvit) was quite busy with lots of stalls setting up to sell their wares and as it was the last place we were visiting we did look around a bit more. It felt a little bit like KL but still not quite as hectic and cleaner. The one place we really wanted to see was the Grand Palace and we found that it was easy enough to get the skyrail to transfer onto the boats. We'd already read about some dodgey guys outside main attractions that would try and lie to you about a place being closed and taking you to their shop so when one guy did actually tried this we just ignored them and went off to explore the palace complex. It full of different temples and buildings built by the different Thai kings and one of the most impressive things you'll see in Bangkok and the temple of the Emerald Buddha is also within it. There are a few temples nearby (Wats in Thai) so we visited the famous ones. One with a huge reclining Buddha and another known as the temple of dawn which is about 80M high and you can get quite close to that height by going up the deadly steep staircase. Despite this we went for it to get some views of the city. After being all watted out we went back to the hotel to eat. They did an amazing sweet and sour red snapper. Our other days we spent in the various shopping centres around the city. We found that a lot of them were expensive but we're not really designer label people though some things were a really good buy. We also decided to see Harry Potter at the cinema and went out to eat a Western meal (steaks). It was funny as even though it was nice we both had decided that we preffered the Thai food.

We always thought our last day would be a drag as we were'nt flying until midnight. We ended up spending a bit off time jumping on and off the sky rail to see different parts of the city before doing some last minute shopping. We ate and then treated ourselves to some cocktails (a singapore sling and a long island ice tea) which were a bit stronger than we expected. We then got a taxi to the airport (which was new but still a bit hectic) and got our flight which wasn't delayed! The flight wasn't the best as I've had more legroom in a smart car but we got to watch some more films and a bit of sleep. Landing in Heathrow was a stress. We had an hour to transfer and with the new heightened security measures it was cutting it very fine. We also couldn't take our duty free alcohol as we were tranferring to Manchester despite having a receipt and it being sealed (which we'd been told would be ok). We didn't have time to argue so we just rushed and made our plane. Having landed back in Manchester our bags were still in Heathrow. This was the first time in about 15 flights we'd lost our luggage but probably is the best time for it to happen. We made our way through the gates to be greeted by our family said our goodbyes and set off for home.

It's good to be back and we hope to see everyone soon. We missed you all, well most of you ;-) Thanks for reading

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