From Temples to Turtles

We got on the bus to Bangkok at 3am I think, we were both half asleep t this stage that it's a bit blurry. We manged to actually make it to the border for opening time at 7am and hit across without any problems at all and got our free visa stamp on the way through so happy days. We got a mini bus then from he border into Bangkok and it only took about 3 an half hours so wasn't too bad at all really. Since we had been in Bangkok before we didn't really have anything to do except go grab our train ticket for later in the evening and that only took half an hour so we jumped into a tuk tuk an headed for the cinema to kill the rest of the day. Was good to have a little but of a comfort after all the travelling. So at 7.30pm we jumped onto our overnight train bound for Surat Thani in southern Thailand. We had been hearing for the last few days about a bad typhoon in the gulf of Thailand and on the train our worst fears were realised, there was flash flooding on all the gulf islands with more to come and no sign of it receeding for at least 4 days. So this all meant that we now couldn't make it to any of the islands on the east, no Ko Tao, no Ko Samui and no Ko Phanagan instead we had to get a bus to Phuket and do the western islands. So the train arrived at 7.30am and were on the bus for 7.40am headed for Phuket, it only took about 4 hours to get here so easy. Spent just 3 days on Phuket. We had time to go and see some of the beaches on the island. We went over to one on the west coast just south of the tourist saturated patong, called Karon. It wasn't what we expected at all and was really laclusture compared to what we have heard. Maybe it was down to the weather too, it was overcast and dull, just our luck. So on yesterday then we got the ferry to Ko Phi Phi, the home if "The Beach" and world class diving, both if which we can now tick off our list. Yesterday we just wandered around and looked at the island and figured out what we wanted to do and diving came in number 1 so off we went and booked the discover scuba dive for today. We were up at 7 and were on the boat for 8.  About 25 minutes later we were at our first dive sight, a soft coral bank off a small island. The first few minutes was a bit scary, getting used to the breathing and all but once we got under, wow, what a world down there. We seen so much amazing coral with tons of fish from baracuda to clown fish to pufferfish and even our first sighting of a sea turtle. It was so amazing. After that we had lunch in Maya bay, where "The Beach" was filmed but it was so horrible, boars everywhere and hundrerds of people. We can however say we went diving in Maya Bay where we seen more turtles, razorfish, even more Nemo and Dori made an appearance too. There was so much down there. Such an awesome exierience, just a pity I didn't have an underwater camera!