Blogging from the future!

For those of you who know my parents they will tell you that they really enjoyed their weeks holiday with me in Malaysia and Singapore and that i am healthy and well. Personally i think that Mum's assertions that I have put on weight are due to her not seeing me for a little while, since i weighed myself today and I am the same as I was when i started this trip. However after a week of good food, good wine and good company it is probably not surprising that I looked very healthy when I left them.

That was over a week ago and since then I have crossed through Thailand and flown down to New Zealand which means that if you are reading this in England then you could argue that you are reading the future. New Zealand being 11 hours ahead of England, and this being Wednesday morning my time! While I was in Thailand I moved to Kho Tao and Kho Panyang, firstly for the scuba diving and secondly because I wanted to meet with Livi Hunt for the Full Moon Party. I shall tell my weeks activities in this order.

Kho Tao is an island paradise with white beaches, warm water and lots of sunshine. It is also full of scuba diving companies which meant that when I did go Scuba Diving with Big Blue Diving there were often more than 30 divers at any one dive site. This was caused by it being Japanese Golden Week;a 2 week national holiday in Japan, and so there were lots of Japanese Divers. Most divers go to Kho Tao to see whale sharks which are fish the size of small cars which eat krill, however as my guide told me Japanese divers regard a dive as a bad dive if they don't see a whale shark. In other words they wont settle for anything less. So when a whale shark was sited at a particular dive site then all the dive boats (including us) rushed to the site and jumped in the water, scaring these normally inquisitive and gentle animals away. These creatures are very rare in the first place, and so it isn't really surprising that despite doing 7 dives I didn't see a single one. Still the visibility under water was fantastic, the people at Big Blue were really nice, and the water was really warm.

Kho Pan Yang is internationally famous for its full moon party, where once a month Haad Rin Beach is taken over by about 8,000 "clubbers" who cover themselves in UV paint and dance through till sunrise. Those of you with Facebook will see some photos of that night coming soon, since I danced till about 4, had UV paint all over me, and drank my drinks out of very elegant childrens sand buckets. I partied all the better because I was with Livi, and because I knew that all the Tits and Dave were also out celebrating Gregs birthday (happy birthday greg!!!) in Southampton, so while I danced in the sand, they danced in Southampton and all were happy :D

Since then it is has really been a transport fiesta! Over the past 48 hours i have used all the below forms of transport;
- back of a jeep
- the front of a landrover
- a slow boat
- an even slower bus which almost meant i missed my
- overnight train
- tuk tuk
- mini bus
- 12 hour overnight flight
- mini bus
and my own feet of course!

Asides from the cold I really like new zeland and am looking forward to exploring Auckland today x