Hello from Koh Pangan. We're staying at a place called Ibiza Bungalows, it's not too shabby but it's not as nice as Cactus was back on Koh Samui. Having said that, the beach I think is a lot nicer than Bophut beach. Last night I had to chase a gecko out of our room, I eventually caught him with the broom and held him up (much to his annoyance) We decided this time to go budget and get a bungalow without air conditioning, so far it seems to be working out pretty well though we've only slept once.

We leave Koh Samui after a lovely few days there, we organised the high speed catamaran to bring us to Koh Pangan. There's so many travel agents all around so you're never quite sure if you can trust any of them, but the ticket we bought was valid so we were in...

We decided yesterday morning that we'd hire some motorbikes and have a ride around Koh Samui, even though the guidebook we have strongly advises against this. I talked to my friend Beatty online and he also strongly advised us against it, saying that it was a surefire way to ruin a good holiday very quickly. After talking about it a bit more we decided that he and the guidebook were probably right so we flagged hiring bikes, instead opting to take a Taxi around to Lami beach to have a look around.

Lami's a lot more tourist oriented, our beach (currently Bophut) is sort of quiet and there's not a real lot of clothing/souvenier shops, but Lami is packed with them, all welcoming us into their store and trying very hard to get us to buy things that we don't really need nor have room for in our packs. Sarah...

Here I sit on Koh Samui and it's totally fantastic. It's hard to explain just how amazing this place seems without being able to show you what it's like first hand. We're having a blast, that's for sure. I'll try and cover the last few days here in good detail, not for your amusement but for mine when I look back on this in a few years time! It's going to be a pretty big entry because I haven't done one since we arrived!

We arrived at Bangkok airport with no problems, the plane flight was pretty comfortable though it did have a rather crappy selection of movies I thought. Once we arrived it was a lot easier than I'd thought it was going to be to get through passport control and collect our bags. They didn't even bother to check our bags for anything dodgy, we just walked straight...

We've made it, we've arrived. It's about 35 degrees and damn, damn hot. The flight over was good, our room isn't too bad though the bed is basically made of rocks. We got in late last night and went to bed pretty much straight away, today's our first chance to have a look around at the city during the day.

Damn, it's HOT!

Tim

We are in the departure area of the Auckland airport, about to fly away. Goodbye NZ, it's been a lot of fun!

What a crazy week it's been. As if getting the motherload of a trailer down here on the back of Peter's car wasn't crazy enough, we have then had to fit everything into a small storage area, while trying to find a couple of things I'd accidentally boxed up that we needed.

Let's not forget of course that my darling mother arrived to see us on our final week. I feel really bad for her because she's really only got to do a few things, we've been so busy running around packing, repacking, boxing, reboxing and then trying to store/ship everything. I think she's had a fairly good time considering the amount of stress we've been under and the amount of arm flapping I've been doing. Poor mother! We went our for a nice dinner tonight though and she got a chance to see dear old Mrs. Harris who is...

It's been a pretty amazing 48 hours I can tell you! In fact it's been a pretty crazy week, I'm not sure what to tell you first of all. So I'll just do what I usually do which is start typing and see what comes out.

First of all we sold the final bits of our stuff this week, of course on TradeMe. It's a great site but damn some people are totally and utterly hopeless. We sold a mirror, the auction closed on the 1st of April. I emailed the buyer numerous times and told her that she needed to pickup by Friday the 13th at the latest. We gave up and filed for a refund from TradeMe last week, after which she finally got in contact with us. She organised to pick it up Friday morning at 11am but she never showed up. That went on the dump...

We're on the road, out of Auckland. We have a HUGE trailer on the back. We are all totally exhasted, Peter and I spent 2 hours packing the trailer while poor Sarah cleaned the house.

I feel elated, scared, nervous and excited. I'll be glad when we get to Napier!

Tim

It's been a good 24 hours for us! Randomly out of the blue last night we got a phone call from a Scottish guy who'd just arrived in the country and was really interested in Sarah's car. I went to meet him last night and showed it to him, he said he'd be happy to buy it as long as we got an AA pre-purchase inspection etc done on it, which would be taken out of the final sale price. No worries we said, we'd had no other interest it it.

This afternoon he rang and said not to worry about the pre-purchase inspection stuff, he'd just give us the full asking price if he could take the car. Done! So we waved goodbye to the Legnem this afternoon. It's getting very strange around here now, the only thing parked in the driveway is the scooter and that's nearly sold...

Happy Easter everyone! I hope the Easter bunny in your part of town wasn't like me, hopping around last night at 9pm trying to find Easter Eggs because he'd forgotten. I eventually found some that a dairy had stashed away, of course at a nice 30% markup on top of the already over inflated prices for a stupid chocolate egg. I'd even been to the supermarket earlier that day and see lots of eggs still on the shelves but didn't click in my mind that I should buy one.

We went out to Sylvia Park again yesterday. It's the newest shopping complex in Auckland. They don't build Malls anymore, they're not cool. Now they build miniature cities which are just thousands and thousands of shops and carparks. Sylvia Park is huge, and yesterday was packed with hundreds of thousands of people. It wasn't too bad though, we got a park...