15 Feb - We spent Valentine's night in a bit of a panic as we hadn't booked any accomodation in Hua Hin which is a little south of Bangkok. The place we had tried to book could only accomodate us for the 16/17 Feb, but not the 15th. We were told that a lot of Thai people travel there on Friday's just for one night so a lot of places were booked up. After about 3 hours of ringing every hostel/hotel in the Lonely Planet Guide we gave up and went to bed, deciding to deal with it in the morning. First thing in the morning I spoke to the local man who runs the hotel's private taxi. He said h knew of an agency who might be able to get me a room, so he took us to her and after a whil of searching she managed to get us a room at the Majestic Beach Hotel. She said the room was not the best and it was much more expensive than we could afford but we were desperate so we took it for the one night until we could check into our other hotel. Then we went to the local bus station and caught a government bus down to Hua Hin for about 166 Baht each. Not quite like National Express back home but w could stand I for a few hours!

On the way down we passed Monkey Mountain which I wished we coul have stopped at as there were tons of little monkeys cawling everywhere. We also saw some of the rougher parts of Thailand consisting of little more than roadside huts. When we arrived at the hotel and the bell boy took us to our room, I was shocked. The room was huge with a big bedroom, a lounge room and the usul things. I'm not sure what part of this room the agent though was awful but if we could stay in rooms like this all the way round the world i'd be very happy! The resort was beautiful, right on the beach and even came with a karaoke room that you privately hire - those tat know me well know what I did that night haha. The rest of our stay in Hua Hin was pretty nice, this is more like a tourist resort than a backpacker place but we had a good few days just chilling out. The bars in this area are less sleazy than Bangkok, I think the same 'services' are offered but the girls are fully clothed and we had a few funny nights there. Three days was enough in Hua Hin and we booked a transfer to Koh Samui with the nice ladyboy across the rd who ran the internet cafe. This time we decided to go by VIP transfer as it was quite a bit longer and I didn't fancy a whole days travel on the same bus as we travelled from Bangkok. This cost 1100 Baht (about 17/18 pounds) including dinner and drinks and was well worth it. We had big reclining seats and were able to sleep som of the way.

One thing I cannot get used to out here is the toilets. In hotels and well built up places they tend to be western toilets and are okay but in road side cafes and bus terminals, toilets are nothing more than flat urinals on the floor with no toilet paper. It's not an easy task squatting, trying to keep you trousers off the floor which is covered in other people's wee! And holding your nose because the stench is so bad and squatting flies at the same time. Roll on Australia!