Outside this Internet cafe a dirt track snakes inland through the coconut trees, whilst round the front lies a restaurant, some huts and the beach. We're situated in the middle of a rounded cove facing the Gulf of Thailand, fishing boats are on the horizon, a speedboat is pulled up onto the white sands, and behind us rise rocks, hills and forest. This is Ao Thong Nai Pan Noi, on the island of KOH PHA-NGAN, Thailand.

Our route since our last email from Hué:

Finished our stint in Vietnam by taking the sleeper train from Hue to Hanoi. Queued in the searing heat to file past Ho Chi Minh's body in his Mausoleum (queueing is not a Vietnamese strong point), and flew back to Bangkok.

Around this point Jay picked up a 5 day case of the dreaded "Bangkok Belly" which necessitated constant close proximity to the toilet. Hence our plans to move on were put on hold until we felt brave enough to venture briefly up to Kanchanaburi, a 3hr train ride from Bangkok. We stayed in a hostel overlooking the River Kwai, and walked up to the infamous 'Bridge over the River Kwai'. Again we hired a moped, and what with it being a hot day, we started a 50km journey (in shorts and t-shirts) to Erawan National Park, which has some legendary waterfalls we could cool down in. Halfway through our journey it started to rain, lightly at first then torrentially. Still, despite the stinging rain (like hailstones at times) and the fact that we arrived just before closing time, already soaked, the trip was worth it - stunning waterfalls you could swim under, surrounded by fish. It rained the whole way home too - gutted!

Finished off with a trip to the Cave Temple of the Golden Dragon - a limestone cave temple on a hillside attached to another temple with a famous floating nun. We saw her meditate whilst floating in the lotus position in a small round pool.. each to their own.

After that we headed south to the coast and the islands. First stop - KOH TAO.

It sounds corny but the islands here are much of a muchness ('same same') - you'll usually find white beaches, palm trees, dirt tracks, huts - all very beautiful and idyllic, but some areas are more built up than others.

KOH TAO is the smallest, not too much in the way of tarmac roads, electricity only runs off the generator from 6pm to the middle of the night. Spent a week on or near the beach and had our introduction to scuba diving. We both passed the PADI Open Water course and are now officially entitled to dive down to 18 metres, worldwide. Fantastic! Saw some great coral and fish (best were baby barracuda, angel, parrot and rainbow fish, but we missed the baby white-tipped reef sharks), and even 'bought the video' of us diving, so make sure you hide your VCRs when we get back!

After our final dive our journey home was a fiasco - our boat broke down, the radio connection with base kept going down, their second boat couldn't rescue us as it had also broken down... As night fell we were bobbing about somewhere out at sea. It took a combination of 2 other boat journeys and a pick up truck ride across the island to get us home well into the night - all part of the 'Amazing Thailand' experience!

Also went to a Thai Boxing tournament - really entertaining, lots of ritual before each fight, but the constant snake charmer music they played was the stuff that bad dreams are made of.

We've had a couple of days of doing very little on the beach here on KOH PHA-NGAN. Tonight is Soph's last night, so we're out somewhere nice for dinner, then next stop is KOH SAMUI, where Sare's boyfriend Mark is meeting us. Some male company for Jay after 5 weeks with 3 girls - yippee!

From there we'll leave Thailand and travel south to Malaysia, probably down the West coast. Does anyone have any suggestions about the East/West coast? We should be flying from Singapore to Jakarta on 25th Sept., but may change our flight to go directly to Bali. It all depends on the situation in East Timor and its effect on Jakarta (if any).