No ferry, but found a beach!We left Malaysia on April 29th, finally tearing ourselves away from Steven's beautiful retreat. We had a really lovely time there, swimming in the waterfall, short treks through the rainforest (and the leeches were lovely too) , and a good test of all our camping equipment. We even managed a candlelit dinner in the jungle...

We rode up the coast, past miles and miles of bright green padi fields on either side of the road. After the most painless border crossing ever we were back in Thailand, unexpectedly!We quickly sorted out bike insurance and rode North. All our Thai maps were on the way to Scotland in our container so we were using a photocopy. Riding down a road that was definitely on the map (but not the GPS; warning!) we were having a great time and making good progress by taking a huge short cut to the West coast.

Suddenly, as often happens in Asia, the perfect tarmac road vanished and became a track, which the locals assured us went nowhere. This meant we had to turn around and do a long detour... being sensible for once as it was getting late we decided to stay in the very unpicturesque town of Hat Yai instead of heading on to the coast.

We picked a place on the map which had a lot of promising looking umbrella and swimming symbols on it but after a few detours through tiny fishing villages we decided to head instead to Ko Lanta, further up the coast but still within a day's easy ride back to Penang in case a ferry miracle happened.

We found a bungalow near the beach, jumped into the sea, got stung by a jellyfish, jumped out again and had a beer instead.

On the way to the coast I'd e mailed some old friends, James and Corinne, who I knew were somewhere in Thailand en route to Canada from New Zealand. They didn't need much persuasion to come to the beach so for remainder of the week we've got some beer tasting activities planned on the deck of our hut. Really great to see them and catch up.

Here's a picture of the four of us caving in Ko Lanta.

So we're back in paradise, and not too worried about the lack of ferry, it'll happen, eventually. In the meantime all I've got to worry about is finding a place to transfer some pictures onto disc to put on here, and the fact that the sea is too hot - (really, it is) although I know anyone still experiencing winter will hate me for saying it!

(Emma)