Vicks and Tuffers travelling adventures!

We share our early morning ferry with a mixture of daytrippers and those who are staying on Koh Phi Phi longer, It's a rough crossing but we doze our way through it - there are plenty of green-looking people though!!

Koh Phi Phi is actually two islands, to the west of Phuket - Koh Phi Phi Leh, a stunning island that is protected, so you can't stay on it, and Koh Phi Phi Don, the main island where the resorts etc are. Phi Phi was the worst affected by the Tsunami, which pretty much wiped out the main resort, but it seems to have been quickly restored and apart from a fair amount of building work - which we're now used to after seeing so much of it in Vietnam - there's not a huge amount of evidence that it happened.

Arriving at the port, we find a bustling little village, full of tiny streets. Vehicles aren't allowed on the island, so porters carry lots of people's bags through the streets to their hotels in giant trolleys. Nick leaves me in a bar while he heads off to find accommodation (we usually book ahead using website reviews to avoid the awful places but we've been a bit slack this time!) and soon comes back and leads me up to the hills with our bags to a dilapidated row of wooden rooms built into the trees. At first glance I think it's pretty grotty and not very secure so we decide to stay the 1 night and look for somewhere else for the rest of our stay. We later discover just how grotty it is when we wake in the night to find hundreds of ants crawling over our toothbrushes - ick!!! Thankfully for another £2 per night, we find a lovely place in the centre of town, run by the no-nonsense but very friendly Miss Lee who learns everyone's names and treats you like one of the family!

Phi Phi Island is definitely a party island, and despite it supposedly being off-season on the West coast of Thailand, we actually find it busier and with better nightlife than in Koh Pha Ngan on the East coast last year! It's full of young backpackers and holidaymakers, and the town comes alive at night when cheap buckets of booze are sold in the bars and cheaper still versions are sold on the streets. We really like the variety here - in the one night you can have a cheap but nice dinner in a busy restaurant, a relaxing quiet pint in the Sports Bar, watch westerners have a go at Thai Boxing in a ring in the middle of the Reggae Bar, watch the ladyboy cabaret in the Irish Bar, watch a fire show on one beach and party in a club on the other beach, dancing in the sand. It's also quite a friendly place and we meet other sets of travellers and share stories and recommendations over a few beers.

The main beach, Ao Dalam, is stunning - white sands and crystal clear waters. You can walk for 10/15 minutes out to sea and still only be in water up to your thighs! We get great weather while we're here, so spend a huge chunk of our days on the beach and sitting in the shallow waters.

Towards the end of our 6 days here, we take the half day snorkelling trip around Phi Phi Leh. For the first time, the weather's a bit overcast and we get a bit of rain just before we get on the boat and the sea looks quite rough! 11 of us set off in a rickety old longtail boat, making our first stop at Monkey Beach, a small stretch of sand where a family of monkeys live. Some people are feeding them and for the most part they're friendly, though a couple of the bigger ones get a bit aggressive and chase some guy along the beach! Next stop is Shark Bay for snorkelling. Funnily enough, the name doesn't put us off and we see some great fish, though the strong waves send us crashing into the rocks. Next stop is a small bay by the rocks, where huge shoals of beautifully coloured fish flock around you as soon as you get in the water. We see some amazing fish in the coral too - our favourite is one we nickname Mr Motivator, as it is multi-coloured - fluorescent blue, purple, yellow and pink - amazing!!

After snorkelling, we swim a couple of hundred yards to a tiny stretch of sand, then climb over some rocks through a tiny, narrow cave, along a jungle track and out into Maya Bay, the stunning cove where "The Beach" was filmed. It is pretty breathtaking and well worth the mission to get here!

With sunset not too far awat, we head back to the boat to make our way back to Phi Phi Don. By now the waves are enormous and we have some very hairy moments on the boat before we make it back to the shore - we're both thrilled to see dry land!!

This time we're really sad to say goodbye as it's our favourite beach so far, but we've heard good things about Railay, our next stop, so we're looking forward to that!

Kata is a smaller beach resort, just south of Patong with a much more laid-back vibe. Our accommodation is up a steep hill, halfway between Kata and Karon beaches, and has some great views.

We spend a couple of days here chilling on the beautiful bay at Kata. The waves are huge, so Nick decides to take the opportunity to give surfing a go. Despite hiring the board for 2 hours, after just over an hour of crashing out and swallowing tons of sea water, plus some serious chest chafage (now we know why everyone else had T-shirts on!!), he calls it a day! He looks like he's gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson, but he did finally manage to make it to his knees on the board - very impressive!!

The town itself is pretty quiet, and there's no much in the way of nightlife, so we chill and relax for a couple of days before moving on to the next stop!

After an overnight stay at a Bangkok airport hotel, we head back to the airport to catch our flight down to Phuket. We'd considered the night train followed by a mini bus but the cost difference wasn't that much so we decided to save ourselves the pain of travelling and fly. After whiling away a couple of hours with free food and drink in the Bangkok Airways lounge (this is hardly backpacking is it?!), we finally arrive in Phuket mid-evening, where the rain is absolutely bucketing down!

Phuket is on the west coast of Thailand, and Patong is the busiest resort on the island, popular with holidaymakers rather than backpackers but we decide to spend a few days here anyway.

After a surprise stop at a travel agent to try and sell us alternative accommodation and trips (after a long day, we weren't exactly what you'd call polite about being sold overpriced crap trips!), we finally arrive at our accommodation. It doesn't look much from the outside, but we realise what good value we're getting when we see our room. It's pretty big with 2 double beds, a balcony, fridge and huge TV and DVD player. The bathroom is big with both a shower and a bath, and shutters alongside the bath that open into the bedroom allowing us to watch the TV in the bath - we make a mental note to have an ensuite with that in our own house, if we ever get the chance!!

It's still raining the next day but we decide to explore the town anyway and soon come across a network of shopping centres where we spend the afternoon avoiding the rain. We notice the difference from Vietnam straight away - there are a hell of a lot more westerners and particularly more holidaymakers than backpackers. It's also a lot more set up for westerners, but for us, a bit too westernised, especially after Vietnam!

We soon decide that Patong really isn't our kind of place - from the shopping centres to the indian tailors following you down the streets adopting fake australian accents and calling you "mate", to the McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut on the main strip and the bars full of dancing Go-Go Girls and transfixed middle-aged western men hoping to take one home!

Our last night in Patong does turn out to be a good one though, sat in a bar opposite one of the Go-Go bars, where the Thai bargirls are friendly rather than sleazy. We get quite hammered on Chang beer, which we later find out is 6% - stronger than Stella - no wonder we have such awful hangovers the next day!! Nick works his way through the Thai food stalls for late-night munchies, trying every BBQ skewer there is - some of which look decidedly dubios!!

But one big night in Patong is enough and we move on a few miles down the road to Kata to chill on the beach and recover from our hangovers!

We're slightly apprehensive about going to Siagon - after a couple of weeks of chilling by a pool and on the beach, heading to another city doesn't feel too appealing, but we are looking forward to a bit of sightseeing and exploring Saigon.

We're dropped off a street from our hotel, right in the heart of the backpacker district - a sea of bars with neon lights, cheap restaurants, souvenir shops and touts offering motorbike and cyclo services. Our hotel is down a tiny alley and is a sweet, family-run place - the reception is essentially their living room, and breakfast is served at their dining table!!

Despite being Vietnam's biggest city, it has a really nice feel about it - it's pretty friendly, and unlike Hanoi, it does feel like a city, with a fair few high rise buildings and more commerce than we've seen elsewhere. We spend an enjoyable couple of hours on our first afternoon watching the world go by on the streets outside the bars - or should I say "ride by", as pretty much the whole city seems to be riding around on mopeds - we've seen a hell of a lot of bikes in Vietnam, but Saigon is something else!!

As we only have 2 full days in Saigon, we get down to some serious sightseeing! First stop Ben Than Market - a huge indoor market crammed full of the standard asian-market fare - chopsticks, ornaments and other craft-type items, beer t-shirts, fake North Face rucksacks, fake watches and Tiffany jewellery, plus lots of weird and wonderful foods!

Next we head to the Reunification Palace - possibly our most disappointing tourist attraction so far! Neither of us can quite work out why it's cited as a "must-visit" in the Lonely Planet! It doesn't really resemble a "Palace" - more like a large government building. Inside are a series of conference and meeting rooms where the president used to hold meetings and meet dignitaries, but all are pretty dingy and a bit 70s retro. The best bit is the view of the city from the roof, so we don't bother to linger too long here!

Next up is the War Remnants museum - a museum dedicated to the war in Vietnam. Outside are tanks, helicopters and other boys toys to keep Nick amused! Inside are mostly horrific images with commentary alongside detailing atrocities carried out by US soldiers against innocent civilians. There's no doubt it's deeply moving, but you do feel that there's lot of propaganda in what you're reading. As with all Vietnam's tourist attractions, there is no air-con inside the museum and it's roasting, so we are forced around the exhibits really quickly. Reading about the torture methods used and seeing the torture chambers makes me feel quite sick so we decide to call it a day.

We'd planned to visit the Cu Chi tunnels on day 2 - a network of underground tunnels used during the war, where you can have a go at shooting an AK47 (clearly a trip for Nick!), but being in the heat of a city again seems to ceatch up with us and we're both ill, so we stay a bit closer to home and explore the more upmarket Dhong Koi area with its posh hotels and shopping centres etc.

We're sad not to be able to see more of Saigon, but we've done all the main things and it's time to move on.

We can't believe our month in Vietnam is over and that we're off to Thailand already! Vietnam has definitely been an experience and a great start to our travels - definitely a place to remember!

To avoid repeating the disaster of our overnight sleeper palaver, we decide not to head straight to Siagon and cut oir journey in two by spending a few days in Mui Ne - a small beach resort, good for surfing and watersports, a few hours outside of Saigon.

We narrowly escape missing our bus - as it turns out, the travel company had taken our hotel name down wrong, so we have to run down the road with our luggage to get it! After another eventful journey - getting pulled over by the police, seeing quite a serious bike accident etc - we arrive in Mui Ne. We haven't booked accommodation this time, and as we've arrived on a Friday, much of the accommodation is fully booked with Vietnamese families going to the beach for the weekend, but we eventually find somewhere at the far end of the beach. Our room is huge with a big balcony overlooking the shore. The windows aren't exactly thick, so we can hear the sound of the waves at all times.

Mui Ne is a much quieter town than Nha Trang - nightlife's pretty minimal but there are a couple of bars and restaurants and lots of big resorts. The beach is beautiful - white sands and the sea is very shallow for quite a way. The waves are strong and it's very windy, so for the first time in Vietnam, we actually feel cool!! Lots of people are learning to windsurf but the most popular sport is kite-surfing - a few people are having lessons and lots of pros come out in the afternoon - very impressive!

As well as lazing on the beach and a round of mini-golf, on our last day, we take the Sand Dunes trip. After stopping at the Fairy Stream (a sandy stream running through the rocks) and a Fishing Village (actually just a slope leading down to the shore where women are drying a bunch of ugly-looking fish in the sun), we arrive at the White Sand Dunes. It feels like we're in the middle of the desert and we hire what is basically a sheet of plastic, for some dune surfing. Nick's disappointed that the sand is too deep to make surfing very kamikaze but we have a fab time anyway and end up covered in sand from head to toe! We get back to the jeep just in time to avoid the rain but as it has no windows, we still get soaked! Last stop is the yellow sand dunes, which are a lot less spectacular and a lot busier so we give surfing a miss this time!

After our few relaxing days, we're now ready to hit the craziness of Saigon!!