Ostrowski. Fleur Ostrowski.

Another week, another patch of Thailand covered. This time it was the south. Luckily, we visited the western side of the coast rather than the eastern side so we managed to avoid all the bad flooding. Though on the journey back up north, the flood waters we drove through were so high, the water came in the bus! And other volunteers had to be evacuated by the navy on their travels! Exciting. And scary.

The south of Thailand is very beautiful. The sand is so white, the sky is so blue and the sea looks as if it's been dyed the perfect shade of turquoise. Literally, paradise. The main reason for being in the south was because Anna's parents were flying out to visit her and travel with us for a bit. So I was temporarily adopted into the Ostrowski clan. (that's temporarily, Parents) First stop on our island hop was Phuket, which was too touristy for my liking, (I have been living in the back of beyond for seven months, remember) but we went on a day tour of four smaller islands and went canoeing in some sea caves inhabited by bats. The man running the tour was ver taken with us when he found out why were in Thailand and kept pushing his canoe to the front so we'd end up as passengers. We also went to "James Bond Island" (hence the blog title) named so because it was used to film The Man with the Golden Gun. As you may have noticed this is a continuation of my film tour of Thailand which is completely incidental. There's more come though...

After Phuket came Ko Phi Phi ("Ko" means Island) and it was time for a snorkeling trip. I'd never been snorkeling properly-with a mask and flippers- but I loved it. The fish were brilliantly colourful and swam right up to you and swarmed over pieces of bread we had in the water. At one point I made a rookie mistake of trying to giggle, but only managed to snort up a load of seawater which was quite unpleasant. It all got rather exciting when I looked down and saw a shark! Just swimming around on the ocean floor! I may have flippered off pretty sharpish... Back to my film tour. I mentioned the film The Beach earlier when I went to one of the waterfalls used. Well this time I actually went to the The Beach beach. It was very, very beautiful and looked pretty much exactly as it had in the film.

The last island we went to was Ko Lanta, where we did a Thai cooking course. Now, I eat Thai food of course but I've never cooked it- stall and restaurant food is so cheap in our village we hardly ever use our electric wok. Which, after the disaster of the grill and the Christmas chicken, is the only cooking tool we have. The food we made was delicious, compliments to the chef! My favourite was Panang Curry, closely followed by Chicken and Cashew Nuts. We even got a recipe book to take away so when I get home, I shall be whipping up lots of Thai treats. Though it could be tricky gettin hold of ingredients. Anyone know a shop in Derby that sells galangal?

Sawat Dee Ka!