Im in the middle of my advanced open water course just now, did two dives today, got three tomorrow, including a night dive! When I’m finished I’ll be qualified to dive to 30m! I was doing a navigation dive today and I saw a nemo fish. I’ve seen lots of others but can’t remember their names. I am desperate to see a shark but I think I’ll be really lucky if I do tomorrow. I’m with a different group of people and a different instructor.

I’m doing a deep dive tomorrow at 7am. We’ve been told that we might get nitrogen narcosis. That’s when the pressure makes you act like you’re drunk and you can’t think straight and start acting weird. I think they time you doing maths problems on the surface and then you have to do them again after 30m and see how long it takes you. It will take me longer if I’m “narked".

Ive just finished my diving course, and absolutely LOVED it. Must be up there with the highlights of my trip. In the last two days I did four dives, each was about 40mins and we just didn’t want to go back up!!

Anyway, they run an advanced open water course which enables you to get more experience, and have more fun, and makes it better for you if you want to go and dive on your own with a buddy (which I am able to do). I just can’t decide whether to do it or not! I have just enough time before my flight to Bangkok, and it costs about 90 quid which is as cheap as anywhere else is the world, as they give a discount cos I did my open water course with them. I just want to do it sooo much.

Aargh can’t decide. I know I won’t get another opportunity as good as this to do it, and it will make me ore confident diving on my own, I don’t think four dives is quite enough.

Im going to Koh Tao tomorrow evening, taking a night bus down the coast then a boat at 6.30am in the morning. It’s all arranged with the Diving company, so I don’t have to worry about transport or accommodation for the next five days, which is ACE!

Im catching up with the news online just now, it seems like it was a very bad earthquake …. but I never felt it and I was awake at that time as well. Although it said in an article I’m reading that it was felt as far north as Bangkok …. Oh well. It was funny cos I was swithering whether to go down to Krabi and Phuket with the boys last night, they are heading to the area devastated by the Tsunami last time …. the South Western coast facing the Andaman Sea, so they might have possibly felt the earthquake. And I think a lot of tourists were evacuated after the earthquake, although I think people quickly realised there wasn’t going to be another tsunami.

Koh Tao is on the South Eastern coast, facing the South China Sea and wasn’t affected by the tsunami at all. Everything is just running there as usual. They have an awareness about these things now and everyone is evacuated if they suspect a Tsunami.

Ive made it safely (although not without stress) into Thailand and I’m now on the Island of Ko Chang! Its totally different from Laos and Cambodia, more developed with lots of cars and trucks and still lots of motorbikes and they all drive on the left hand side! The food is excellent and the people are REALLY friendly. You just don’t get the hassle that I did in Laos and Cambodia.

I left yesterday morning from Sihanoukville and got on the boat to Koh Kong (still on the Cambodian side) and that was a fairly uncomfortable 4 hours. At first I sat on top of the boat due to some advice I was given, but it was so hot and uncomfortable and the live chickens tied up next to me were starting to escape that after 2 hours I went downstairs with everyone else and had to squish between two people and the seat in front of me and I couldn’t move for the rest of the journey.

When we got to Ko Kong it was absolutely pouring (you never get drizzle or showers here) and as soon as I stepped off the boat I was assaulted by the rain and many moto taxi drivers, one grabbing my bags, one pulling my arms in different directions all shouting “Thai Border Thai Border!” I managed to take a few steps forward then found myself (and my bags) on a truck with various other travellers from the boat but they packed about 20 of us in and it was quite a squish. I asked the driver how much it was and he was just shouting “Same Same", so we all thought it would be a dollar. Turns out when we got there he had tripled the price and many people just walked away refusing to pay while he is saying he is going to just take us all back if we don’t pay. When we got to the border in the end, me and a few others gave him a couple dollars each because I couldn’t just give him nothing, even if he was trying to overcharge us.

They had put our bags on a cart which many people weren’t happy about and we all starting taking our bags out of the cart (they were going to charge us for taking our bags 20m) and mine was at the bottom and I couldn’t get it out and I kept slipping and the Cambodians just watched. When I did get it out, I slipped again and dropped all my bags in the mud and puddles and they all thought that was hilarious. I was not happy with that at all, after all the friendliness I had experienced over the last 16 days this was the impression I was left with as I crossed the border. On the other side there were happy smiling Thai officials doing anything to help us. It was such a relief.

After that I got a mini bus along with a few other people to the first main town in Thailand, Trat. As soon aswe stepped off the mini bus there was a smiling woman asking if we wanted to look at her guesthouse, with free transport there …. couldn’t believe our luck. We got driven for free in a car (a real car!) to this guesthouse where everyone else from my mini bus went as well and they all got free transport too. It was pretty shabby but it had a hot shower and was really cheap.

This morning I got a Tuk Tuk to the port and took a boat over to Koh Chang, where I got another Tuk Tuk (along with a French couple and a really friendly retired Canadian couple who gave me some advice on places to stay in Bangkok) To Kai Bai beach. Though I had to wait for ages to get another taxi to take me to Lonely Beach. By that point I was so hot and bothered I just stayed at the first place I came to, they are all pretty much the same, wooden shacks with a bed and a mosquito net and THATS IT. Though I can get a fan for an extra $2. Might get that tomorrow.

Im really looking forward to coming home. It will be weird being in a car …. let alone driving one! There’s hardly any here in SE Asia (maybe more in Thailand, I don’t know) And motorbike is the transport of choice. Tuk Tuk in Thailand and Laos. If you want to go anywhere you have to get a motorbike and quite a lot of people I’ve met who have never ridden one just hire them out for themselves.

Just changed my boat ticket to Thailand, going tomorrow. Two friends left Sihanoukville today, everyone seems to be moving on now, so it seems like a good time to go and have a change of scenery. Ailish is swithering about whether to go to Vietnam, China or India! Just have to be careful what I eat before tomorrow.

I’m seriously thinking about doing my PADI diving course in Thailand at Ko Tao.

I haven’t made it yet to Thailand, Fi and I bought boat tickets three days ago for the 17th and we were due to leave the next morning, but an hour before we were due to leave I got quite ill with sickness and diarrhoea and couldn’t get out of the toilet for more than 5 mins! Last thing I felt like was a 5 hour boat trip! The girl who owned the place and her grandmother looked after me …. they treated us all like family really lovely. I stopped being sick a couple of hours after Fi left and stayed in bed for the day and by the evening I was much better and I’m absolutely fine now.

The day after Fi left, I moved to a different part of Sihanouville with an Irish girl (called Ailish!) where we are staying in a much nicer place for $2 each and we even have our own bathroom! No more bucket baths for me! Last time I had one I felt something tickle my feet and I looked down and there were loads of fat black worms whizzing over my feet, urgh! They were so fast! And although we are paying for accommodation here it works out cheaper altogether because food is loads cheaper here. And we’re still 5 mins walk from the beach.

I get on really well with Ailish she’s been travelling on her own for ages and says I’ll have no problems in Thailand on my own, its so developed its more like going on holiday to Europe. We watched City Of God last night on this huge screen outside where there was like a seating area made of straw with cushions and and little tables and it was nicer than a real cinema. The film was amazing. I really recommend it if you haven’t seen it.

Im still in Phnom Penh, we visited the S-21 detention centre museum and the killing fields just outside the city today. Very, very harrowing stuff, it’s so hard to try and understand how people can do that to their own people. And the effects of the Pol Pot regime are still very apparent in the stories of the people we meet in everyday life. Our motorbike rider today lost his brother and grandmother under the regime.

I sent some things home today so I have more space to buy more lovely things! We went to the Russian market yesterday and I bought a skirt, trousers, three tops and 6 CD’s for less than 20 pounds! Got a little bit burnt today as I forgot my suncream but it’s not too bad. I feel all scabby and I think we have bed bugs as I got eaten alive last night and my legs are covered in bites, despite having the mosquito net up. I have one on my toe that has gone all white and purple. I got a picture of a monkey climbing across some electricity cables right in the middle of the city … hilarious. It’s absolutely boiling here. Haven’t slept a lot the last couple of nights due to bites and the intolerable heat.

Tomorrow we are leaving for the coast, our last stop in Cambodia before Thailand. Bus leaves at 7.30am tomorrow. Yippee! Still have to pack as well.