Still alive

So the past few days the girls and i have been learning to ride mopeds! They apparently dont require a drivers license here. in fact they didnt even ask if we knew how to drive or ride a bike they just gave us one and said good luck have fun. Emily crashed hers driving out of the place and the woman didnt even care haha. We drove around for ages on our driveway before we got the courage to brave it on the roads. I onyl fell off once trying to turn around our sandy roundabout at the accomodation but we have since given up on the sand and have taken it to pushing it along there. I have slightly grazed knees but not nearly as bad as emily and dionne!. still we are good when we are on the road and we drive really slow. They have been so handy we have been biking all around the island. Yesterday we saw Koh Phanagns biggest tree (which turned out to be not vey big) and the biggest waterfall, which was a trickle haha. We eventaully found a little swimming spot to cool off on. and then we trekked up to see the view from the top which was awesome. we could see half the island and out onto the islands beyond. very pretty! We then headed to the north of the island and found a really nice beach for swimming and there we bumped into Mark this Canadian guy we met in Bangkok who we had tried to catch up with earlier. his tour was taking them out snorkling and they managed to get us on for 80 baht (NZ$3)!! Of course as soon as we got out ont he water the looming black clouds came and bucketed down but teh water was so nice and warm it didnt matter. There wasnt heaps of fish but there was some quite nice coral and we swum around for ages. It fined up for the boat ride back but once we headed back on our mopeds it teamed down! I had a semi-waterresistant jacket with me but the girls had nothing so they got saturated. We had to drive really slow on the way back cuz of the rain so it took us about an hour. We were so cold and dripping wet when we got back. Never imagined we would get this cold only a few hours after we were sweating in the heat!!

Its really cool sitting round here in Koh Phanagn and just watching the people. You have little kids who can barely walk holding onto the moped handles while the parents drive, and a man who has a cast on one leg, steers and accelerates/brakes with one hand and holds his crutches with the other!

Anyway i should get going its a really nice day today (for the moment anyway) and we are heading off to another beach to hang out there. We have yet to actually swim off the beach here!

If you wanna email me my address is ingrid_jones@hotmail.com

cheers,
Ingrid