Oh and yeh... forgot to say that definitely NOT to book any tours here in Australia before they leave. I was amazed at how easy it was to more than halve the price of tours, just by going to 2 or 3 different ticket booth places on the street. They all want your business, so will quite happily give you a cheaper price than Joe Bloe up the road!

If you are feeling game, then yes, do hire a Jeep and go for a drive, but the roads are pretty crazy (not as bad as Vietnam tho!!!) and there dont seem to be too many road rules and certainly not many police on the roads!!! It would have been fun to hire a car and drive ourselves around, but Im 100% sure we wd have got lost doing that! It was nice to have a driver, and then just say ok next stop is ........ It wasnt too badly priced I thought, and this guy was just a guy from the Patong Merlin, so Im sure you cdve got one cheaper on the street. For 4 of us, to drive for 4-5 hours down south coast and back with a 1 hour stop at Nai Harn beach (by far the nicest beach we saw on the trip - so worth a visit!) it only cost 1500 bt in total. I think I worked that out to $13AUD each per person ... a bargain I thought - PLUS we knew we wdnt get lost!!!

Cheers again Kitty

PS ... Bobmac ... where is Tesco Lotus??? Im thinking its in Phuket town, cos we didnt see it in Patong. When I came home, my sister in law said "did you shop at Tesco Lotus???" and I said no, we didnt see it and didnt really know where it was.