Hello…sorry about the brief radio silence, we’ve been electricity-shy for a week or two.

We left Phi Phi about 10 days ago and spent one night in Patong, a beach resort in Phuket which seems to be the spring retreat for all the fat, drunk European oafs who haunt the Canary Islands during summer. Quite frankly it was horrific and we spent the night playing Thai bride bingo and counting the go-go bars (12 in one street) between drinks. Despite Thailand’s many virtues the sex industry is really, really unsavoury, and it was with a Patong flavoured bad taste in our mouths that we decided to have a little detour to Malaysia, which is proving to to be a very good decision: it’s very relaxed with a friendly multi-cultural population and an abundance of natural resources – less hectic than India but more unpredictable than Thailand.

We’ve spent the last 5 days on Pulau Perhentian, a little speck of jungle covered rock in the South China Sea with the most sublime, postcard perfect beaches I have ever seen. I know we droned on about pretty islands on the last post but in my book the Perhentians kicked Phi-Phi’s arse: hardly any development at all, perfect sea water, daily volleyball matches, incredible wildlife both in thre jungle and in the sea, and a lovely bunch of Malaysians and ex-pats running the handful of beach bars and dive shops. There’s really nothing else there – no ATMs, no speedboats in the bay, no electricity during daylight, no shops full of tat, no touts.

Annoyingly, James signed up to a PADI course and is now a qualified open water diver, while I achieved nothing beyond swimming, eating and playing volleyball badly. I was very kindly adopted by a group of English boys who, being on their gap year, were right on my maturity wavelength: had a great day with them snorkelling and jumping off lighthouses into the sea. Our snorkelling inventory: black tip sharks, barracudas, angel fish, clown fish, stingrays, sea turtles, snappers, about a million other fishies and more coral than you can shake a stick at.

We’re back to the mainland today and planning to shoot down to Singapore for a bit of sand-free civilisation before we head into the Malaysian rainforest to swing on some ropes or something (before we do that we will be collecting a large tree sloth from Kuala Lumpur airport in order to return it to its natural habitat).