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Sorry... and a brief update

So much for my promise of a big review of the travelling etc etc. Well, as I was just about to do it on the evening we were due to leave Bangkok, I discovered that our flight (to London) was 4 hours late meaning that we would miss our flight to Naples from Heathrow. So, instead of spending more time on the internet I had to rush to the airport and demand to go on another flight in order to make the connection. It was a close thing but we made it in the end. Some 20 hours later we arrived in Naples.

It's as hot as you like here, about 34 degrees, and non c'è aria condizionata anywhere (having become so accustomed to air conditioning in Asia.)

Anyway, the big review will come another day, but for the time being all is well here in Naples. I started my Italian course on Monday and am going to school for four hours every day. It's good fun and I think I should be speaking a respectable Italian by the time it's over. There's no other English people in the course, which I was disappointed about at first because I had visions of me getting a little gang of English people to hang around with in Naples, but I suppose from a learning point of view it'll be better.

Last weeks in Thailand

Blimey it's over two weeks since I last updated the blog. The last time I wrote we were in Bangkok, and now we're in... Bangkok! But we haven't been here all the time, we did actually escape down south for a couple of weeks.

First we got the night train down to Surat Thani and the boat to Ko Samui. We stayed at Chaweng and my God, I thought it was pretty built up and Mallorca-style the last time I was there years ago but it was nothing compared to now.. there's Starbucks and Burger King and everything. Although the beach is nice and it wasn't too crowded since it's not high season at the moment, the town itself is a bit grim. But the weather was nice so we stayed for a few days before getting on the boat to Ko Pha Ngan, which is slightly less built up than Ko Samui but still choc-full of backpackers. The weather wasn't nice at first but we managed to amuse ourselves well enough in getting massages, pedicure/manicure and watching pirate DVD movies at the many cheap restaurants in Had Rin. Then, just as we were thinking of cutting our losses and heading back here to Bangkok, the weather improved so we were able to get a bit more sun.

To be honest we probably haven't made the best use of our time in the Thai islands in only doing Samui and Pha Ngan, and it might've been better to head over to the Andaman coast and Ko Phi Phi / Ko Lanta etc but with the weather so up and down we were quite happy to just stay put and make the most of it.

So the travels are finally pretty much at an end! We leave Thailand on Thursday although instead of coming straight home we're going to Italy (Naples) for 5 weeks, where I'm going to do an Italian course. So, as of next Monday I'll be in the classroom for 4 hours every day studying hard! And after that little sojourn we'll officially be back in the UK on 9 August.

That's all for now, I will try to post again once more before we leave for Italy! Something like a post-trip analysis / review type thing perhaps.. stay tuned...