We were up bright and early tuesday morning without I think a wink of sleep from the night before due to nesting birds in the roof of our bungalow. Once checked into the Pranee guesthouse we were alot happier and it wasn`t long before we were sunning ourselves on Sairee Beach under a very photogenic horizontal palm tree. Me and Helen were considering doing a padi diving course during the 5 days we were planning to spend on Tao but decided that instead we`d do snorkelling as we hadn`t really budgeted for the diving course. We heard the snorkelling sites around the island were amazing and the visibility was really good. So we booked ourselves on a snorkelling trip for Thursday through one of the cafes we ate in for lunch.

The beach front along Sairee bay was adorned with and cafes, which turned into cool bars on an evening, one particularly bar we drank in was called lotus bar, which had fire jugglers performing on a night. Two thai guys would be spinning flaming poles all night long. Just when we thought they couldn`t out do their previous trick they astounded us by throwing the flaming poles into the air and catching them with one hand under their leg, unscathed.Later on in the evening inibriated revellers were convinced to jump through flaming hoops and flaming skipping ropes, we heard lots of stories of those who tried it and got 2nd degree burns!

On Wednesday we went down to the beach again and found the tide had gone out , which made the beach look huge. It was by far the hotest day we`d experienced so much of the day was spent ducking in and out of the cafes for cool drinks just to escape the blistering sun. On the evening we ate at the King Crab restaurant on the beach just inches from the sea, they had a BBQ and were cooking up a variety of locally caught fish including marlin, red snapper and shell fish. We ate probably the nicest meal so far on the trip, grilled marlin with a bbq`d jacket potato, It was delicious. We washed down the food with mojito`s at the big blue bar where they had a less acomplished fire juggler performing, however his tricks never really came off, which meant he was probably nursing some burns on his arms next day. Before we hit the hay we bought an under water camera for the snorkelling trip, which only cost about 10 pounds and would hopefully get us some good pics.