You, Me & Phi Phi

Thursday 13th January

People say that Phuket is full of dirty old men so for me it was just like a salmon returning to its spawning ground.

However in all honesty it was nowhere near as seedy as I had been told, OK there were the odd spattering of morbidly obese pensioners cradling nubile teenage thai girls but other than that it was pretty family friendly.

We decided to go on a tour of James Bond island, so called as it was one of the locations used in "The man with the golden gun".

Not having seen the film left me at a bit of a disadvantage, but I am fairly certain that unless James Bond was fighting the evil souvenir touts or mass of russian tourists then things have probably changed a little since the film was made.

Its sad to think that this once lovely desert island has been beseiged by people selling fake sharks teeth to people wearing speedo's and flip flops, this should act as a good incentve never to use your house as a film location.

That is unless you want Alexander Nevsky and his band of merry men to flatten your rose garden whilst they are trying their utmost to simulate a particular scene, on the bright side though you could make a fortune selling them tat.

After this we jumped back onto the boat and pulled alongside another island where the crew let everyone jump off the side into the oil laden, mud incrusted waters below.

Obviously Tyler was the first one in as usual, he was already swimming back onboard for another go before the captian even finished his safety sentence.

Around Phuket shouts of "your size, your size, we have your size, eminate from every market stool that you pass.

Up until that moment I had'nt really considered myself to be that much larger than average, but the way that they shout it out makes you think that you are some freak of nature.

They say it with such conviction that upon hearing the news you will instantly run into their fine establishment and snap up every moomoo and sports bra that your sleder frame can squeeze into.

If I had any doubts about my body shape they were well and truly highlighted upon arrival at phi phi island.

It seems that there are just two types of people there, the ultra fit 20 something models or the locals, so obviously we all fitted in seamlessly.

To make myself feel better I would sunbathe next to the best looking people I could find in order to make it look as though the had exceptionally low standards.

An added bonus of this was the fact that I could partially block out the sun with my mono man moob, leaving ecliptical tan marks on their highly defined six packs.

The day after we arrived we went snorkelling with the reef sharks and as usual I erred on the side of caution by allowing both Pauline and Tyler to go first in order to 'test the waters' as it were.

After all you can never be too careful and between them they have 8 limbs compared to my meagre 4.

Fortunately it seems that on this occasion the sharks had already had their fix of tourist tofu so the whole family went unscathed.

We did get to see 4 or 5 black tipped reef sharks which was cool, the largest of which was about 5 foot, but our attempts to get close to it were thwarted every time.

In reflection the site of of us in swimwear is enough to frighten off the most hardened mammal so I cant say that I am surprised.

Following Phi Phi we headed out to Krabi for a couple of days before getting the bus up to Bangkok.

We decided to book a fishing trip and staked that nights dinner choice for the person who caught the biggest fish.

I hate to say it but Tyler was a natural, he caught about 15 fish but was somewhat distraught when they refused to throw them back into the water and instead threw them on the boat so he could watch them flail around gasping for air.

In order to smooth over the situation I explained to him that "if we were fish both me and your mum would be eaten whilst you would have been chucked back overboard as you are too small and wimpy", however in hindsight I am not sure this helped the situation.

The long and the short of it is that Tyler won hands down and we all got to dine in the culinary perfection that is Burger King! Yipee.