On the island of Tarutao we visited yet another cave but his time up river courtesy of a “longtail”, the local boats that have the engines mounted on pivots above the stern and the prop shafts trailing behind…extraordinary and noisy but very fast and effective.

This cave like the others has a healthy population of at least 2 species of bats …medium sized ones and little ones.

The limestone of this whole region has weathered to produce a stunning landscape of rocky islands, including the stunner Phi Phi Le, which is absolutely magical first thing in the morning and last thing at night when there are no longtails or speed boats coming and going with their cargoes of day trippers.

It was with Hattie that we visited here last Christmas; it still seems an amazing place with a safe, swell free anchorage in a wonderful setting.

Back in Langkawi we had hoped to go to the mountain top we had visited by cable car last year with Peter but sadly the poor weather that has plagued our visitors meant that strong winds had forced its closure. However, we found an attractive waterfall where Hattie stripped off and was soon cooling off.

Hattie and Ben didn’t have ideal weather or good sailing winds we had four days and nights of rain during their second week; never had that before, usually a heavy downpour for an hour and that is it although last year we had a nasty storm on Christmas day. Ignoring the rain as much as possible we continued to walk, swim and dinghy about putting up with being soaked and surrounded by wet
paraphernalia, not so bad when it's warm.

We covered a long stretch of the Thai/Malay coast and packed a lot into a short time. Their last day was glorious weather and we booked into a luxury marina - wonderful beach and a swimming pool just a step away with beautiful grounds and hornbills flitting about so we soon forgot about the rain and they had a happy, lazy day before the long flight back.

Hopefully they enjoyed themselves as much as this photo suggests.