Rakhi: Making it back into Thailand wasn't the end of the whole visa saga; On Thursday we met with one of the Mediakids reps at Immigration in order to get our new Non-B Visas which entitle us to remain in Thailand for another three months as teachers. Whilst I got mine without a hitch, Joel wasn't so lucky. A letter from the Education Department confirming Joel as a teacher, had his passport number down incorrectly. The Education Department were contacted and after half an hour of waiting, an amended copy was faxed to the immigration office. Phew! Joel and Pai (the company rep) stepped up to the scary immigration lady and laid out all the necessary forms in front of her. This time however, the Education Department had Joel's name spelt wrongly. This further error was the final straw for the Immigration lady and she told Pai that we'd have to return the next day to try again. Luckily, since Joel had already shown his face, signed the necessary papers and handed over his passport and the fee, he didn't have to go back after all.

So, everything was pretty much done and dusted and it was still Thursday morning. We'd told our school we probably wouldn't be back until Monday and they were fine with that since we had nothing to do because of the exams. We took advantage of our new found freedom and hot footed it to the infamous Pattaya about 2 hours south of Bangkok. Pattaya is one of the most touristy areas in Thailand, people go there for numerous reasons but the main pull is the fact that it has one of the largest red light districts in the world. The number of old, wrinkly foreign men with young Thai girls on their arm was obscene. Whilst we slept in Pattaya, we actually spent the rest of our time on the island of Koh Lan about 45mins away by boat. Because of heavy tourism, the abundance of jet-skis and boats, by Thai standards, I'm sure it comes near the bottom of the list of idyllic islands. I can't wait to sample more secluded and less trodden ones later but for the purpose of last weekend it was great and lying on the beach on Friday afternoon certainly beat being at work.

From now until the end of our contract we have an abundance of free time. This coming weekend is a long one because of a religious holiday so we have next Monday and Tuesday off. There's another long weekend in a couple of weeks followed by a two week holiday, two weeks at work then finito! This weekend we're planning on going to Kanchanaburi Province in the west of the country. The province is most famous for the Bridge on the River Kwai but all the scenery there is supposed to be green and lush so I want to do some exploring. I've also managed to locate a guest house that offers a morning cookery course so I'm going to sign us up for that too. Hzaar to Thailand- The Land of Holidays!