Well we have come full circle this time, and here we are back in Langkawi, after an eventful sail back with Poppy and Ned.We were so excited to see our pale faced children straight from the freezing north of an English winter, and it was lovely to see them look healthier and less exhausted by the day!!We met them in Phuket, and took them for a brief trip north east to the 'hongs' of  Phang Nga Bay, which are dramatic, as well as being iconic Thailand for this bit of coast. We took delivery of our newly rebuilt dinghy, complete with hyperlon tubes, (that's rubber to most people), so here we are with effectively dinghy number four in as many years. As it equates to a car for us here, perhaps I am getting my come-upance for all those years of embarrassing my children with my old, much beloved bangers!Thai food is good news for Ned, who has such a restricted diet, but the wealth of wonderful fresh vegetables, and rice noodles is pretty good as a low protein diet, and much enjoyed by me too. Ned and I certainly get the prizes for spicy food tolerance! Giles often takes eating out as a chance to get some meat into his diet, which as we haven't been running the freezer for this holiday, has been notably absent from meals on board, and our total failure to catch fish has meant that we haven't had that either! Buying meat or fish locally is so off putting, as it is normally crawling with flies, that I just don't do it! Eating out is cheap and fun, so we do so whenever we can.Which brings us to a little story from Ao Chalong, where we had to go and clear customs, on the south east of Phuket. Well, in typical Winter fashion we arrived in order to do our port formalities, but unfortunately, although we remembered that the authorities have a lunch hour from 1-2, we had not realized that they shut up the office an hour after that!! So we missed the moment, never mind, we were anchored (miles) off, and decided to return for a meal in the evening. We had had many lunches at the restaurant next to the customs office, and they had always been delicious!We were unperturbed by an empty restaurant, big mistake, but not really, as in due course a yummy meal was produced, and much enjoyed by all. Then came the time to pay up, and oh dear, the bill was almost double what we were expecting, we carefully checked the prices with the menu, and the bill seemed to bear no relationship to it whatsoever! The trouble is that we are not proper tourists, we are long term visitors, so our attitude is somewhat different than if you were only there for a week or so, and we have an instinct for what is right.Anyway, there was no way that Poppy and Ned were going to take it lying down, so we quietly suggested that maybe his addition was wrong, and pointed out the discrepancy. Well, that was no good, and although we were very smiley and civil, he threatened to call the police. Fine said we, we'll hang about, but we hung on and on, until it was obvious that no one was coming, so we added a huge chunk to what we thought the right amount, and said that will have to do. He did not demur, but it left us feeling sad, when most Thais are so nice, and if they rip you off, do it with a little more subtlety and charm! Never mind, it probably did him a favour, and will make him a little more wary next time around.  We had lovely sunny weather and a good trip south, mostly stopping at places we have been to before, but apart from a night at Phi Phi Lei, 'The Beach', Poppy did not go to any of the same places as last year.It is accepted that it will take a week to sail south to Malaysia, so although we checked out in Phuket, there is no problem staying in Thai waters for a reasonable amount of time. In fact many of our favourite places are on the route south, as they are too far from tourist bases, and not very accessible.One of these is the Emerald Cove on Koh Muk, where you swim into a cave and through a long dark tunnel, holding a torch, to end up in a beautiful 'hong', with a white sand beach and wonderful tropical trees, but surrounded by the perpendicular walls of the eroded island, literally in a secret world. Of course being Thailand it isn't, but as we went after the last tourist boats had gone, the feeling is still there.We went on from here to another favourite place, the Bulan Channel, where you slide through a rocky gap formed by two islands, and enjoy the calm of birdsong, as well as the best echoes we have ever heard! Monkies on the beach added to the atmosphere. On from here to the large island of Tarutao, where we had an unfinished walk to complete! Thank goodness we hadn't persisted last time around on our way north, as my ribs would not have allowed it, but it was a lovely waterfall walk, with lots of scrambling, and plenty of dips in lovely fresh water to keep us going, it took us four hours return, but although we did it at the heat of the day, the joys of walking in the shade made it possible.Next day on again to another island in the Butang group, Koh Rawi, on the extreme south west of Thailand, where friends had told us that there was excellent snorkeling on the south side of the island in a channel formed by a small island to the south. It lived up to all expectations, in spite of a grey day without much light, lots of lovely brightly coloured coral, but awkward because of the racing tide. Giles who wasn't swimming was appointed dinghy man to look after the snorkelers, but got diverted by a lone man on the deserted island to the south, who beckoned him, and asked for a lift to the larger island.Giles with some reservations agreed to help, and carried the man with a water bottle and a machete  across the fast flowing water. During the course of the journey, the man indicated that he hadn't eaten for three days.We thought no more of it, and back on Brother Wind were having a belated cuppa, when a scruffy dive boat appeared with three white chaps in it. We wondered what on earth they could be doing so late in the day with light fading fast, but as they were swimming all around us, we asked what sort of fish they were looking for. 'Not fish a body', came the abrupt reply before he disappeared again, clearly not wanting to share the info with us.Next a fast launch appeared complete with flashing blue light, not uncommon in these areas where every conceivable light is available cheaply, and used with no reference to possible maritime code!However, it transpired that these were the 'Park police', and they came over to see if we knew the yacht 'Mr Bean', from the garbled conversation that we had with them, we gathered a lot of the tragedy which had taken part on the same buoy that we were now attached to some twelve hours before.Sobering and sad, 'Mr Bean' was a boat that we had seen, but we had never met the Roberts, it all felt horribly close to home, and we felt desperate for poor Lindy, and how she must have been feeling.  The man with the machete that Giles picked up, was evidently nothing to do with the event, but was another escapee off the illegal unregistered Thai fishing boats, which we had seen earlier.It seemed almost right that the wind came around into the west that night, and we had to move eastwards for some better shelter, although it was the small hours of the morning by the time we reanchored I think we all slept better for being elsewhere.At last next day, we set sail, so far there had been no wind, and Ned was feeling hard done by, so up went the cruising chute for the 35 mile sail back to Langkawi, I can't pretend we had a great wind all the way, but at least we had a little bit of sailing, and it looked very pretty!Out of Thailand and into Malaysia, and somehow we had zig-zagged enough to log 260 miles in two weeks, adding at least 100 miles to the rhumb line.Since then , we did a whistle stop road tour of Langkawi with Pops and Ned, and then let them experience the joys of Rebak Marina, where the use of the wonderful facilities of a top notch resort deluded them that they were on a rich man's holiday; although they concluded it might pall rather fast! After they had flown off, we had a quick restock, tidy and clean up (can't think why!), and then our old friends Lucinda and Johnny Lewis Crosby arrived with us for three nights, en route to Australia. We had a lovely potter around the southern islands of Langkawi, which are stunningly beautiful, and then off to the 'Hole in the Wall' anchorage, where we had hoped to eat out at the floating fish restaurant, but dramatic rain and thunderstorm put paid to that. Next day we caught the tide south in blazing hot sunshine, stopping on the way for a quick dip, then a late lunch at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club, and they whisked away to the airport for the next leg of their journey to Perth.Oh well holidays end for us as well as everyone else, and we are now down to the serious and trying business of getting boat jobs done before we return home next week. It is never easy, and always frustrating, as seemingly straight forward things are not always easy to source here, and somehow one thing goes right and then something else breaks down. It is so hot and humid here at the moment that everything you do results in one's own personal sauna. Never mind, the frustrations of boat maintenance in the transitional period in the tropics will be exchanged for the fickle English spring in Norfolk next week when we come home for six months to sort out our new house. Can't wait!!