One of those rare nice sunny days was a good opportunity to visit one of England's most famous beach resorts, Brighton. Historically famous for loads of reasons, not least gay community, site of IRA bombings and its weird, onion domed Royal Pavillion. The train journey is less than an hour and a half from London, but for us - taking the train into London, waiting to change at Clapham Junction, and then getting on the already jam packed train, was a little more involved. The beach isn't exactly sandy (unless large pebbles still counts as sand) and the water must have been pretty damned cold not to have a single swimmer (pretty sure there're no nasty stingers or sharks here) but that didn't stop the beach looking packed like in high summer. Brighton has more indie shops and restaurants than I've seen since arriving in the UK and it was also heartening to see not everyone was looking forward to the much publicised jubilee either.

I knew after seeing the frayed fabric on the artificial flowers that this place wouldn't be as nice as where we'd been staying in Bangkok; the rooms are that much older and the breakfast that much greasier. But it's not bad - plenty of geckos running up and down the coconut trees outside our balcony. Yeah, some of the scenery is not too bad at all.. Not having taken resort holidays before, I'm not used to poolside areas with scandinavian kids screaming and people getting the best poolside chairs, or running the gauntlet of Indian tailors that line the journey from the hotel and its run down surroundings, to the beach side strip of shops and restaurants (and guy ambushing everyone with a monkey in his arm) that is Ao Nang. Hello saaa, How you, wheh you from? 'Merica? Engla? Krabi province is of full beaches with views of small craggy islands which can only be reached by long tail boat. So when we didn't stay put at the hotel we bought return tickets on these rickety boats, hiding from the scorching rays under the tarpaulin roof, and then bought lunch off similar boards moored on the islands themselves - phad thai cooked there and then on a floating kitchen for pennies; but so many other tourists, especially around Phi Phi island. There were of course day tours and trips to everywhere. A big one was the chance to go to James Bond Island (but seeing as that was from the really dodgy Man with a Golden Gun I gave it a miss). Instead we went for a tour if the islands, including that one from the Beach, Phi Phi. As part of our the tour I was glad to get the chance to get another go at snorkelling and vowed I'd swallow less seawater in the attempt. I didn't improve much, and where the coral wasn't as spectacular as in Queensland, the water was full of fish centimeters from my snorkel. It's been such a long time since I've swam in the ocean - I never realised that the sea could be as calm and warm as a swimming pool (warmer in fact)

Finally had a chance to make use of a hotel voucher we'd received as a present by going on a weekend away to the Gold Coast a few weeks ago. Considering neither of us is made of beach-goer material, it's not somewhere we'd ever thought of visiting in Australia, but given that we had the voucher and the plane tickets were cheap we thought what the hell. The flight from Sydney is only an hour and a half and our room looked out from the 19th floor onto Southbeach, one of the main beaches that make up the long strip of sand hugging resorts that adds up to Gold Coast city, just across the border in Queensland and about an hour's drive south of Brisbane. The main resort, Surfers Paradise, was about 10-minutes down the road and easily made out by its skyscrapers. We lucked out on the weather; still early enough in the summer not to be absolutely roasting. We drove up to Brisbane just to say we've been there before (seems nice enough) and then on our last morning drove to a place west of the Gold Coast called Tamborine Mountain, where we walked through the rainforest on a raised walkway and saw a Scrub Turkey which was kinda cool. Surfers Paradise happened to feature on the news the weekend after we got back though, and watching it I immediately realised we'd barely avoided a disasterous holiday and the worst time of the year to go to the Gold Coast. It turned out to be schoolies week, where recent high-school graduates go on the rampage or a vacation. All you could see were hoards and hoards of drunk teenagers thronging the beach day and night, the swarm broken only by police picking off the worst of the bunch, slamming them on the ground and whipping handcuffs on them.