KOH PHANGAN, THAILAND

I suppose there's something a little romantic about languishing in a hammock in a tropical island bungalow, delirious with fever, but in reality that gets old pretty quick! I'm hoping that the restorative powers ascribed to chicken soup extend to chicken tom kha, which is about as close as I could find at the little restaurant down the road.

People met today:

• Matt from Melbourne, Australia, who was supposed to be touring SE Asia with a friend, but somehow ended up in Koh Phangan on his own (where have I heard that story before?). Despite cutting his foot on coral and crashing his motorbike twice, he loves it here and keeps extending his stay, at the expense of seeing Laos and Cambodia.