brilliant, thank you so much for responding, this is exactly the sort of reassurance I was hoping for and not expecting get, thank you, our journey seems so much clearer now
thank you, yes, will have a look but we also want to be relatively close to an international airport so the islands are not an option for us (other than to visit and explore)
we originally considered the area around Pattaya but felt it was a little๏ฟผ too (dare I say) seedy in parts, was in a Pattaya forum and a number of members suggested we look at the area around Phuket and we kinda like what we see