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Published: August 20th 2006
Wednesday 9th August Paul - Up bright and early (5am yikes!) for our boat/bus combo all the way to the Malaysian border. The woman who sold us the ticket told us it would take us all the way to Kota Bharu but it's quite obvious the bus wouldn't cross the border so we'd have to make our own way there once we got there!
The usual hilarious problem to start off the day - the woman who was supposed to be taking us by boat to Krabi had moored her boat so far in that it was approximately 100 metres from the sea. Brilliant. Well I thought it was funny. Surely the locals should know the tide times having lived there all their lives????
After watching her anxiously look around for another boat to take us she finally caught some guy taking a few local people across and chucked us on board. Apparently we were heading for the port just short of Krabi and very luckily for us there was a guy who worked for our tour company there and he phoned the bus to make it wait for us.
The journey was the usual affair, stopping
every couple of hours at random places so we could get some street food. Swapped buses at Hat Yai in Thailand and drove through a lot of military check points and barbed wire road blocks. We had entered the area of Thailand with a lot of unrest....... Finally arrived at the border where our kind bus driver dropped us off right at the path to it.
Walked about 200 metres to a bridge over a river where we saw lots of people crossing the border by swimming across the river. Not sure you're allowed to do that...
Waited around for a while for a bus to Kota Bharu and it was refreshing not to see hordes of Westerners on the streets here. In fact we hadn't seen one since Railay! We missed the first bus as it drove straight past but caught the second. Nice drive to Kota Bharu as there were some cows strolling down the middle of the road and a beautiful sunset going on as well.
Checked into a hostel after being harrassed by a guy trying to get us to go with him to the Perhentian Islands tomorrow and went to bed as
we would be getting up at 7 to leave tomorrow. Chedd, our ultra friendly hostel owner, had sorted out our bus to the port and then we'd buy our speed boat tickets when we got there!
Thailand was such a let down. If you want to go to party then that's fine it's the place for you. But it's not an adventure in the slightest and I can't really understand why it's such a popular place to go backpacking (well I suppose because it's really really easy!) The islands were the equivalent of Ibiza and Magaluf and the "party beach" on Ko Phan Ngan was ridiculous.... anyway hopefully Malaysia will be much much better!
Thursday 10th August Paul - Laura and I went for breakfast this morning as Holmsy couldn't be bothered to get up. Got our mini bus to the port with the guy who harrassed us the day before but we didn't mind (too much!). The boat over to the islands was nice as the coast is framed against a backdrop of lovely mountains. Decided to land at Long Beach on Kecil island as this is where the most accomodation is and apparently it's
difficult to get a place to stay in high season.
Left Holmsy with the bags and Laura & I set out to find a place. Lots of places full, one even told us the power was out and had been for 3 days but he wouldn't lower the prices of his ridiculously overpriced rooms! AND people were STILL paying to stay in them. Why are people so stupid?
We decided that maybe we should hike over to the other beach on the west of the island and see what the accomodation was like there. Only problem was the hike was through a very dense jungle and we didn't know where to go. Fortunately we spotted a nice couple coming out of the jungle and we asked them the way.
So we strode off, nice and confident, we wouldn't see any animals or snakes or anything...... until... a 3 metre monster of a lizard (a monitor lizard apparently) strolled into view. Let's just say it made us both jump slightly.... or a lot.... god it was scary! After that shock we booked into a lovely chalet on Coral beach right on the beach with Holmsy getting one of
the shacks set a bit further back.
The sea here is beautifully clear but the only problem with Coral Beach is, surprise surprise, that there is a lot of coral so it's not great for swimming. But the water is perfect, and the view from our balcony is lovely too. Lounged around on the beach for the rest of the day before having showers. It's much nicer over this side of the island as Long Beach is quite loud and has a lot of holiday makers looking for a "good time".
Watched an amazing sunset with Laura sat on the beach, some would say romantic?!?!, before hiking through the jungle to Long Beach for tea. Had a BBQ on the beach whilst listening to a Ozzie guy tell us about how brilliant the word "Epic" was and having to explain it to an English guy who didn't know what "epic" meant! The English guy then went on a rant about how he hated the Americans, the French, the Italians, basically everyone before saying:
"I've got two best mates who are French actually!"
You couldn't make this stuff up. He followed this up by proclaiming that:
"all Germans are boring"
before the girl who he had been seeing for 3 days (and was sharing a room with) piped up and said:
"But I'm German!"
Honestly I wish this stuff wasn't true but it is. Actually I'm glad it's true as we were in stitches! We had to move tables as we suspected they realised we were laughing at them.
Now it was time for Laura's favourite part of the day, the trek back through the jungle. In the pitch black with just one torch. A guy told us that we should make as much noise as possible to scare away the lizards and snakes... this was going to be hilarious. Me and Holmsy picked up two huge sticks and we set off, first trying to sing a few "Mary Poppins" songs before settling on "The Futureheads" as we all knew the words to them. If people could have seen us who knows what they would have thought. It was quite scary but pretty good fun and the only wildlife we saw was a couple of bats.
Friday 11th August Paul - Well got up today with the intention of
going snorkelling but Laura said that she had a bit of a cold so we put it off till tomorrow. Had a lovely local breakfast called Roti Canai before heading through the jungle once more to laze around on the other beach today. It's called Long Beach and I suppose it is quite nice but there were a lot of people on it. The water is wonderfully clear though, probably the clearest sea water I'll ever see in my life, just like in all those picture perfect postcards you see.
Anyway I decided to swim quite a long way out to a man made floating shack and even from there you could still see the bottom of the ocean, complete with loads of multi coloured fish. It was beautiful. Waved back to Laura before diving in to see if I could touch the bottom (apparently not!) before swimming back.
Spent the rest of the day reading our books and then swapping our books. A hard life really. We did see a hilarious American with a guitar who had two of the funniest things to say:
1) "I've been, like, likened to Jack Johnson which is, like, awesome!"
Laura tries to find a replacement Chilli
Apparently the cute cat HAD to go on the blog....and
2) "My guitar style is so unique man, I really should, like, copyright it or something..." (goes in to a daydream for 10minutes about his guitar style)
What a guy. What a legend! Headed back through the jungle to our beach spotting a small, well small compared to the 2 metre monsters!!!, monitor lizard on the way. Had a lovely BBQ dinner on the beach while watching an amazing sunset. It was lovely.
Saturday 12th August Laura - We got up fairly early and booked a snorkelling trip for the day from a cafe next door to where we're staying. We were soon joined by a group of people from Holland and a middle aged couple, who were wearing rather dashing swimming trunks. We got split up into two boats and luckily we managed to get on the fast one.
The first snorkelling stop was at a place called 'Shark Point', off Besar island. No prizes for guessing what was swimming around here. Cue a few sporadic chants of "Duh Duh... Duh Duh..." Jaws style, and we were jumping in nervously, hoping we weren't about to be eaten alive. I wasn't sure
what to expect, and had no idea if the sharks were actually dangerous as nobody would give me a straight answer. Our guide had just said "they don't like humans, they only eat at Burger King". Very helpful.
There were lots of different fish swimming around and after a while we heard someone shout "shark!!". Rather than swimming away as fast as possible, (as what may usually be expected in this situation), everyone stuck their head under water and swam in the direction of the sharks. Unfortunately they'd swam off again by the time we got there, but after a while Paul did see some baby sharks. We also spotted a turtle swimming around slowly on the sea bed.
My goggles were leaking very badly and I was sure we weren't going to see anything else, so I was about to swim back to the boat when I heard Paul trying to get my attention by going "MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM" as loud as possible under water. I looked down and right below us was a 3 metre long shark swimming merrily along. It really was huge. No 'Jaws' though. I don't know what type of shark it was, but it
was definitely a shark. We followed it for while before it swam into the darkness. It was really amazing and not scary at all!
The next stop was 'Turtle Point', another imaginitively named snorkelling site. We stopped for a while before spotting a huge turtle under the water then all dived in to take a closer look and take some photos with our underwater cameras. It was really cool to see such a huge turtle swimming around in the sea like that. It had a few fish swimming beneath it, which was pretty cool too. We couldn't stop here for long as there were many speedboats whizzing by, so it wasn't exactly safe.
Next stop was another turtle site, where we saw another 2 turtles and Paul saw a huge stingray. My favorite though was spotting a few clown fish (aka 'Nemo' fish) bobbing up and down in their anemone home. They were very cute!
After this we stopped in a random bay to feed the fish, so that we could take good photos. The driver dropped in some bread and hundreds of multicoloured little fish came swarming towards it. Me and Paul jumped in to take some amazing photos and were pecked by the fish who obviously thought we were food too. Luckily enough they do not have sharp teeth so it didn't hurt. Everyone else on our boat was too scared to jump in with us for some reason.
Next stop was "The Lighthouse", where guess what, there was a lighthouse. The coral here was amazing - vey colourful, with huge dark caverns and underwater rocks. The guide tried to impress everyone by swimming under one of the caverns and then telling us to follow him. As he'd warned us before we jumped in "not to touch the coral whatever you do, it WILL hurt", nobody took him up on his offer. Then he decided to jump off the lighthouse into the rocky water below... Surprisingly enough nobody followed him in this either. I think he was a little crazy. He had lots of scars over his body and chest, I think we can all guess why.
The last stop was in "Romantic Bay", a very pretty sandy beach which has not (yet) been developed. We swam around for a while and saw some great coral and a few big fish but the waves were getting big so it was time to head home.
In the evening we ate on the beach as the sun came down, and played some cards. We were pretty tired so after a quick stroll on the beach we had an early night.
Sunday 13th August Paul - Laura and I were first up and after opening our door out on to the beach we realised that the weather was looking a bit dodgy. So after chatting over breakfast on what we should do we decided to head back to Kota Bharu and hopefully get the jungle train the next morning.
The islands have been quite good but I suppose we've been disappointed by most of the islands we have been on so far because they are definately not the "paradise" claimed in all the brochures. All of them are very touristy resorts that are usually quite pricey for what they are.
Went to wake up Holmsy and tell him our plans and make him pack! The boat back was hilarious, the guy thought he was the Michael Shumacher of the boating world. Bearing in mind that the sea was really choppy, we sped past about 5 other speed boats at some insane speeds, while our boat tipped precariously from side to side. SAFETY FIRST as some people used to say in their hilariously great jobs....
Got back to the main land safetly and asked where we could get a bus back to Kota Bharu.
"No buses" proclaimed one taxi driver. "Yeah right mate", and after a bit of walking found the bus stop and waited an hour for the bus.... only thing was, disaster struck! Now lets not laugh at this, but some idiot had put a really deep drain in the middle of the road and not covered it so when some poor hapless traveller comes along they will fall down it....
I cut my toe pretty deeply and gave my knee about 20 cuts as well. It was all quite sexy. A bit of Iodine later (and a lot of high pitched screaming - that stuff hurts) I was bandaged up and ready to go. Got back to Kota Bharu and checked into the same hostel and shared a dorm with just us 3 in. Haggled for a watch as I needed a new one and ate some food at the local market whilst booking our jungle train for tomorrow morning even though we have no idea where we are going next!
Either meet up with Andy & Anna at the Cameron Highlands or trekking in Teman Negara... tough decisions...
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Auntie Maree
non-member comment
Hi to you both
Don't know what happened to the blog I sent so you might get two. Sorry I was out when you rang today Sunday Paul. Your mum and dad are on holiday. From the text she has sent they had a lovely time and weather in Venice, now at Lake Garda and sounds beautiful and hopefully going to the opera today if the weather holds. They are home Saturday 26th Aug. late. Not heard from Michael but hopefully arriving home tomorrow, its just me and him then holding the fort - that will be fun. Uncle Derek has gone golfing in Scotland for the week, whoops just remined me I have not fed the birds. Spent a lovely day back here with Lisa last week - great to hear her giggling away and chatting to Uncle Derek in the Garage. Not sure I would have liked the jungle track but glad you are all back safely. I know the pain you were going through with your toe Laura, Ive just stubbed mine on a step and I could have cried, the pain was agonising and I had an ice pack at the ready. Lots of love to you both and look after each other and enjoy. xxx