Blogs from Terengganu, Malaysia, Asia - page 25

My last week on paradise island came around far too quickly. Managed to catch up with sunbathing, we managed to follow Molly the Hawksbill Turtle during her feed, where she came up for air 4 times - and I had my camera! Many games of scrabble and misc card games, and I think we've exhausted every possible film for pictionary! (How many films have got 'world' or 'family' in?!) We also did a Fish I.D. dive yesterday, where we tried to identify different types of fish around the coral - went well until I lost our pencil - it was a real 'noooooo' moment! Even Laura couldn't save this one (the other day Fran dropped the slate during a somersault snorkel and Lau dived down to get it before I could even breathe in to get ... read more

A little joke for you all: What lies on the bottom of the sea and shakes? A nervous wreck. ANYWAY... After almost a whole day of umming and ahhing, Fran, Kate and I decided to do the Advanced Open Water course along with Sarah, Liz and Gemma. The wreck dive sounded really interesting, as did the underwater photography - and as for the night dive? We'll see about that... There is also no final exam, so less studying than the Open Water - and we convinced ourselves that we'd probably spend the money on fun dives anyway! We get on instructors also said that it was the cheapest price we'd find in many places and I thought it wouldn't stop me diving in Thailand too. Enough with the justification! The wreck dive last Thursday was really ... read more

After meeting up with Brett and RT, and experiencing the hustle and bustle of Bangkok for a while, we wanted to get out and start travelling again. So we hopped on the night train headed south for the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia. This train ride wasn't exactly what we expected as it turned out to be 21 hrs through the most unstable part of Thailand. We also discovered that the term "first class" means different things in different countries. In Thailand it was a far cry from what it means at home. Sure we had AC and a sleeper, but they weren't exactly handing out complementary champagne and honestly the toilet amounted to little more than a hole in the floor of the train. Russ compared sleeping on the train to the Indiana Jones ride at ... read more

Man it seems like so much has happened in the short amount of time since our last entry. We ended up sleeping in pretty late on our last morning in Bangkok and just packed our stuff and headed to the train station. Luckily we made it to the station 30 minutes before the next overnight train. What a beautiful country side! We departed the train station around 1 pm and had fun playing cards (none of us have figured out how Brett won every game but my best guess would be that anyone who has had that many broken bones has played a lot of cards) and bothering the other riders with our ipod speakers. At the time we felt pretty uneasy about being cooped up on a train for 20 hours but we all agreed ... read more

Yesterday spent recovering after our trip to Long Beach! Set off on Sunday afternoon and found rooms to stay at Panorama hostel - complete with a big owl sat outside which we all thought was stuffed at first! Shared with Kate, Laura and Fran in a room with AIR CON! Which we were all excited about. However it only lasted as long as a nap as by the time I woke up the Air Con had conked out, ah well. We joined the others at Bobo bar for a cheeky cocktail. Ordered a Cosmopolitan (of course) which took aaaaaaages (barman trying to do too many orders at once) but went down very nicely. Plus we were entertained by a big gecko trying to catch an even bigger butterfly! He nearly caught it - but not quite. ... read more