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Published: January 5th 2009
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For our last few days in Thailand, we decided to avoid all the suits, massages and ladyboys of Patong Beach and jumped in a taxi straight from the ferry up to the quiet Nai Yang beach, about 5 minutes from Phuket airport. We grabbed out things from the boot of the taxi (umbrellas still attached) and set off down a small path to the beach to find a cheap bungalow from one of the many sprawled along the coastline. An hour later, backs and shoulders aching, darkness surrounding us, turns out there is actually nowhere to stay along the beach, except for the odd posh resort. Luckily, just as we were beginning to resign ourselves to sleeping in a restaurant doorway on the beach, a little old lady rocked up on a moped shouting "Bungalow? Bungalow?". Hell yes love. Her English was barely more advanced than any of our Thai, but in no time I had volunteered to be whisked away (shakily) on the back of her moped to see her friend's guesthouse, while Lizzie, Kirk and Kayla guarded our things by the pitch black roadside. In the middle of nowhere, after nearly being tipped off a couple of times over
the speed bumps (once going too fast, the other going far too slowly!) while the lady laughed her arse off shouting "Sorry!Sorry!", we rolled up at Wong Lee's Guesthouse. While I settled with an orange juice and bargained a decent price for the room, she sent her husband off in a minivan to find the others and bring back my luggage. The clean rooms, air conditioning, hot showers and no cockroaches or geckos in the room mixed with the fact we'd been wandering the streets in pain, tired and hungry meant this place was like the holy grail. We said thanks to the little old lady after she'd offered us noodles, then she smiled (turns out in the light she had very few teeth) and hopped on her moped again, presumably to abduct some more stray backpackers.
In daytime, we found that the beach was almost completely deserted except for a few germans and crabs. Lizzie and I walked up to the north end of the bay was where the planes flew in to land at the airport just off the beach, while Kirk hired a moped and took Kayla on a romantic ride around Phuket island. After a
couple of days chilling out here, it was off to Singapore.
We left for the airport in Mr Wong Lee's Minivan at 6:30 on Thursday morning after saying incredibly emotional farewells to Kayla who had just about managed to appear to see us off. By 9:30am we were back at Wong Lee's! We tried to tell Kayla that we just missed her too much and couldn't be without her, but she didn't buy it so we just told her how our flight had been cancelled due to the protests shutting down Bangkok Airport. We're not sure why our flight from Phuket had been cancelled but we think our plane was stuck there and none of the protesters knew how to fly it. Regardless, with no more flights until at least Saturday, and our flights from Singapore scheduled for Sunday, we made an executive decision not to gamble on a flight being available and with the help of Mr Wong Lee, had organized a bus to Singapore! We jumped in the taxi with Kayla, who was catching a bus to Bangkok, handed over a few thousand Baht and were off to catch a bus to Singapore!
We were bundled
into another minivan after saying less emotional farewells to Kayla (probably expecting to see her again in a couple of hours) and set off to the border town of Hat Yai about 50km from Malaysia. I was happy to be riding up front like a big boy with a whole seat to myself before a young Buddhist Monk joined me and repeatedly invaded my personal space for about 4 long hours by falling asleep on my sholder over and over again! Lizzie and Kirk were watching from the back loving it.
We arrived in Hat Yai, 7 hours after leaving Wong Lee's Guesthouse to be told that we wouldn't actually be heading to Singapore until 4pm the following day. Gutted, another day lost. We just wanted to get there and were mentally prepared for sitting on a coach for 24hours. Still, we soldiered on and caught yet another minivan across the Thai - Malaysian border to Butterworth, where our VIP bus was waiting for us to leave at 9:30pm. On we hopped and at 11am on Saturday we arrived in Singapore, two days later than planned, so we embarked on a 24 hour sightseeing tour of Singapore!
Singapore
was a far cry from the South East Asia we'd been used to over the last couple of months as it was very clean, very modern and very strict. While in Thailand you could get away with pretty much anything (remember Suzie Wong's?), in Singapore the police fine you a thousand dollars for forgetting to flush a public toilet! Our first stop was the riverside to catch a view of the city and to see the Mer-Lion Fountain. Just passed the floating football pitch we saw there was the "Singapore Flyer" (like the London Eye but in Singapore) so we walked across the city to ride it just before dusk. We were lucky with the weather and could see for miles and, thanks to our map reading skills (in Joey from friends style, we went "into the map") could even see the sea!
Underneath was the Formula 1 home straight, which had been built for the countries first ever race earlier that year. We walked the track, Martin Brundle stylee (well the home straight and pit lanes) before Lizzie and Kirk tested out what the track could do with a race of their own.
After running up and
down the pit lanes and touching Lewis Hamilton's skidmarks, we went in search of some liquid refreshment at the world famous Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling cocktail. The drink was invented here and the hotel has accommodated guests such as Rudyard Kipling, Michael Jackson and the Queen. Hopefully in years to come, people will be saying "Morgan, Fell and Price drank there". Unfortunately we were told we were inappropriately dressed for the main bar (think it was Kirk's leather cowboy chaps) so we enjoyed our 10 pound cocktails (yep 10 English pounds) in the garden seating and made the most of our free nibbles. Turns out it wasn't really worth ten squid in my book but, on our last night together we sipped our astoundingly expensive pink gay drinks and reminisced about the month we'd spent together.
In the morning we packed up and spent a couple of hours in Chinatown before heading off to the airport. We said our goodbyes with Kirk now firmly set on going travelling himself some day before he headed off to find out if he could actually get back to London before Christmas, with the protests at Bangkok airport worsening slightly (what
Young Buddhist Monk...
and a guy dribbling on his shoulder with all the explosions and that), causing his flight to London via bangkok to be, well, cancelled. We headed to terminal 3 for our flight to Brisbane wondering if Kirk would end up doing a "Tom Hanks" and spending more than a few days stranded at the airport!
So, goodbye to South East Asia, it's been emotional, now it's back to western society.
Next stop, Down Under!
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