From Singapore through Malaysia to the Andaman sea

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Alright asia, already here for 18 days or so and saw alot of stuff...
i arrived in Singapore, it was hot and humid. And very different, even as it is supposed to be the most "European city" in asia. A very clean and fast working city. I still left singapore after one day as i have another two or three days here before i fly back home. From Singapore i took a bus to Melaka in Malaysia. Melaka was very different to Singapore, we had quite often the feeling that the people here dont see white people that often. It was very poor as most of malaysia but interesting. After Melaka the next stop was Kuala Lumpur. A pretty ugly place, well strange really. The CBD with the Petrona's Towers and all the hudge shopping malls but if you walk 10 minutes further it is so poor. After 2 nights in KL which really was enough we left again, this time to the cameron highlands. We wanted to higher a motorbike here but as it is a bit (not very) off the beaten track all the places where close as it was a sunday. Instead we did a very nice jungle walk that day. The next day we booked a guided tour to see the biggest flower of the world (turned out it is a mushroom actually). This region of Malaysia was very poor, and it felt very weird. One thing was very good in Malaysia though. The food, mainly Indian but sooo cheap and really good. We learned to love roti which is a kind of pancake. Even sweet served with curry but we just left the curry away... We left the cameron highlands with another crazy and scary bus ride through the windy small roads with the plan to stay the night in georgtown, on penang. As we got there we found another noisy, smelly city so we decided to make our way to thailand the same day. After quite an easy border crossing with a very uncommunicative driver we reached Hat Yai where we spend the night. The next day we took a bus the short drive to Trang (should take less then 2 hrs) but we ended up on the local bus which stoped every 30 meters so it took us over 5. anyway from there to coast with a minivan and then a longtail boat to Ko Muk. An incredible change to arrive at this beautiful island after all the noisy and dirty cities in Malaysia. Ko Muk was a very quite place and had less than 10 tourist on it. I was still traveling with james. An ossie guy i met on the way to melaka. We had 2 great days here with good local thai food and swimming and snorkeling at some great beaches. From here we joined a boat trip which done a small stop at the island and took us to Ko Lanta, stopping at a few different islands. The landscape was amazing, the small islands with limestone cliffs in the blue sea...

On Ko Lanta, we hired some motorbikes and went around the island. great fun. but the limestone cliffs were missing so it wasnt as amazing. still very nice beaches... after 2 days on Ko Lanta. James and me left for Ko Phi Phi. Ko Phi Phi was the one of the highlights so far. The first day we just spend on the beach and had a good night :P the second days we met up with 2 girls we met on the trip to Ko Lanta and we an increadible day. The morning we were at the beach and stuff and then hired our own boat for 4 hrs (5 euros each). It took us to Ko Phi Phi Leh where the movie "the beach" was filmed. We had some amazing snorkeling here. The visibility under water was over 20m!!! absolute insane, way better than the great barrier reef. And we had a great end of the trip we watched the sunset while being close to the limestone cliffs which turned into a birght red... really an amazing day

After Ko Phi Phi we took a boat to Phuket, our last island in the andaman sea. James sister was on Pukeht so we could stay with here. Phuket is very touristy but has some nice beaches. But we wanted to excape all the other tourist so we hired a longtail boat again and went to some smaller islands where we got some kajaks and went to some more islands, really nice. That night we took a night bus (12 hrs) to bangkok, where i am now. As the red shirts are demonstrating here atm i will leave tomorrow again. The site of bangkok is save now but still, you can see the bullet holes and blood on the walls from last week. So Cambodia tomorrow....

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