Move over Malaysia, time for Thailand

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Hello

It's been a while since our last blog because we've been on the road and rail so much.

Our last stop in Borneo was Kota Kinabalu. We had some mixed feelings about the place. It's a lovely town with some great sights nearby, but really touristy and we were having to battle to not get ripped off. We planned to visit a national park but trying to get there turned into a complete nightmare. We ended up walking away from the taxi mafioso whilst some American guys were full out arguing with them.

However we had a great day at one of the islands just off the coast. There was a great little bay to go snorkelling in and we snorkelled a lot....and Stu became the red backed Lemmon....and has only just recovered! Luckily I was too scared of being eaten by sharks to stay out too long (haven't found a shark hat yet!) so my sun burn was very mild. I did wonder why people were swimming in t-shirts...doh.

Stu did manage to see a sword fish, not sure it was compensation for the sun-burn though.

We then flew back to mainland Malaysia and jumped on the greatest bus in the world to Penang. It had 2 seats per row, each seat had its own on demand TV, you could recline to almost flat and there was a stewardess to serve food and drinks. We didn't want to get off!

Penang was a great town with a real mix of cultures. It had a real colonial feel with some really beautiful but shabby buildings. We spent the first night in the hotel from hell...cockroaches, ants and a rotweiller for a landlady.... so we nipped down the road to the nearest 5 star hotel! Apparently that kind of behaviour makes us 'flashpackers'. I think we actually got properly clean for the first time since Australia! We even had afternoon tea whilst we were there, the cakes were amazing!

We then set off on an epic journey through to Chaing Mai in Thailand where we planned to meet up with our friends and ex-housemates David and Lucetta. All that stood in our way was 2 days and 2 nights on the train! The route was the same as the Orient Express which we actually followed down the track (I think the class of accommodation was slightly different). In between we spent 6 hours in Bangkok. Not the best city to end up in after an overnight train! We decided to come back through on the way home to see it properly.

On arrival in Chiang Mai we enjoyed some local beer to celebrate meeting up with our friends...some of us enjoyed more beer than others...washed down with some Thai whisky to be on the safe side.

Chiang Mai was great, we had a fantastic day at a Thai cooking school. Stuart and David had quite a reputation for the chilli count by the end of it! We made 7 dishes each and drank plenty of water to stop the burn. Spring rolls, panang curry and deep fried bananas were the pick of the day.

The best trip of all though was our day with the elephants learning to be Mahouts. 'Pie' for forward, 'Kway' for turn and 'How' to stop it. Getting on the elephant was actually quite scary and I have to say, not the most comfortable seat in the world. We learnt to control (yeah right) the elephants and then went on a 2 hour trek in the jungle. We finished off with a dip in the elephant pool Our elephant was a little mischievous and rather than letting us sit on him to scrub him clean, he gently toppled us off into an elephant dung pool.....nice. Definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

Stu and Lisa

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