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Published: December 20th 2009
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So, second blog of my travels...
On Tuesday morning Lara and I went island hopping to 3 islands on a speedboat, despite the rain and grey clouds over the sea. The 'speedboat' was not quite what I had imagined and appeared to be and felt like it was falling to bits...we were being thrown around like rag dolls and getting absolutely soaked, but it was fun. The first island was Palau Dayang Bunting (Geoforest National Park) famous for the Lake of Pregnant Maiden, where legend has it drinking from the lake improves womens' fertility Unfortunately (or, maybe, fortunately!), we didn't manage to reach the lake on the other side of the island as we spent most of our time there being attacked by monkeys. Unknown to us, we were actually on "Monkey Island" - so a bit of pre-warning would have been nice as we stepped off the boat with two big bags of crisps and drinks. As we stepped off the boat Lara and I were commenting on how cute the monekeys were, when seconds later they had jumped on our backs and shoulders and ripped the crisps from our hands! It was actually pretty terrifying. We really didn't
enjoy walking round the island as they were continuously pouncing on us and everyone else, just trying to steal everyone's stuff. The next island on our "3-island hop" we didn't actually get out on, but got to watch the guy feeding the sea eagles from the boat. The third island was Pulau Beras Basah. As we got off the boat, a monkey ran straight up to us, so instead of venturing into the jungle we decided to play it safe and stay around the beach for a beer.
On Wednesday and Thursday we hired a car to get a better look round Langkawi. After hitting the duty-free shopping mall, we drove to Durian Perangin Waterfall on the north of the island. This was beautiful, though a ridiculously huge climb to the top. But we watched Malay kids backflipping into the water for a while. That night we went to the famous Babylon Bar - great live reggae music, cheap drinks, great people and right on the beach - amazing! Langkawi had some great nightlife and we made friends with a lot of Malays while out. On Thursday we drove to the Cable Car, which was well worth the price
and queue with the hundreds of other tourists to get on. The highest point was 710 metres above sea level and we also got to walk on the suspension bridge between two platforms at this height - the views were breathtaking. We also went to the Seven Wells Waterfall - though only managed to see one waterfall halfway up - after a 15 minute almost-vertical climb in the midday heat, we really couldn't manage the whole thing! On a quest for waterfalls, we then found Langkawi Falls waterfall which is the highest man-made waterfall in Malaysia (with rocks made of some kind of polystryene!) - however, it was massively dissapointing as it was completely dried up (we learnt later from a local that the president at the time spent a huge amount of money on it, but after a new president was elected it was left to decline). Another, and by far the best waterfall we visited, was the Temurun Waterfall. We swam in the clear, pure waters until dusk - beautiful!
That night, walking between bars on the beach after a couple of drinks, Lara managed to tread on a dead fish that had been washed up, and
get it stuck between her toes - she had to kick it out of her foot! She carried on drinking through the pain that night, but the next morning couldn't walk, so, on the advice of the local lifeguards (Bombas), who took us, we decided to go to the hospital. The hospital wasn't actually too bad or expensive - though it took most of our day there (however, still quicker then the NHS).
On Saturday we decided to book our journey from Langkawi to Ko Lipe - but as we'd left it very late we ended up having to book a very long-winded way for the same price as the 45 minute speedboat. However, we didn't know our journey would actually take over 8 hours. We were picked up from our hotal early and taken by minibus to Kuah ferry port for the ferry to Satun in Thailand mainland. Then then had another minivan journey from Satun to Pak Bara. At Satun, we thought we were being met by another minibus, but it was actually a open-back truck whcih we were rolling around in the back of. We were then dropped of in the middle of the town and
told to wait for another minivan, no idea when it was coming! We were then dropped off again at another random stop in the middle of nowhere...and another truck picked us up and took us to the small fishing village of Pak Bara where we waited again before jumping onto a speed boat to Ko Lipe. We then had to change from the speed boat onto a longtail boat, and finally arrived on beautiful Ko Lipe - white sands, the slearest sea you've ever seen, lovely chill out bars on the beach, no roads, no cars. Lara and I jumped straight in the sea after finding accomodation and met some lads from Bournemouth for the first time (who we kept running into again).
Our time in Ko Lipe was spent eating lovely, cheap pad thai's, enjoying our first Thai buckets with the Bournemouth guys (half a bottle of Sang Som whisky, Red Bull and coke), meeting our first ladyboys and having amazing massages. We had a fantastic fresh fish bbq one night; Lara and I shared a huge Potato Crouper with 1kg of clams (clams in Malaysian are "Lala" so we had to try them!). We walked round the
Sea Gypsy Villages while we there, whcih was a great insight into the local culture and lifestyle. Like the Malay, the Thai people are great - so friendly, helpful and chatty and we've had a brilliant time chatting to them and learning about their lives.
We stayed in Ko Lipe for 4 days in total though we all coud have stayed much longer - highly recommended. So we decided our next destination was a very, very small (though it was still smaller than we imagined!) to Ko Bulon, just up from Ko Lipe on the Andaman Coast. The speedboat there was the bumpiest ride i've ever been on and with a hangover from the previous night's drinking and 3am swim on the sea, really not what we wanted at 9.30am (especially seeing people being sick around us). We managed to find a great little jungle hut on stilts in Ko Bulon but thought, being the budget backpackers we are, that we'd wander round the island to check out the other accommodation; big mistake: the island was divided by a huge mountain which we had to climb up and down (literally a 45 degree climb), whilst being bitten to pieces
in the jungle and sweating buckets in the midday sun! After not finding anything cheaper or better then the first one we found, we settled on this one! The beach was beautiful, secluded and virtually empty, but also -crawling with white crabs and hermit crabs, so not hugely relaxing! The island only enjoyed electricity between 6pm and 11pm, which would have been fine of Lara and i had not come down with some kind of stomach bug/food poisoning! Wasn't much fun for Lara spending most of the night trying to get out of our bed with the mossie net, squeezing between our bed and Mills on the floor mattress, with her headtorch on to go and throw up in the bathroom! As we were in the jungle, the noise from creatures and insect was loud and scary - at one point in the middle of the night, we discovered some kind of creature (probably a monkey) was trying to pull a half-eaten packet of Oreos through the gaps in our hut walls! He didn't succeed though, as in the morning i managed to pull it back through the wall to discover some huge teeth marks! We only spent 2 nights
on Ko Bulon, which was plenty in the end!
Our next destination on Sat 12 December was Ao Nang in Krabi after this - more about that and the next few islands on my next blog.
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