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Published: April 25th 2010
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Cheong Fatt Tze mansion - Penang
Doesn't look that big from the front, but huge Chinese 19th century mansion built by the 'Rockerfeller' of the East in Malaysia Hi Everybody
Sorry it's been so long since our last update. Ahem we've had a very busy schedule..... Anywho in our last blog we were in the Perhentians in Malaysia. Quite a lot has happened since then so I'll try to keep it brief.
We left the Perhentians and got an overnight bus to the other side of Malaysia to Penang. Unfortunately the "overnight" bus got us in at 3am and we didn't have anywhere to stay. Luckily we met some drunk Germans who were about to wake up their hostel owner to let them in so we sweet talked him into giving us a room for the night. It was a windowless box but it had a bed and aircon so we were happy!
We stayed in Penang for 4 days and spent most of out time just wandering around. We went to an amazing temple up Penang Hill called Kek Lok See and did a tour around some famous dead Chinese guys mansion. I can't remember his name but I'm sure Geena will put it on the caption when she adds photos to this blog.
From Penang we flew to Phuket for 3 days since
flying worked out cheaper and meant we got a longer visa. We skipped the resorty beach area and stayed in Phuket Town which is much cheaper. Good thing we did stay there too as our second day in Thailand was Songkran, the Thai new year. We had met a restaurant owner the day we arrived and he gave us a map and showed us where there was a temple where there would some sort of new years ceremony and then where to go for the rest of the celebrations.
Thai new years are a little different from what we are used to. The rest of the celebrations we were told about was a waterfight with the whole town involved!!! We have never had so much fun, our cheeks were sore from smiling. Every single person from little kids to the elderly had a water pistol. There were utes driving around with as many as ten people crammed into the back with a barrel of water and bowls to soak people. Just down from where we were staying they had a portable pool put up on the road to jump into. Massive water tankers were driving down the roads with
people on top of them spraying everybody. And of course since we were pretty much the only white people around the meant we were the target for the 100 or so Thais in our area!!! Easily the best day of our trip so far.
The day after Songkran we got a bus from Phuket to Ao Nang. We stayed in there only 2 nights as we have been here before. While in Ao Nang we took a day trip in a longtail to Railay beach (the panorama shot at the top of the blog), easily the most beautiful beach we have been too. Checked out a cave and some monkeys and then headed to another island Koh Lanta for a few nights.
Koh Lanta was about a 2 hour ferry ride from Ao Nang. The island itself is much like all the others in the area except the people seem much friendlier and for some reason it seemed a hell of a lot hotter than anywhere else. Not good when you can't afford air con. We spent a few days hanging on the beach and hired a scooter for a day. The scooter was good fun and we
Filling up the waterpistol
Adam's about to get soaked haha! saw elephants!! The mother elephant had had a baby about 2 months earlier so it was still really small. The people who cared for them were really cool and let us walk up and pat them.
After a few days here it was time to move on so we hopped in a van, then another van, then a bus, then the back of a ute, then an over night ferry, then the back of another ute and after 20 hours of traveling arrived in our current location, Ko Tao on the east coast. Ko Tao is a really touristy island with loads of resorts, restaurants and drunk Western people on the beach. Most people though only come here for one thing, to go scuba diving, as it's one of the best places in the world for it. So yesterday Geena and I completed our open water diving course and became qualified divers!
Over 3 days we have done a total of 5 dives going to a depth of up to 24 meters. It was an absolutely amazing experience. We saw so many different kinds of fish including scorpion and lion fish, butterfly fish, trigger fish etc. The highlight
was a pinnacle dive we did. We got on a boat at 7am and sailed for about an hour. Once we hopped in the water we dropped down to about 12 meters on to the top of the pinnacle. Once we were sorted we swam around the pinnacle with about 15 meters of water below us and more than 20 meters above us. We have definitely got the bug and if our budget allows do some more dives on our trip.
Our next stop is going to be Chiang Mai in the north. We are going to carefully make our way into Bangkok then get an overnight train sometime in the next couple of days. That's about all we have to report at the moment. Love to all
Adam and Gee
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gareth
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Scruff
Clint you scruffy tinker ya