Injury, Mistakes and Malaysia!

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Having been on this island for over a month now, you get to know certain hot spots for food/drink etc. That's why I'll always go to Sairee Dive Cottage for my one large beer around 5pm, watch the cracking view and generally daydream for an hour before I find out where the group are and join them in catching up on the days diving over food and other notable events. Other places of interest include Zest for a great late breakfast and Flowers bar for pizza and pool.

This particular night was going to be a good one. A member of The Prodigy had turned up for a late night DJ set at one of the beach bars - simply couldn't say no that (nor could the rest of the island judging how busy it was, more about that in a minute). So I had my usual beer, met the gang at a cracking sunset view restaurant (called Sunset View Restaurant - must have taken them a while to conjure that name up!) for dinner and drinks for one of the videographers last night on the island. Several rum/vodka cokes later after predrinking at a nearby bungalow, we made our way down to the beach bar. It was heaving. I'd guessed from the music we could hear 10 minutes away that it sounded busy but even trying to move was difficult enough! That was soon forgotten as I moved onto bucket number 3 and the music all night was generally awesome. I stumbled out around 5am and it was time for bed.

Next morning, I had one intention - wipe my name off the diving boards for the day...I felt rough, actually I was still drunk. So I wipe my anme off and then one of our Divemasters asks me the one question I didn't want to hear in my state - "can you help me this afternoon with 5 fun divers?"... head said no, mouth said yes. I was doing him a favour by helping out so he didn't mind me feeling bad as long as I was ok to dive and he gave me some extra time to chill out and sobre up before the afternoon boat. My advice for that day: don't drink and dive. I survived, but only just. By the end of the day I was knackered, in pain and had no skin left on my right heel.

It was week one when I first discovered that my fins were rather annoyingly rubbing against my bare heels underwater, but through the excitement of starting to dive frequently, I naively thought it would heal up magically overnight. This wasn't the case... by the start of week 4 I had a chunk aruond a square inch missing from my right heel, in excrutiating pain and therefore took a trip to the local nurse who seemed quite angry I hadn't come to her before now (I'd also been warned by various staff members to get it sorted before it became bad, but again the lure of the underwater world was too inviting to take any time off.) Nurses advice: stay out of the water for at least 7 days and start a long course of antibiotics. Gutted was an understatement. The problem with living on a tropical island (the only one I promise) is that warm water ocean temperatures breed bacteria like Katie Price's lady bottom (just a guess). Long story short, it's almost impossible to heal a wound this deep by staying in the water.

I accepted defear - no diving until it had healed. I now had a week or so to myself to try and keep entertained while I reluctantly would be watching through envious eyes, my fellow divers coming back. Change of plan...

I knew my visa in Thailand was about to run out, so I had a few choices. Head over to Burma for a 15 day extension that took 10 seconds to stamp and 15 hours of travelling, or head over to Malaysia where a 60 day visa extension could be granted taking a day to process and substantially longer to travel to. I had 36 days left here and so I decided Malaysia was the best option, I mean who wants to make the same trip 3 times in 4 weeks? Not me. Plus, with me being out of the water it made sense to travel a bit further. Luckily I would have a travel companion on my trip also - a fellow Divemaster in training was in a similar situation (regarding the visa, not the gross hole in the heel!) and so we made the quickfire call to leave the following day.

The final part of the blog is all about Malaysia and I take full responsibility for all of the mistakes made on the trip...

Mistake #1 - after reaching the train station and being very sleepy, we got on the train that would take us down to Malaysia. Or so I thought... this train was pretty horrible. I'm no snob but I can only describe the section we got on as "poverty class" or "pov class", that sound cooler. Think of chickens running around, wet floors of dirt, 100 people crammed into a small carriage and beds that resembled something I wouldn't even feel comforatble dying on. This was the image we had. Luckily we found out it was the wrong train altogether and instead managed a great nights sleep in our comfy quiet air conditioned beds where we would wake up at the Malaysian border.

Mistake #2: my map reading skills. We had arrived in Penang the next afternoon and decided to drop our bags (literally 3 small bags holding a couple of t-shirts and toiletries) and have a look round the city with our trusty map (the most complicated map I've ever seen). Within 5 minutes my brain was slowly shutting down. I thought left was right and instead of listening to directions from friendly locals, chose to nod my head and carry on not having a clue what the people had told us, just a general direction point. This happened several times during the trip and all I wanted was a cold beer and to magically arrive at good places to sightsee. The best beer the Malaysian's had to offer at most places was Carslberg for 3 pounds a bottle. No thanks, I'd stick to water. Carslberg, seriously?

Moving on to the things we did see in Penang, what a great place it was! Right in the heart of the city (Georgetown) we had areas called Little India and Little China. These were sections of the city built up of either a huge muslim culutre or chinese culture. Here we would find some amazing food for ridiculously cheap prices. Street curries, delicious samosas and large Chinese food areas which were my highlight of the trip. Then a few minutes east (or west or north or south... no idea) of here you could find the huge hotel complexes, designed shopping plazas and a modern cinema. We both agreed we wanted to watch the new Batman film before we arrived and that was one of our first stop offs. The film cost us 2 pounds, and was just as good as any cinema back home. Great film too! The night ended with us getting lost in the underground car park as the shopping centre had closed, but we managed to escape and headed to bed tired yet happy.

The final morning of the trip included us heading to the 72 acre Botanical Gardens of Penang, where wild monkeys roam and some of the best views you could wish for. We'd heard of the trail to Penang hill which would give us the best views of the gardens, so we slowly started to climb the steps leading up to the top. Step after step after step after step. Half an hour later, we were extremley sweaty but we had reached a flat part of ground where other people were hanging out. So we asked how far it was to the top... "another hour at least" was the reply. We were in a rush to catch our train back to Thailand so reluctantly accepted defeat and started to walk all the way back down. Step, after step after step.

Overall we were both satisfied with how much we had saw in the 3 days we spent there and I know for sure it will be a place I will revisit in the near future. Back to Thailand it was!

If there is one thing I've learned about myself so far on this summer in Asia, it's how laid back I am when travelling when compared to ordinary life. I'm usually rushing around, places to go, things to do within a certain time but over here I haven't read any maps (as my Malaysian travel companion Erin will happily tell you!), I stroll rather than walk and I'm happy to discover somewhere rather than plan my way around to find good places. This is a good way to spend time when travelling for long periods but as we only had 3 days in Malaysia, we needed to plan to get the most out of the trip. Without Erin I doubt I'd have seen half the stuff we did. *HIGH 5 ERIN!*

Also be sure to check out the rest of the blog photos in the photos tab at the top. There are monkeys!! It only lets me upload 6 on a page for some reason.

Until next time...

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