Learning our lesson about reliable transport, we decided to carefully choose the bus company which we would travel with for 4 hours to Kuala Lumpur, or KL as the locals know it. We spent a couple of days questioning different travel agents, demanding to see pictures of buses, asking if it was direct and all the other things we have learned go wrong with bus travel and we wanted to make sure the 27 ringgits we were paying was worth it. So on the day we were leaving, we chose the 11am bus, with a 10:30am pick up from the travel [View Full Entry]

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On the day we finally left Langkawi we opted to stay in the bungalow until 3 minutes to midday...just to make sure we got our money's worth! Again, Neil did another fine job of finding us transportation to the jetty so we could catch our ferry to Penang. By now, everyone will know Neil's knack of finding great, reliable transport! If this car had ever been called roadworthy, it was probably in the 1960's and we have made a note that if a taxi a. has it's windows open and b. the boot doesn't open we shouldn't get in it! The [View Full Entry]

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Our journey from Krabi to Langkawi was another nightmare one. We were collected from our guesthouse at 6am, crammed into a minibus and driven around the Krabi area picking random people up. The minibus, which was meant to hold 10 people, ended up holding 12 people plus their luggage. It was pretty uncomfortable, as these minibuses aren't made for foreigners and their long legs, but we put the MP3 on and tried to sleep with our heads lolling around everywhere - no head-rests! In his wisdom, the minibus driver had decided not to fix the suspension, he obviously thought it would [View Full Entry]

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Relieved to be leaving Phi Phi, we caught the morning boat to Krabi Town which again only took 90 minutes or so. Arriving into Krabi, quite a few travellers were puzzled as we arrived into a different port to what we expected. Apparently the local transport cartel had lobbied (sorry bribed) the local government to change the entry point to Krabi as they weren't making enough money from the people arriving by boat. The new ferry port did not have any public buses running from it like the old one did and travellers were reliant on the lying, scheming and cheating [View Full Entry]

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The ferry journey to Phi Phi took around 90 minutes and went surprisingly smoothly except for 3 or 4 backpackers who gave us and Donna's parents condescending looks. These were the type of looks that suggest to say 'Phi Phi is no place for your type', we don't know what that was all about! Arriving into Phi Phi Don we made it off the boat and past the annoying obligatory island touts and found 2 nice bungalows near the hill. On arrival Donna's Dad and Neil needed the toilet and were shocked that the toilet lady asked 40B each for it's [View Full Entry]

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Travelling from Cambodia to Bangkok to catch our flight to Phuket was a marathon journey. The journey involved lots of mud track roads, loading buses onto ferries as the bridges to cross the rivers weren't complete. Once arriving to the Thai border at Hat Lek we had a bit of an 'issue' with a Thai Immigration Officer, who decided to count Donna's stamps from previous year's holidays (that is 2004 and 2005) to Thailand and he insisted that he would only allow her into the country for 19 days, saying she had already had 71 of her allowed 90 days in [View Full Entry]

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Sooooo, we are sat in our bungalow in Langkawi desperately trying to recall the events of the past two months as we realised that we are well behind with our blog updates. Our recollection is being helped along by us having taken advantage of Langkawi's duty free status and so being able to acquire 1 litre of Smirnoff, 1 litre of Stolichnaya vodka and 1 litre of French wine for under 8 quid, but more on this in our Malaysia blogs (if we ever get around to writing them!). Evading the many moto drivers in Phnom Penh we were able to [View Full Entry]

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The bus to Cambodias capital city Phnom Penh from Battambang was uneventful except for the persistent beeping of the driver (70 time in 1 minute...yes, we counted!) and some strange squeaking noises which we later learned were some poor live birds in a bag a woman had smuggled onto the bus and hid under her seat! The journey was hot, in fact very hot, despite being sat at the back of an air con bus, we realised that we were also on top of the engine, this combined with the vinyl seats made our backsides sweatier than the average bus journey [View Full Entry]

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Looking from Aranya Prathet in Thailand to Poipet in Cambodia you could see the enormous casinos in the distance. We had heard about these super casinos which exist because Thailand has banned casinos and it's residents venture to adjacent border towns to satisfy their gambling cravings. What the four of us (Ben, Andrea and ourselves) were not prepared for was the trauma of the next 3 hours and the most difficult and worst border crossing that we have done! Poipet is described as the cess pit of south east asia by Lonely Planet and for once LP actually got something right. [View Full Entry]

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Entering into Thailand at Nong Khai we were greeted again by a Thai Immigration Officer who refused to say hello, goodbye or anything at all in fact. The next leg of our journey we travelled with an Aussie couple, Ben and Andrea which would take us overland through North Eastern Thailand stopping at Nong Khai, Khon Kaen and Khorat, then crossing the border into Cambodia at Poipet. We spent one night in Nong Khai apparently the 8th most desirable place for retired people to live in the world to see how it had won this accolade. At first it was difficult [View Full Entry]

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