M walms

The Following is a travelogue of our road trip from Melbourne to Kununurra, written from Kununurra in September 2010. I have decided to post it in its entirety as that is how it is intended to be read, as oppose in separate blogs and locations. From Kununurra – A Travelogue of Sorts Coconuts in Kununurra The tall palms are swaying gently in the breeze, framed in the bright blue sky, and from my reclined sun lounger I can see they are laden with coconuts. They look so good up there in bountiful bunches, but completely out of reach. Everyday I walk by the trees and have a quick scan over the grass to see if one has fallen, but not yet. I would love one to fall, it would be a good prize. I've mentioned this ... read more

Hmmm... where to start with Melbourne? We lived here for just short of 8 months – from 21st Jan 2010 to August. I loved this city, everyday I spent here was exciting, so many things going on, so much to explore and I met so many cool and interesting people. The city itself was much bigger than I was expecting, much more hip and much more expensive. It has lots of history and one of the best museums I've ever visited. It has a huge market in the CBD (Victoria Market), a massive over the top casino / restaurant / hotel / cinema shopping complex right on the Yarra river, and the skyline is awesome and includes the tallest building in Australia. Coffee is taken very seriously and is always excellent, the bars are varied though ... read more

We got in to KL on the 9th; the bus took about 4 hours from the Cameron Highlands. Liam was already in KL with his girlfriend Jo, and he had arranged some accommodation for us staying with Jo’s friend Jepp. Jepp works as a guide for the same tour company as Jo, but currently was not getting any tours so he had some free time on his hands and was happy to have us stay and hang out with him. So Jepp, Jo and Liam picked us up from the bus station in Jepp’s car and we went back to his apartment. He lives about 20 mins drive out of KL city centre on the 12th floor of an apartment block called Desa Petalie. The flat was nice and the views from the balcony across KL ... read more

After leaving Ko Phi Phi on New Years day we had to spend the night on the mainland in Krabi town as the trip to Langkawi Malaysia is too long to do in one day. The hotel in Krabi was OK - it was cheap and had a hot shower. Krabi town itself does not have much going on. The next morning we took a minivan which transfered us in the middle of nowhere to a second minivan which eventually took us to the Thai port of Satun. From here we went through immigration and changed our Thai baht to Malaysian ringit (RM). The currency change is fairly easy to calculate - 1pound is aprox 50baht which is 5ringit. So from baht to ringit you just have to drop a zero. After a short ferry ride ... read more

We headed to Krabi from Koh Tao on the 23rd of December, ready for some serious relaxation over xmas to recover from all that diving. The 'speed boat' and '5 hour bus journey' translated to a 12 hour journey. This phenomenon is known as 'Thai-time'. With Thai-time all ETA's go out the window. It seems the basic formula to working out Thai-time is however long a Thai person tells you the journey will take - double it. This applies to buses, trains, boats, minivans, tuk-tuk rides, even our flight from Laos to Bangkok. - any transport, every journey. Anyway when we eventually got to Krabi Liam had got there first from Bangkok (he was only 5hrs late) and had booked us a sweet room with aircon and sat tv in a nice guesthouse on Au Nang ... read more