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Published: December 6th 2006
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When in Thailand....
it's been way too long without one of these framed shots I'm dreaming of back home, of christmas dinner, of the cold and of being back at ef. I wake up only to see that we are dangerously close to having a head on collision. The lady beside me is petrified. I lay my head back down and quickly fall back asleep....
Despite the fact that the month in Thailand that we spent with Abes and Randy was mainly on beaches, in air conditioned rooms, or in bars, the actual travelling aspect is tiring, and can sometimes be frustrating, annoying and stressful. During the last month I hadn't really thought about this aspect at all in our travels, and it all honesty we hadn't been on a huge travel day since we left Bangkok to go to Koh Samui.
That was until, sitting in Ao Nang with Jord's visa running out and with us having seen almost all the beaches in southern thailand, we decided for a change in scenary and headed to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We had two options for buses: one leaving at 7am and getting there at 22:00, or the other one leaving at 11am and arriving at 6am the following day. The travel times did not
The bare necessities.
Always, always carry a good supply of TP when travelling, especially when heading into the jungle add up but after confirming with the tour agent we decided on the overnight bus as that would save us money for accomodation for one night. We spent one last night in our luxurious penthouse air conditioned apartment trying desparately to fall asleep. For some reason it becomes extremely difficult to get to bed at a reasonable hour after relying so heavily on the booze to knock you out in so many previous nights. After a fitfull sleep we were at our appointed meeting place at 10:20am to grab the first shuttle.
Travel days themselves, especially the long ones are always weird: how much should one eat and what kind of food? I had the unfortunate experience once of eating some rather suspect food on a 17 hour bus ride with no toilet. Easily one of the worst experiences in my trip gripping the arm rests, sweating profusely and popping immodium after immodium in an attempt not to sh#!t myself. The same can be said about drinking too much water as James found out, the hard way, on our visa run. The other frequent problem is that most of the stops don't provide recognizable food of any kind which
Waiting
There's always a lot of waiting on travel days. If you can notice Jord in the back...it's all Robert Jordan's fault! leads one to either guess and hope for the best or buy good 'ol American junk food.
Our trip to Kuala Lumpur (KL), was in fact not that bad compared to our trip back north. After spending a couple days in the capital visiting the sites and 3 nights in the Taman Negara jungle (which was really weird), about 3 hours north east of KL, we decided to make a hard push from the jungle up to Bangkok in order to greet the new members of our party. To do this we had to make our way back to KL before we could go north. We awoke in our hide and began the 3.8km walk to park headquaters through mud and leeches as soon as it was light enough to do so. After a boat and a couple bus rides we arrived in Temerloh greatly anticipating pizza hut which we had seen on our way to the park. After spending four days surviving on limited supplies of PB&J we had quite the feast and once again received awkward stares from the waiter as we placed our order. With James, Fryan and the like the waiters always seem to think
In the Jungle
What has to be some of the worst planks of wood that we've slept on for three nights. that they are mistaken with our order.
Our trip back to KL lead us to one of the best train stations that I probably have ever been to. While it did not provide internet, it had a ton of different food options, some of the nicest showers I've had in South East Asia and outlets for the boys to charge their electronics. Everyone has their travel companion whether it be books, music, video games or some combination thereof and once you are used to them it is damn near impossible to go without. However our high hopes for a nice 16 hour train ride to Hat Yai from KL were quickly dashed the moment we decided that it would be ok to still take the train even though the sleeper cars were all full. While our car had AC for a good portion of the night it did not work in the half where Jas, Trev and I were sitting and would not have had Jas not gone and found the conductor in the wee hours of the night. The seats did not fold back more than 5 degrees, the lights were on the entire time, and I had
One rail
monorail, Monorail, MONORAIL! a man who must have shit his pants giving the way he stank, sit next to me for most of the ride. The small leg room and constant stops and rattles on top of this made sleep all but impossible except for Trev and I who somehow managed to squeak in 30 minute segments thanks, in large part, to our shorter legs. Our arrival in Hat Yai and back in Thailand was evident as soon as the touts began to pour on the train looking for tourists even before the train had stopped.
Ignoring them, we made our way to the ticket booth to buy yet another set of train tickets for the 16 hour train ride to Bangkok. At least tonight we have beds which will probably be too small for James and Jason but perfect for the vertically challenged of the group.
On another note this will most likely be the last blog before I see you all in 12 days. Loooking forward to it...except the cold that is. I can barely feel my limbs with temperatures below 20 degrees let alone freezing temperatures.
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Hassan
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Looking Forward
Looking forward to seeing you bOI!