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Hi everyone,
Well as it turned out we did not return to Koh Tao, but travelled on to Koh Phangan instead. We stayed at a small but perfect hotel on a white sand beach (what other kinds of beaches are there?) One of the outstanding things we found on this island is an Italian restaurant run by an Italian chef and his wife from Northern Thailand, who make all their own pasta, some of the best food we have eaten outside of Italy, not really what you would expect to find on a small Thai island.
On to the ferry after a few days and on to Samui largest of the local island group sporting an airport and many resorts, still very relaxing which had we known of our next journey we would have appreciated all the more. From here the plan was to take the ferry to the mainland, and on to Surat Thani for the Night train to the border of Malaysia. Well that was the plan…..
As it turned out the owner of our hotel offered to give us a lift all the way to the station, which would have been great, but
he decided to drop us at the mainland port instead, so from there we had to rush to get a bus to Surat Thani, then hire a minivan (converted truck) to the station at Phun Phin, as our train wasn’t leaving till
0156 we took a room at the station hotel, basic (toilet no seat or flush) but cheap and it meant we didn’t have to rove the town waiting for our train to leave. We set out about 0130 to the station only to find our train was delayed, so a further hour sitting at the station before our train rumbled in. Nice train, not like Vietnam, 1st class sleeper, just the two of us in our compartment. We slept soundly rocked by the motion of the train to awake around 0730 for tea.
Shortly after our conductor arrived and by miming men using guns informed us that there had been a very recent terrorist attack in the southern Thai state to which we were heading (not that unusual in Southern Thailand) and the train would therefore be stopping at Hat Yai several hundred km short of the border. We now had half and hour to formulate a plan
More boats
Sorry i just liked the photos!before we reached Hat Yai, we decided to get a bus to Butterworth in Malaysia, on the west coast, far from terrorist threats.
General uproar at Hat Yai, as everyone on the train tried to claim money back for the disrupted journey and make new travel plans. We got on a minibus with other thwarted travellers heading for Butterworth. Crossing into Malaysia was uneventful and efficient.
We arrived at Butterworth bus station at 1pm, knackered, we now had to organise a bus journey across the breadth of Malaysia, as we were supposed to be on the east coast, the bus would take 10hr we were informed and would leave at 2200 hrs, fantastic, another night not spent in bed. So, into Butterworth to find a hotel room we wouldn’t sleep in again. So we were sitting in our room telling and recollecting our best travel stories and agreeing that we were now indeed hardy travellers when the very helpful woman who ran the hotel knocked on our door in some distress asking us if we didn’t have a bus to catch, no we replied, its only 2045, and our bus doesn’t go till 2200, but its 2145 she said
Full moon on Koh Phangan
Every month they have a full moon party on this island and thousands of young travellers party, we settled for admiring the moon! amazed, is it? Oops the hardy travellers had forgotten to set their watches an hour forward on coming into Malaysia.
There follows a comical dash (at least if your watching) as we chase to the bus station, fortunately the bus had not left and we found our places. In order for us to continue our travel ‘experience’ the bus air-conditioning was set to -25 degrees and within 10 minutes, we were wearing our cardigans (33 degrees outside). Finally we were forced to wear our plastic raincoats under our cardigans in order to conserve heat and stave off hypothermia. (no photos of this mind). Needless to say everyone on the bus was very happy when we reached our destination, Kota Bharu, at 5am, not an ideal time to arrive anywhere and we spent the next 3 hrs sitting in a Chinese restaurant watching kung fu movies and drinking too much coffee and tea. Picking up tickets, we then went on by taxi to the port which itself involved much drama trying to find somewhere to change money (eventually did so in a camera shop?!) I still managed to get 10 mins sleep in the taxi! At the port we pile onto
Joy of travel
Claire in another tastful hotel, this time waiting for the night train to Malaysia (or not as it turned out). a 320 hp speedboat which sped across the sea at high speed regardless of sea state bouncing everyone ruthlessly for 35 minutes.
And suddenly there we were shaken & dog tired on one of the most beautiful islands I have ever visited, everything pretty basic, but who cares when your in paradise. That night we slept well, nice to have a bed.
Perhentian the island in question is surrounded by a coral reef, and by snorkelling just off 50m from the coast you can come face to face with 2 meter long green turtles feeding on sea grass, we met 3 while we were there right in front of us, sweetest animals you could imagine huge and peaceful.
We reported to the local dive school planning to go on a couple of dives, but ended up signing up to do our advanced open water diver.
This involved various dives of note:
1 - Wreck dive, on a 92m cargo ship, locally known as sugar wreck because it sank with a load of sugar in 2000, now it looks like its been in the sea for decades, covered in sponges and coral teeming with fish life it lies
on its side, cargo holds now home to a multitude of fish. Prior to the dive we had to make sketches of the wreck based on a model, and then navigate our way around underwater, not too difficult when you have good visibility. Great dive, something special about wrecks and the sea change they undergo.
2 - Navigation dive, probably the funniest, our third dive that day so we were fairly tired, then had to do underwater compass navigation, which we succeeded in surprisingly well, thereafter we had to navigate using natural features, if you know me you know my navigation by landscape is hopeless and so predictably when my turn came I led our dive group off into the blue, mainly following fish. Claire did us proud, faultless navigation oh well, I shall stick to a compass should the need arise.
3 - Deep Dive, This involved following a anchor line down to 28m and carrying out a counting task (this is to test whether you have nitrogen narcosis, a bit like being drunk caused by too much nitrogen in the blood) On our dive at 28m it was very murky, visibility of 1m. Took me ages
Same same but better
Perhenthian is quite heart breakingly beautiful. to do the task, not due to the narc’s, but trouble reading the chart. Dive was short due the cold and to lack of enthusiasm by the participants!
4 - Fish Identification dive, Before the dive you get a lecture on fish recognition (where are the fins, how do they move, families of fish). During the dive the dive instructor points to fish and you have to write their names down on a slate, with thousands of fish constantly swimming around in 3 dimensions this can be quite entertaining.
During all our dives we were surrounded by amazing sea life, turtles, reef sharks, moray eels and barracudas and thousands of colourful fish, truly wonderful, and yes we are now advanced open water divers, danger is our middle name.
The ferry back to the mainland was much smoother due to 4 heavily overweight Malaysian gentlemen who sat at the front of the boat and acted as ballast, bless them.
Malaysia is generally a much wealthier country than the others we have visited, you don’t see kids collecting crickets on a string to cook over the ever present charcoal braziers, here they are more likely to have chocolate or sweets, obesity is rapidly catching up with levels in Europe. After much negotiation (all travel in Malaysia involves much negotiation, very tiring) we set up our move to the next island Redang, here we rested after our course, snorkelling (lots of black tip reef sharks) and relaxing. Redang is big with Malaysian visitors who tend to stay two nights tops, snorkel wearing boat type lifejackets in groups of 40 - 50 and build fabulous sandcastles, the idea of holidays is still very new in Malaysia and I cant imagine what they would make of us going travelling for a year.
From there we moved to where we currently reside, Cherating, a Malaysian seaside resort, further south as we make our way down to Singapore. We are off to our final sun drenched tropical island soon, living in denial of the fact that we are coming home soon, but who knows maybe we will retrain as diving instructors and remain on the island teaching the finer points of underwater navigation.
I hope you have all enjoyed the blog, this will be the last entry as I am now retiring to enjoy the last week. We are flying back to the UK on the 17th and flying straight down to Cornwall to spend time with Claire’s family. No doubt we will be in touch with you all soon and in the mean time I have fish to identify…
All the best Shane & Claire
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