Running for the border

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So when you're staying in Thailand for a long time, you have to take time out at various stages to perform the biggest exercise in futility...yes, a Visa run. You get to travel for 10 hours on various speedboats, buses, taxis, donkeys etc to get 4 stamps in your passport. The accountant in me has worked out that each stamp cost me around AU$150, once the cost of food, travel, accommodation & general supplies is taken into account.

The stamps aren't even that pretty!!

Anyhoo, to make this exercise a little less futile, three of us divers decided to make a holiday of it and go for 3 nights to a little tropical island in Malaysia near the Thailand border. Yes, it seems ironic to require a holiday from living on a tropical island...and even more ironic that our chosen holiday destination would be a...er...tropical island...but to be honest, that saying "a change is as good as a holiday" is so true. Especially when you get both simultaneously!!

So the visa run ended up being to a little Island called Langkawi.

We decided it would be most efficient to make it there on a "speedboat-ferry" which was advertised with a premium pricetag, but came with promises of a stress-free trip. When we turned up for our "speedboat-ferry" at 8 in the morning, it resembled nothing of a ferry and everything of a speedboat.
For our 10 hour trip.
With about 20 other people crammed into the boat with us.

After a few tentative moments when we took off, wandering how loud the boat would be, and how we'd really survive the full 10 hours, we relaxed into the rhythm of the speedboat bouncing over the waves - and found that if you sit at the front of the boat, it can actually be a very pleasant trip with the wind in your hair. With the engine roaring, there's no chance of sleep, but we tried, and that's what matters, right??

So Thailand being what it is, about 2 hours into our trip the speedboat broke down in the middle of nowhere and the passengers gradually heated up in the midday sun. The only thing to be done then was to jump off the boat & cool down in the surrounding waters. This was a great solution until someone mentioned the possibility of sharks, and we all returned quickly to the boat and sat peering over the edge while our driver continued to cyphon the petrol out of one engine & into another...or something. Insert technical mechanical speak here...

After our unplanned hour break, the boat somehow restarted and we continued on our merry way island-hopping to pick up/drop off passengers at various idyllic remote locations around the Thai/Malaysian border, and change boats 3 more times. Our last boat was a massive speedboat powered by 800 horsepower engines & boasting enough room to walk around quite comfortably. It docked in Langkawi at about 7pm and we waited another hour or so for them to stamp our entry into Malaysia. They didn't seem too concerned about matching the faces with the Passports before stamping, so we got to sit outside and have our first meal of the day . I actually think the people at the border were just happy to have people coming into Langkawi...

I'm sorry to anyone who has a strong attachment to this island, but it turned out to be one of the most boring places I think I've been to yet...and slightly creepy too!! There were a whole lot of hotels & theme parks etc set up for a large capacity of tourists to come through...yet no tourists!! It was like those theme parks that the crew always ended up at in Scooby Doo...the 3 of us kept looking out for a random bad guys to jump out at us.

Luckily there was no bad guy, however there was a bad monkey that did chase Mario when we were chilling out at a waterfall. He was actually filming it at the time so there's great footage of the monkey minding it's own business eating some rubbish left behind by some considerate tourist previously...and then the moneky grunts, bears his teeth at the camera, and the footage goes all shaky as Mario runs away from this monkey. I'd just like to add here that the monkey was about the size of a cat. It's true it's better to be safe than sorry, however Mario did cop a lot of flack about that for the rest of the border run.

We went to the waterfall on our second day in Langkawi, driven by our hostel owner, Ibrahim, who I believe had slightly bad hearing. Either that or he was incredibly rude, as he never answered any of my questions that I asked from the back seat, however each question asked of him by Mario in the front seat was provided with an answer...
Ibrahim was one of the highlights of our trip actually - in addition to being married to a self-proclaimed "crazy Samurai" and being an ex fighter-jet pilot, he spent the first 30mins of our drive telling us how all police were lazy & worthless, before stopping at a police checkpoint, knowing them all by name, and arranging to meet them all later for drinks at one of their houses...!! Oh, and he was also a big fan of Saddam Heussain. They met about 10 times back in his fighter-jet days, and were apparently great friends in times gone by - he had not a bad word to say about the man. "Brilliant man..."

So everyone in Langkawi insisted that we go & see the cablecar on the island which had been installed only a few years ago. However, travelling with a Swiss-born Irishman and an Austrian, neither seemed to be overly-fussed by the concept and we repeatedly tried to tell them that we didn't want to go see the cablecar. As it was, Ibrahim drove us there anyway...but it was closed for the day so we just got back into the car & hit up our next destination - the crocodile farm.

I've never actually had a concept of how handbag companies harvest the skin of crocodiles, but now I know. I always used to assume the crocodile was killed & the skin was used for handbags while the meat was eaten . However, the crocodile being just a massive lizard, means that it's tail grows back if it's removed. So they let the crocs live in big ponds where they seem to have quite a happy life most of the time...but when their tails are harvested, the crocs sit in small pens looking miserable . We didn't actually get to ask anyone how long it takes for the tails to grow back, but I googled it later and a particular species of crocs can regenerate the entire tail in a few weeks. I don't know what species were at the park, but I assume the owners know what they're doing...

After trying to find the biggest crocs & joking about a small bag of monies or other insignificant reward for anyone keen to jump in the pens with the crocs , we moseyed on off to our next destination - the Go-Karting track.

With a name like Mario, it was inevitable that he was going to win the go-kart race, closely followed by Morris. Both of them actually lapped me twice, but I refuse to put that down to being "a girl"...I prefer to put it down to higher intelligence - purely because our "protective gear" consisted of shorts, shirts, no shoes...and a helmet I therefore foresaw that any tipping over of the go-kart may have resulted in some sort of pain on my behalf...and decided that a Sunday pace of racing would be more appropriate for the situation...besides, I got to see the scenery as I went past...and the smoke from Both Mario & Morris' tyres as they sped on past.
The best thing about it though was that when we received a listing of all our lap times, they'd written the wrong names next to the times...so on record I actually won. I choose to believe this sheet of paper, which will remain as is in perpetuity...rather than our own memories, which can often get a bit frazzled with time... =P

We ended up staying only 2 nights in Langkawi, having seen the entirety of the island's offerings over that 2 days...so headed back into Thailand by catching a ferry to Sattun, and then cabbing back from there to Krabi. Unfortunately for Mario, his re-entry visa expired a day before we jumped back into Thailand...and under new tourism laws, he was only able to get a visa for 15 days, rather than the expected 60 days. He has since done another visa run, somewhat mroe successfully this time - but I guess it's probably something for future reference...

We caught a cab from Sattun to Krabi. It was one of those drives where you spend most of it with your foot on an imaginary break pedal, one arm clinging tightly to the car door and your face staring firmly out the side window...so you can't see the fact that the driver believes his car to be the size of a motorcycle, and therefore trying to fit through motorbike-sized spaces in the traffic...I was quite relieved to make it back to Krabi, no the least bit because we were back in a country which didn't creep us out!!

Our last night of the "holiday" was spent looking for somewhere we could have a bit of a party / boogie, but the closest place we found was a rasta bar with the entire decor dedicated to Bob Marley. So we settled down for some mojitos & a couple of games of pool on a table with more kinks in it than Nicole Kidman's hair in "BMX Bandits"...which actually made for a very challenging game.

The morning boat trip back to Phi Phi really felt like we were coming home - once back on the island, we hit up our favourite restaurant for lunch and then headed off to our beloved bungalows for the standard afternoon siesta

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Photos

Seaviews
The view from boat no. 1. Not bad really.

Boat boat no. 1
The boat inevitably breaks down...

800 Horsepower
Feel the roar...

Boat boat no.4
The 800hp boat at sunset...aw...

Monkey
The monkey that attacked Mario...an intimidating animal to be sure...

Gigantor
The one we like to call Gigantor...and 2 slightly nervous-looking divemasters peering through the fence...!!

Crocs
Latest addition to the popular series "Bodies of water Alex chooses not to swim in..."

Beach Cows
Just casually...cows crossing the beach to freshen up in the sea...