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Published: June 30th 2006
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Hello everybody! Hope everyone is good back home!
Sorry We haven't blogged in a while but the computer in our hostel is as unreliable as a Malaysian bus. We are actually in Australia now, Perth to be exact, but first we shall tell you of our adventures after Koh Phangnan and into deepest darkest Malaysia.
We took a ferry from Koh Phagnan to the mainland, then after a small amount of confusion and a much longer journey than expected we ended up in Nakhom Si Thammat (that's not how you spell it). Anyway, we decided to take in some culture for our last few days in Thailand, so we visited a huge buddhist temple and the museum of thai art and stuff. It was interesting but felt quite out of place! Helen managed to stay away from the monks this time!
The night before we left we decided to check on the train times, which was quite foolsih as we got caught in a huge thunderstorm with rediculously loud thunder, as we suspected the train left at stupid o'clock. So we got up very early for a very long journey. First we got on an ordinary train with wooden
Gig Temple
The big pointy thing at the top! seats and I think a couple of elephants for an engine. We stopped Hat Yai for lunch (KFC) and managed to get a ticket for a much nicer (less ordinary) train to Butterworth in Malaysia. Crossing the border invloved getting off at a platform for knowhere, getting our passports stamped and then gettting back on again. After that we tried to work out what time we were supposed to arrive at our destination, which was made much more difficult by the fact that we had unwittingly crossed a time zone. It was a good job the conductor told us where we were, so we could run down the train (which had somehow grown in length) to get off.
From Butterworth we wanted to go across to the island of Penang which would have been easy had we had got ourselves some Malaysian money (organised as ever!). So we had to trek to a cash point with our backpacks on and then trek back to the ferry terminal. We eventually made our way to Georgetown on Penang and stayed at a very nice hostel called 'stardust'. Penang was good (look at the photos) but we were in a bit of
Gig Temple
Loads of Golden Buddahs! a rush so we stayed a couple of nights and then got on the best bus in the world to go to Kuala Lumpour. It had massive seats (you could only fit 3 in a row) and some stylish green and gold wheel trims! It looked like Westwood had paid them a visit.
After another long journey we arrived in KL pretty late and decided to trust some random man on the street called Sri, who said his hostel was better than those in the lonely planet. After visiting one hostel, which was very unwelcoming and blatantly head bed bugs, we decided to take him up on his offer. He even carried Helen's bag to the place, not mine though! We both enjoyed Kuala Lumpour and wished we could have stayed for longer but instead we crammed as much as we could into one day.
We got up early and decided in a very dazed state to head for the Petronas towers and go up to its sky bridge. We got a little lost and then had curry with a banana nann bread for breakfast which was strangely very tasty. Eventually we found them (they're bloody massive), only
Gig Temple
More Pointy things to be dissappointed because the free tickets to the bridge were sold out! It was still very impressive from the outside and we decided to get a better view from the KL tower as you can see from the photos.
After the tower we went to see some animals. First we went to the butterfly park which was funny because Helen flinched everytime a butterfly came close, which was a lot! Then after a brief encounter with some troublesome monkeys outside the park we visited the bird park (all in one day!). Now, it was no tropical bird land of Desford but it was good, and there were plenty of free roaming birds which were pretty cool like big fat horn bills. My highlight, however, was provided by an angry pair of geese and a muslim couple. All we wanted to do was walk down the path, but the geese objected, first they hissed and then they ran, flapping towards us, hungry for blood! We did what many other fearless travellers would do which was run. It worked because they stopped chasing us although we still could not get past. We repeated this sequence of events a couple of
Huge Buddah
Dispelling fear. times before we saw this muslim couple. The man thought we were being stupid and walked down the path only for us to witness him being fought back by the geese. Undaunted by this he grabbed a large rock and raised it above his head, we were unsure of his intent and so were the geese. The threat alone was enough to scare the angry geese back down the path as the man dressed all in white chased, rock in hand. It was much funnier if you were actually there.
After a long day of sight-seeing we had to make another long journey down to Singapore. For the first time we bought a ticket the day before we left, this was to be our downfall! The next morning we got to our bus which definitely was in need of some pimping. Our worry increased as noises got louder and gears crunched more the closer we got to the border. Eventually smoke started to come out of the engine and the bus broke down just short of the border! The bus driver said we could either wait for it to be repaired (he wasn't sure how long it would be
Penang Tower
We went to the top of this really big tower in Penang. Helen wasn't too keen on the hights! or even if it would be) or we should get a taxi and make our own way over. We shared a taxi to the border and then we passed through the Malaysian checkpoint unaware that we should have bought a bus ticket. We were stuck between Malaysia and Singapore and it was stupidly hot, not good walking weather. We found at the only way to get across now was to walk! This trip was bound to be full of firsts, but crossing a long bridge into another country was never supposed to be one of them! After a lot of sweating, dodging of vehicles, and cursing of a particular Malaysian bus driver we found our way to the otherside. We got to singapore too late to see any sights, but first impressions looked good so we would like to go again sometime! Also, its very expensive so we would have to be richer.
The next day we caught our flight and arrived in Perth, the journey was over!
Sorry for all the rambling was struggling to remember what happened!
Take care, will inform you of our Perth exploits (We held a wombat!) very soon!
Ben and
Helen xxxxxxx
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