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Published: April 22nd 2008
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Sunset on Karon Beach, Phuket (the good place i stayed)I left mum, dad and michelle in bangkok airport on the saturday night and got another overnight train down south again, this time to Phuket which is an island off the western coast of the mainland. Arrived at the hostel which was in the middle of nowhere and pretty much empty which was rubbish, it wasn't even near the beach so i didnt really know what to do! Got chatting to 4 people in reception after a few hours and went for dinner and a drink with them so that was fine but they were moving on the next day so i decided to as well!!
Moved up the west coast of Phuket to Karon beach and a different hostel - was in my room 10min and immediately felt 1000 times better - two other people in my room, oli and sarah, and they turned out to be some of the best people iv met on my trip so far!! Spent a couple of days on the beach and then went with oli and 2 swedish guys on the tuesday night to Patong, the nightlife area of Phuket, in order to watch arsenal v liverpool in the champions league quarter-final cos
the match kicked off at 1:45am and nowhere in Karon would be open that late!! So we weaved in and out of all the ladyboys dancing on tables outside the bars in Patong and found a place that said they were going to show the match - was fantastic!! Liverpool won 4-2 and we got home about 5am, absolutely brilliant night.
I spent one more day in Phuket (extremely hungover) then decided to head over to Ko Phi Phi island for a couple of nights. Met 2 californian friends travelling together, Katrina and Rory, and ended up spending the next 2 days with them which was really cool. Ko Phi Phi got affected really badly by the tsunami and they are still trying to repair the damage and rebuild what was destroyed. We went on a bit of a hike one morning up the hills to the viewpoints and the cafes all have pictures of what the beaches and the boat dock looked like before and after the tsunami, it was completely different actually being there and seeing the destruction rather than seeing it on tv. Overall the island was really nice tho, there are no cars so it's a
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Oli playing pool to pass the time until 1:45am kick-off! lot more peaceful than the mainland, lots of shops and cafes and a few bars and lots of places that rent out scuba diving gear and organise beginners lessons etc. We decided for our second night that we would do the tour that takes you to Maya Beach which is where "The Beach" was filmed! So the first night we sat in a bar where they played the film as Rory and I had never actually seen it...!! It was pretty weird to be honest! So anyway we left the next day at 4pm and did snorkelling in a couple of spots on the way to The Beach, fantastic fish and coral and such turquoise water, was really beautiful. Maya Bay itself was lovely, white sand and a pretty cool sunset!! There were about 20 of us on the tour in total and we had dinner, did a bit of night-snorkelling in the water and just generally chilled out on the beach, then grabbed some mats, pillows and sleeping bags and went to sleep! Until 4am that is when a thunderstorm broke out and we had to retreat into tents that we had put up as a precautionary measure earlier!!
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Us and the 2 swedish guys, Seb and Sixten The next day we went back to the main Phi Phi beach for a while then I got a boat over to Krabi back on the mainland, and Rory and Katrina went back to Phuket. I spent just the one night in Krabi before sitting on a bus for 12 hours down to Penang, an island off the west coast of Malaysia. It was actually Thai new years day which is also known as the water throwing festival - when it began it was simply a handful of water being sprinkled over people as a celebration but these days it has progressed into a full-blown water fight!!!! It was amazing being on the bus driving through total mayhem on the streets. Groups of friends and families take huge vats of water into the back of their pick-up trucks and drive around throwing water over anyone in the streets, over motorcycle drivers, spectators, anyone!! They are all brandishing super soakers and all sorts of other water-projecting devices, the funniest thing was watching an elderly lady using her water gun to soak a teenage guy driving by on his motorbike!! I had to switch buses halfway and the first bus dropped me
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playing connect 4 with the bar staff in Patong off at a tourist office with 5 teenage girls outside, completely soaked and faces covered in flour (another part of the tradition!) I get out of the bus and this one girl considerately says to me "give me your bag"...............so I give her my bag and another one pours a bucket of water down my back whilst a third paints flour on my face!! I then had to sit in the tourist office for 40min with locals laughing at me, then got on the second bus for 5 hours down to Penang!
I'd booked in at a hostel in Penang which was pretty empty when I got there but 10min after me another girl arrived - called LYNSEY!!!! She was from San Francisco and was also travelling round the world on her own - we decided to go for a walk and explore the town (we were staying in Georgetown, the capital of Penang). We ended up having dinner in the Little India district altho recognised nothing on the menu so just told the guy to bring us a few things which turned out ok!! Had a drink in a local bar too (alcohol is so expensive in malaysia tho
cos it's primarily a muslim country) and we were joined by a few local old men who were supporting their friends singing in a band in the bar. The band members were all about 60yrs old, malay, ponytails and leather jackets and singing the eagles and rolling stones! although strangely the bar was empty except for us and their table of friends!! So these 2 old blokes come over and are chatting away to us in their best english as they polish off their bottle of Jim Beam and they try and persuade us to join them in their next round - a bottle of vodka! But we politely decline and escape back to the hostel before things get too raucous!
The next day we wandered round the streets of Penang, it's slightly cooler than thailand but not much, and still very humid. We had a nightmare on the bus system all day which was frustrating but we managed to go see a reclining buddha and temple, then eventually got out to Penang Hill after trying some local dishes from street vendors for lunch. We went up Penang Hill on the funicular railway and wandered around on the top, great
views of the city/island, then decided to walk back down which turned out to be really really steep! There was some sort of hikeathon going on and as we were going down we were passing runners and cyclists heading up this steep hill, including one cyclist who had Celine Dion belting out on his little bike radio - whatever motivates you!!!!!
We saw at least three different types of monkeys as we walked as although it was a tarmac road it was surrounded by the jungle vegetation of the hill. Wandered through the botanical gardens at the bottom then realised we had missed the last bus back to Georgetown - thankfully a guy who had done the marathon thing who we had spoken to earlier spotted that we were in a bit of trouble and drove us back to the hostel in his air-conditioned 4x4, magic!!!
Left Lynsey the next day and got the 5 hour bus down to Kuala Lumpur. Staying at Hostel Cosmopolitan that Oli (who I met in Phuket) had recommended to me, really nice little place just out of the centre but right next to the Chow Kit monorail station. Met 2 guys in my room
called Kevin (from Shropshire) and Colin (Irish) so we went out to the Chinatown area of KL and found somewhere for dinner then wandered around the city (Colin was tour guide, he'd been here a few days!). As we got off the monorail in chinatown though the sky cracked and a huge thunderstorm broke out, we got absolutely soaked through! Water was flowing down the street like rivers, all the poor motorbike drives were trying to shelter under big bridges becuase it was just impossible for them to drive, it was crazy!! There were pictures on the front page of the paper yesterday showing some of the flooding so it must have been slightly unusual altho there has been a short thunderstorm each day we have been here. Anyway it cleared up after dinner and the air temperature had dropped a lot so we walked around the city for a while and went right up to the base of the Petronas Twin Towers which are really spectacular by night, so sparkly!!
Colin left the next day so Kevin and I went up the Petronas Towers and also the tall KL Tower which had great views from the top. We had
lunch at a curry place next to the hostel which Colin had recommended and as he was such a good tour guide the night before we thought ok, we'll give it a go - I am so surprised Kevin and I aren't sick today, we had a plate of rice and kev had some rock-hard bit of beef in sauce and i had mutton in sauce - the rice was bordering on cold and the meat was luke-warm, definite food-poisoning conditions!! Plus they charged us a ridiculous amount (well, still not a lot in the grand scheme of things but for what you could get for the same price elsewhere it was a lot!!) Unfortunatley we hadn't exchanged details with good old Colin so we'll never get to tell him.... In the afternoon there was a thunderstorm (obviously!!) and we were pretty much the only tourists out at the Batu caves which is normally a very popular tourist spot. We climbed the 272 steps up to the cave entrance, it's basically a Hindu religious centre and they have a huge festival every January at that location. The caves are carved in limestone and there are lots of monkeys around which
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Ko Phi Phi you are told not to feed as they may get violent!!
Today we did a hop-on, hop-off bus trip around Kuala Lumpur and stopped off at some key areas around the city which was good, although I have to confess we did cave at lunchtime and went for a MacDonalds....at least there you know what you're getting, right?!?!?!?!
Went back to chinatown tonight for dinner with another guy who kevin had met earlier in his trip and we wandered round the market afterwards trying to get some bargains - as usual I was a terrible shopper and bought a grand total of nothing whereas the boys bought board shorts, normal shorts, t-shirts and watches!!!! Never mind, less for me to carry I suppose...?!?!?!
Leaving KL tomorrow and going by bus to Melaka, about halfway between KL and Singapore where I fly to Australia from on Saturday - the two boys have said there's a really good hostel there so I may as well spend a night there on my way!
All in all, these last 2 weeks have been the most unstructured of my trip so far but they've also been 2 of the best I think in that I've
just been able to make on the spot decisions about where I want to go the next day and not have to involve anyone else, but also I have met some of the best people on my trip so far which has been fantastic!!
Looking forward to Oz now...!!
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