Thailand part 2: Ko Lanta

In case you didn't know, the prefix ko/koh means island in Thai. Our Minivan transport took us all the way from Phuket to Ko Lanta. Phuket (which is also an island, but doesn't seem to be called Ko Phuket, surprisingly) has a causeway bridge to the mainland, and Ko Lanta is serviced by car-barge/ferries that go back and forth all day.

We arrived in Ko Lanta, and couldn't find our accommodation. We were told that it was close to another place, so the minivan dropped us off there. After 1/2 an hour of wandering around the area ladened with our heavy packs in the heat, we found it - Ancient Realm had no sign at the road, and was down a muddy path. But the accommodation itself was good.



This is the bungalow from outside, and the photo was taken right at the edge of the beach - thats how close it was! Each bungalow had a fence and its own grassy area with sun loungers and a dining table.



The bathroom was open air, like a room with no roof, on one side. It was quite tastefully decorated with shells and even random bits of glass along the top of the walls! The room had Aircon, a mini fridge and a TV/DVD player. The owner boasted 300 (pirate) DVDs all free to watch.



This is the view out to the beach. While we liked where we were staying, the place was in low season, and lots of businesses were closed down. The water itself was similar to Phuket, but the beaches were quite dirty - covered in bottles, old lightbulbs and crisp packets - not very nice.

Maybe the place is better in the busy season, but without the farangs keeping the beach restaurants open, it was hard to find food options, and there wasn't much to do! We hired a scooter anyway, and spent a few days looking around the island.



This is a cafe that we stopped at at the southern tip of Ko Lanta. It was built into the side of a hill (Wellington style) and was made out of bamboo! It seemed stable enough to have a sprite at, and so we did. Thailand recycles glass bottles all over, so most shops/cafes serve you a drink in a bottle, and collect them up to do a swap-a-crate type thing. Soda, especially Coke, tastes much better from glass!

Aside from scootering, we really just relaxed here, though after the fun and excitement in Phuket, we were under-whelmed here, and didn't stay very long. Like we said before - maybe in busy season it would be a better place to visit. On to Ko Phangan!

Thailand part 1: Phuket

We touched down in Phuket, and headed to Karon beach, where we had booked some very nice accommodation. We had a new room with Air Conditioning, cable TV, a quality walk in hot shower and a clean, comfy bed. This place was a little more expensive then we were planning for our nightly accommodation budget (500 Thai Baht, or about NZ $20 for us both), but we decided on a little pampering and luxury to find our feet in Thailand.



The water was just divine here. We hadn't yet been to a tropical beach and this was just great: you could stay in the warm water all day no problem. The surf does push you around a bit though, and so after an hour of dodging the breaks you get at bit tired. The sun at the beach was pretty intense too, we both managed to get just a little sunburnt! Princess especially went rather pink. Naughty naughty!

There were plenty of refreshments at the local shops, all aimed squarely at the farang (Thai for foreigner) market. Outlets looking to sell you booze, soft drink, juice, bottled water or ice creams. Shops selling knock off surf clothes, hats, sunglasses and sandals but unfortunately the product range is limited, because every shop seems to have the same product brands and range!. Restaurants with the same headings: Thai food, pizza, pasta, burgers.

Scooters are the backbone of Thailand's transport. They are simply everywhere. You can hire a scooter from every 3rd shop (and that is no exaggeration) and an equal number of places sell petrol by the liter out of whiskey bottles. You simply pull up to what looks like a boozy lemonade stand, and buy a couple of bottles worth - they tip out the whole glass bottle to your scooter and put the bottle out back for the next refill.

It is common to see 3 people on a single (100cc) scooter - often 3 girlfriends, or mum dad and the kid, standing between dads legs on the scooter floor, looking over the handlebars. It's a little scary to watch, but you soon get used to it as it is the norm here.

We hired a scooter from our hosts, and set about exploring the island. The Thai style of driving is quite different to westerners ideas about the road - things like: keep left, indicate, wear a helmet - these are all just ideas, not rules... Most of the island has low traffic density, so its not really a big problem, just keep out of the way of bigger vehicles (i.e. everything). We did venture into one of the main towns, which made Princess very wary - it takes a while to get used to all the jostling and chaos on the roads.

Cruising the island, we also found an elephant park, and decided to go for a ride.



This was our elephant mahout (trainer) who guided the elephant while we rode him. He spoke only one Thai word for the whole hour - no English, just "Maa" which means "come". His big smile made up for the language barrier, and his hat had been written on in English saying that "tips accepted".



Here you can see Princess riding 'bareback' around his neck. I didn't get a chance to go up front, or, as Princess put it, I was too chicken!



After the ride we got some pineapple and fed it to the hungry elephant. They are very sweet and gentle, politely picking the food out of our hands with their trunk and then placing it in their own mouth.

We scootered around the whole island, seeing the sights and getting burned - our whitey skin had never seen so much sun. Thankfully the UV is much lower here, so by the end of our stay at Phuket we had tanned up, and burning is now unlikely.

We managed to park in the wrong place at Patong beach, and get the rental bike chained. We had to go to the police station and pay the ticket just to get the bike unlocked! Thankfully the ticket wasn't too bad (nz $20). I think they were gentle on us.

From here we took a bus across east to an island known as Ko Lanta...

Malaysia part 2: Kuala Lumpur

So we made it to Kuala Lumpur in another VIP bus, after kindly being dropped off by Howard (Ringos) at the bus terminal. A comfy bus ride later, we meet my old work mate Harjeet, and his partner Pam in Kuala Lumpur. Harjeet and I (Toolman) have shared a fair few drinks after work, and he always said we were welcome to visit in Malaysia, so I claimed on the offer :)



This is the only photo I got of them both - sorry is so bad! Harjeet also has a nephew...



... KP - another awful photo; sorry I didn't get sorted and get nice photos!

We went back to Harjeet and Pams house, which was very welcoming after Melakka, the bus ride and stinky-hot KL central with our full back/front packs on! We had a proper shower and got a good nights sleep in a nice place - soo much better! The next morning, we went on a drive out to the Batu Caves, an Hindu shrine of sorts.



At the entrance to the caves, is a gold (colored) Buddha that stands very tall, maybe 15 storys? He is visible from miles away, and stands guard at the entrance to the caves...



... which is 260 odd steps up, and very steep! The picture here shows the grade. Its easily 45 degrees, possibly more.



We climbed up slowly, puffing all the way. The view of the city from the top was neat. As always, click on a picture if you want to see the whole set.



From inside you can see the cave itself, a natural limestone formation. There are a handful of shrines, one for each of the deities - Ganesh, Buddha etc. The place is very big inside, like a cathedral. Apparently, the space gets packed out every year by faithful devotes who sing and dance around in there - the thousands of people must make it truly scary up there. Escape down the stairs is slow, and people apparently get crushed due to the numbers up there.



The roof lets light in one half of the space, and is even more impressive in person.

The area is quite awesome (in the classic meaning), but there are lots of cheeky monkeys around to inject humor. They get into the rubbish and swig the drops of fizzy drink left, then go nuts. I assume the sugar-rush is to blame, once they are fired up you better hold on to your stuff, else they might try to get it, especially if you have sweet treats!

That night, KP offered to take us around the city and see the sights at night - thanks KP!



This is one of the governmental houses, not sure of its name, but it faces a huge grass field and I have since seen it on TV with their PM outside so it is pretty regal. Also interesting is the white building on the right side, which up close is a lattice work in an Islamic style. Very pretty.

The main road along the front is closed off at night due to gangs on scooters drag racing along it etc. Its the Malay equivalent of boy-racing basically. These guys are nuts on their modified scooters - driving at night with no headlights, pulling wheelies etc and apparently drinking etc. too. Scary to see, mainly for their own sake! Foolish male bravado transcends race, unsurprisingly.



This is the Petronas twin towers. Pam heard them described as "2 syringes full of champagne.." A good description! They are very pretty (and tall). We didn't get to go up to the bridge, as it was too late, but the shopping center at the bottom was open...

So KP and I left Princess to it shopping, while we had a quiet drink at one of the many bars around it.



Petronas support an F1 racing team, and so in the shopping complex there is a speed museum. Unfortunately it was closed, but I got to look in the window...

We saw the nightlife, including the ladyboy areas. Boy, some are really feminine and pretty! KP was well versed at spotting them, but its plain to see how some guys are fooled. Single guys beware!

The next day, Harjeet + Pam also took us for a drive around the city, looking at the Islam-influenced architecture, and some of the city parks in KL. After a days looking around, we ordered a pizza back at their home, and they messed up the details ("I said THICK crust! this is THIN..."). So with a few haggles on the phone, Harjeet managed to get a second round of pizzas free! Thanks Dominos. We chased the pizza with a few* drinks and had an awesome night of talking about NZ vs Malaysia, the makeup of Malayisa and other such things.

* I wasn't counting, but put it this way: no one was out of bed before midday the next day ...

We both really enjoyed our time KL - Good friends make all the difference! After all the cities, we were both craving some good beaches, and so we decided to travel up to Phuket in Thailand next, flying air Asia. Somehow, our packs gained about 3kg each between Singapore and Malaysia, so we were forced to pay extra for overweight baggage. Grrr, we didn't buy anything to add to the pack, where did that weight from? We checked on 2 different scales because we were so surprised!

Stay tuned for the next installment...

The flight itself was fine, and we landed in Thailand for the next step of our exciting adventure ...

Malaysia part 1: To Melakka

We Left Singapore, going thru customs on the causeway bridge to the north, and got dropped in Johor bus station, an unremarkable big city just north of Singapore.

So we get off the bus, and straight away have about 5 guys coming up trying to sell us discount tickets to anywhere we wanted. I had been warned (thankfully) so we ignored them and went to the counter and got proper VIP tickets to Melakka. The bus was comfy and air con, and the 3 hour bus ride cost something like $7 NZ each - gotta love Asia :)



The decor on the bus was garish! I was later told that the discount tickets are, at best, not aircon and not insured, and at worst, non-existent or so rusted/unwarrantable etc. that you wouldn't want to get on.

And the driving! It is truly scary at times, even the bus drivers drive like crazy. Indicators, road signs, lanes - all these things are optional. Its might makes right around here, and the bus wasn't small ...



This is the old town square that is Dutch styled. Melakka (and importantly, its port) was taken by the Dutch. If you read the history, you'll see that lots of bits of south east Asia have been conquered due to secure shipping needed- the various powers (EU/US etc) were all capturing ports in south Asia. This was the Dutch port.



We spent our first day looking around the place, including holding this snake. The owner promised it wasn't poisonous, but I was still quite edgy and nervous. Princess was much calmer, but she didn't have the head! He kept wanting to come and kiss me or my wrist. No problem. Honest...

Singapore was clean, orderly and very European. Melakka.. isn't. We sheltered in a nice clean restaurant and had some nice comfy European food - Hot chips and pasta. The prices would be horrendous for the locals, but it still converted fine for us rich foreigners. It was here at Melakka we both realized the reality of the poverty gap.

We were staying at Ringos Guest House and this was quite nice. Hung out with a live-in staff member, Howard, and traded some music etc. We got over our reality-low and decided to visit a water park in Melakka.

Howard wasn't sure, but he pointed us to the local bus station, and we took a 'local' bus the 1 hour trip to the park. This bus had no doors, and was falling to pieces. A fun ride! Was good to talk to the locals - the older generation learned English, so had a few (basic) conversations with local Malays'.

Incidentally, they are very sensitive about being called Malay/Malaysian etc. depending on their ethnicity. Malaysia is a bit of a kludge with respect to culture, as there are indigenous Malay, Chinese Malaysian and Indian Malaysian all in similar proportions. The harmony seems only on the surface - maybe an example of bad multiculturalism?


Afamosa, the fenced tourist park that housed the waterpark was hard to get to. The local bus went to the nearest town, and we had to taxi out and pay a staggering amount just to go in. We were so hot and scratchy by the time we got there, that the NZ $30each was payed - which is our daily budget each!

The park was not very great, and all most of the tourists were Middle eastern. Because Malaysia is Islamic, they come over and spend lots because its so cheap! The water was cool though, and a welcome relief for a time. We ended up getting a ride back to the local bus with a cute old school teacher who drove past and offered us a life. He was the sweetest guy - as he dropped us off, he tried to purchase us a Malay flag as a souvenir even though he was running late!

That night, you could say we had culture shock, but that isn't a good description of what we both felt at the end of the second day. We both missed home, and were just exhausted from walking and being in the searing heat (aside from the swim itself). The amounts of money people live on here is so close to zero, our influx of tourist money is the only thing to grasp at.

To top it off, the Chinese community hall across the road had some festival and was cranking their huge (taiko?) drums and the noise made our room shake! In the distance we could hear the Muslims chanting too - it was like a sing off was happening at the expense of our sleeping patterns.

It wasn't just any one thing, but suffice to say we both felt very low for a while there in our room. Family and friends - we miss you all!

We made the decision to move on to Kuala Lumpur after a few days of Melakka. We didn't really give Melakka a good chance, but it was an interesting place to further dip our feet in the Asian experience.

Singapore

The flight was nice and cruisy. We flew into an air conditioned airport, went thru the usual visa, baggage claim etc. We got on to the MRT (Subway train) from within the airport terminal, backpacks on, looking like turtles (It was hard to turn with the limited space and our shells on..)

It wasn't till we got to our stop that we had to exit the train, at about 10pm. The doors open and we both walked into a thick wall of humidity and heat - it was like stepping into a sauna! The temperature in Singapore stays at about 25-30c all day and all night, and it is like a blanket.

from wikipedia on Singapore:

Temperatures range from 22 °C to 34 °C (72°–93 °F). On average, the relative humidity is around 90% in the morning and 60% in the afternoon. During prolonged heavy rain, relative humidity often reaches 100%

Thankfully our hostel had lots of big fans and so we could sleep that night. The hostel was run by a guy named Yang, and he works in electronics doing(destruction) testing of printed circuit boards (PCBs) during the day - making sure that batch production was going smoothly and soldering correctly etc. In his spare hours, he ran the hostel. Everything was reused items - from the toilet-come-PC-chair, to the Epson toilet roll dispenser (pictured on top of TV) . A neat guy working overtime to make a nice place, and some cash.

I realised that I had lost my (expensive) prescription sunglasses somewhere between Sydney and Singapore, which really sucked. I now have to either squint or see things blurry behind cheapie sunglasses....

The shopping in Singapore is even better then Sydney! There are malls everywhere, and they all impeccably clean and tidy. This is a recurring theme in Singapore, it is so straight and orderly.



I didn't take many photos of the shopping malls, but this one thing was sooo sweet. The photo is blurry sorry, but that huge rack of drawers has every lego piece known to man in it. You could replace individual lego items, or hand pick exactly what you wanted.. like a kid in a candy shop :)



We found a pet shop in one of the complexes - and they have hamsters! These things are so small and cute, Princess nearly popped with excitement at seein them. http://cuteoverload.com would not work without them.



A sunbear at Singapore zoo.



A cotton-tailed tamarin.



And yes, that is 2 giant turtles trying to do their thing... they are big and slow moving so it was likely quite a drawn out affair. Singapore Zoo is the best zoo we have ever been to. There are so many animals, and they are obviously well cared for with large enclosures and awesome maintenance. Go and click on the pics to go to Flickr and see the rest of the pics - I have tagged them with "zoo". We went to the night zoo also, but no night pics sorry.

At the night zoo I was lucky enough to be next to the glass wall when 2 Leopards were very active, pacing back and forth right in front of me. We both love the big cats, and these 2 animals were mere inches away from us (ie the glass thickness), strutting around. It was awesome!

We were staying in the north-west corner of the island, so we travelled on the train (MRT) every day for at least 1/2 hour. Was good to interact with the locals and get 'a taste' of asia however watered down it is - Singapore was a great way to dip our toes into Asian culture. It is very western in most senses, so there was no culture shock to speak of, and not too many stares (aside from the shenanigans with our backpacks). Although English is the official language, everyone speaks ching-lish, a sort of hybrid of lots of languages.


We also spent time looking at Singapores "little china" area, and their "little india", but they seem to just be a way to draw tourists to sell them cheap stuff. Fun to look at all the same, lots of guys wanting to be my tailor! I'm guessing the hourly rate for a tailor is good in comparison to lots of other industries because there are heaps of them! We also spent some time looking thru the asian culture gallery - art from all of Asia and as far as the middle east. No pics were allowed sorry, but lots of beautiful pottery, amoury and paintings. Also caught the latest Harry Potter with Malay subtitles.

We visited Sim Lim tech shopping mall: man-Shopping! This place was NUTS - 7 floors PACKED with every piece tech hardware I had eve heard of. You name it - cameras, laptops of all brands, pdas, cellphones, game consoles... gaah. By the time I had walked the 7 floors looking for a new camera I was dizzy with choice. I was so flummoxed, in fact, that ended up buying a camera without thinking. A Sanyo. A brand I didn't even know did cameras.

It was my first attempt at bartering and so I paid much more then I might have, but I have accepted it and moved on, and besides, its actually a good camera anyway. Sanyo just never got on my radar for cameras before. I'm so used to researching and carefully selecting my tech hardware - this ended up just being a (confused) whim. In any case, hopefully you'll notice better pictures from now on...

Sydney

Confusingly, we were to fly out of Sydney to get to Singapore, so we had to head all the way from Cairns (far north Queensland, Australia for the cheap seats) to Sydney (South...). Thankfully my wonderful Auntie and her partner put us up for a few days for our whirlwind tour of Sydney.



So this is me with Prue (your left) and Auntie Jan (right). The shock of the temperature difference when we got to Sydney was bad - we both quickly caught colds. Cairns had been 25-30c, and Sydney was in the 5-12C range... Cold, even for a Wellingtonian!



Here is Princess looking fabulous. Showing some bling off maybe?



Princess spent lots of time trying to figure how to smuggle one of the pets on as hand luggage - THEY ARE SOO CUTE! Both doggies have their grease-for-pats technique well practiced and are hard to ignore. Tiger the cat has only 3 legs, so the sympathy card would be easy, but cats are too aloof for that. Tiger is awesome, and if you scratch him just right behind his ear, his missing leg stump goes mad like hes scratching his own head and he thinks hes doing it himself. Very funny for immature people like me..



How could you say no to him? Especially when he gets his puppy-dog eyes out, and taps you on the leg with is paw softly in a "please pat me..." kind of way



We actually slacked a bit in Sydney and slept to try and recover from our respective colds. We did go out a little tho, and so here is the obligatory Opera house picture...



... and the "is he 28 years old or 12 now?" The shopping is great here, according to Princess. Unfortunately, we have little in the way of discretionary cash so it was more looking and less buying - I promised that in Asia (where stuff is cheap) she can buy up clothes.



When I went to Sydney (when I was 5 or so) Auntie Jan took me here to Luna park, so I wanted to go back. Its right next to the harbor bridge, and very visible. Unfortunately, in quality, its something like that scary traveling winter show that you see in Taupo every year. You know; the ones where half the thrill is hoping that the dodgy guy who assembled it wasn't too drunk and forgot any bolts etc....

Was good for nostalgia value, but crap for real fun. Jan and Prue also took us for a driving tour around Sydney, including of the grounds for the Australia games, the beach where home and away is filmed and lots of nice viewpoints around.

Was great to unwind a bit, fix a few things around their house (and break a few too sorry..) and prepare for our Asian excursion... Thanks Aunties!

Cairns

As mentioned last post, yes we are behind on posting our stories. I'm trying to catch up!




As I mentioned before, all the way up the east coast of Australia are these sugar cane fields - don't they look like ToiTois?

So - Cairns: Princess' family gathered in Cairns for a week, partly as a celebration of Daves (21st was it? ) birthday. 2 cars were hired to drive the group around, and I got to drive the Ford... MAAAATE! It was a 'free' upgrade - by that they meant that it waas free except all the extra insurance you were obliged to pay... grrr! A lovely car in any case.



So here is the family pic:



The back row, left to right:

Dave (Chris' brother), Gillie (Chris' partner), Princess (as noted on her top) and Lindy (Daves wife)

Alice (in front - Laurens mate), Rupert (Daves son, Princess' cousin), Lauren (Gillies daughter), Grandma Betty (Chris and Daves mum), Chris (Princess' dad) and some dork with a ball.

One of our adventures was to go on the Kurunda skyrail - a gondola over the rain forest. We parked the cars , and took a historic rail ride up the Kurunda ranges to get to the gondolas.



I think the rail had been used for mining, but now it was for tourists like us!



We had lots of fun onboard, and I took lots of photos with Chris' flash new camera. So many, in fact, that I smoked the battery before we even got to the skyrail - sorry Chris! As it was new, I think the battery didn't take the full charge.



The train stopped half way up the beautiful trip to look at this stepped waterfall - was very pretty. If you click on any of the pictures, you can go and see all the pics I took, but be warned, theres LOTS.

Once we got to the top, we spent a couple of hours look around the shops. Far too tourist-y for my liking - lots of trinkets and expensive food outlets.



When we did get on the gondolas, the view was very pretty, and Lauren gave us a detailed running commentary of the rainforest. She had been studying them recently, and knew all about the emergent trees, the canopy as well as the understory and forest floor.



Yes they are high, but I didn't panic too much. Honest...



This is us all waiting for the boat to head out to green island. This is just off the coast of Cairns, slightly north. This is a tiny island that has nothing but a jetty, a resort (and associated food/swimming shops) and a coral reef. it is a really pretty - and small - island!



We jetted across in this big 'cat - pretty comfy on the way over. Unfortunately, it was quite choppy on the way home - Princess and I saw a poor old Chinese lady loose her lunch right in front of us! Gross, yes. Ikky, yes. Funny in a "americas funniest home videos" kind of way... maybe ;)



We hired snorkels for the day and headed out to the coral - its is so beautiful! Finding Nemo, eat your heart out. A fun day of swimming, bathing, reading, eating and a touch of getting burned was had by all.



Our final day was spent at "the Babinda boulders" - a natural feature 50km south of Cairns. These boulders are formed in a valley, and the ones in the middle of this shot above are each about the size of a car - large! I was really impressed as these were all carved from the single large rock/earth.



The valley is an S shape and this is the tail end. During flood season the water level gets much higher.



We also visited a large fig tree, which was a little farther away then we had expected due to the steep nature of the road going there - but never-the-less we made it and went to have a look....



Once you see me in the picture its a bit more obvious how LARGE this thing is! It is really solid and I could climb up as high as I cared to venture. So yes it did take a while to get there, but I did get to have a good drive of the Falcon - a great aussie tradition! For the record, they are nice as big tank-type cars go, but I'd still rather have an Audi.

We both had a great time in Cairns, and so thanks to all the family who made it so enjoyable.

(and affordable, thanks :D )