Samui to Kuala Lumpur

Hello Hello!!

Today is the 27^th of June and we are in Bali, in a town called Ubud in the center of the Island. We have been in Indonesia about 12 days and are loving it.

I left you with Koh Samui and our nice room, so I need to check my memory card for the details:

Oh yeah. The first night, we went walking down the road to a little restaurant serving local food. Some idiots ended up eating half of our dinner! Pretending that our spring rolls looked like the crepes they had ordered, right, and one of the guy ordered noodles, but still ate Steve’s dish of rice and curry without a frown, humhum.

The next day we just spent around the hotel, chilling in the AC room (it was boiling outside), went for a little walk and climb on the beach and rocks around it, and finished the day with some cocktails in the pool at the neighboring resort (expensive room ours, but no pool).

We rented some bikes that night and went back to the same little restaurant, then went around the town to see what was there. We discovered a smaller Chaweng Beach. Loads of restaurants, bars, clubs, tattoo places, shops… We didn’t stay long and went back to our quiet hotel.

We kept the bikes the next day and went riding on some small roads inland, went up some mountain roads that ended up as trails at the top, and turned back into tarmac halfway down the other side. We went for a drink in a panoramic restaurant where we could see the whole island. Samui was ok out of the busy bits, but we started thinking about Indonesia, and how to get to the South of the planet…

We checked out the next day, after making a few enquiries about ferries and trains, and got back to the mainland in the afternoon. We booked a train for 1am to Butterworth, Malaysia. We had to check into a room until 1am because there wasn’t much to do around the train station, and it was kind of far from everything. We watched American movies dubbed with Thai language, most of the time they only have one voice for all the characters, male or female, doesn’t matter, which makes them quite entertaining!

We got a sleeper class ticket for the train, and fell asleep as soon as we got in, and until we hit the border station with Malaysia. There we had to get out of the train, get our visas, get our bags checked, and get back in the train. Pretty swift.

When we got to Butterworth, we decided to cross to Penang Island, a 15 minutes ferry crossing. On the ferry we met a German guy, Daniel, who was traveling by himself. He had a guide book for Malaysia, which we hadn’t bought. Instead, Steve insisted that we buy an old guide book from 1991, I state:”to see how different it is”. Well, it’s very different from having a guide book hey!! It was quite interesting, but really useless when you’ve just arrived in a new big town, and you’re wondering where to go and how much things are supposed to cost.

So we started chatting with Daniel, who offered to guide us with his book to the cheap hotels area. We ended up in the same hotel, and decided to go for some beers a little later. A little later, Daniel was knocking at our door, so off we went. Daniel was ok… but extremely silent for someone soooo sticky (he stayed with us about a week!) I mean, he just wanted to do things with us, and quoting his guide book for things to do and all that, but apart from that, he was completely silent. We had to force questions and conversations at him, which is ok for a while, but then you start to wonder why the person actually wants to spend time with you!

Malaysia has a very big Indian community, and we soooo enjoyed having some lovely Indian food, and talking to them about our time in India. They’re such lovely people. The Malay… I’m not sure we met so many, because Malaysia is also taken over by Chinese, and the whole western part of the country is inhabited by them. The East part is apparently more Malay, but we didn’t have much time to go there, and skipped it.

In Penang we went to a botanical garden, we rented motorbikes one day (Daniel couldn’t ride one so we had to carry him at the back) and visited a big part of the island like that. There was also a dragon boat race when we were there, on one of the dams, and we went to watch that. Apparently, dragon boat racing is quite a big thing, and a lot of international teams were there… We saw a few, 12 people in a little boat with a dragon head at the front, 1 person at the back beating the (no, not the people) the drums to give rhythm… quite cool.

After 2-3 days we decided that we had enough of Penang, and needed to move on to Kuala Lumpur. As I was discussing that with Daniel, he decided that maybe it would be a good idea for him to go to KL also, and asked if he could join us. My mouth said yes, the rest of my face said no, but… he didn’t get that, and off we went and booked our bus tickets for the 11^th of June.

Comfiest bus ever. It only had 3 seats on each row and they were airplanes seat. They even had a little rest for your feet coming out of under the seat, excellent. I said that to Dan, and he seemed surprised and ask if the busses in other Asian countries were not all the same… hahaha

We checked into a little, quite dirty hotel near china town and a night market which had everything there.

We got some food from a food stand in a corner, and went for a little walk through the amazing market where people called on to Steve to buy a new Gucci handbag, and called on to me to buy a new tie… go and understand!

The next day we went… to the zoo!

Daniel said there was a good aquarium somewhere in town. We said it would be cool to visit an aquarium. Then he said it was at the zoo. I haven’t visited a zoo since, sorry no, I can’t remember the last time I visited a bloody zoo!! Anyway, after a 20 minutes train ride, we got to the zoo, and Steve and I started paying interest to the place, looking at all the animals, reading their cards and things. Well, Daniel was just waiting for us at the end of each section, looking bored, and just letting us know from time to time that the time for the animal show at the auditorium was almost there… Did we care about the animals doing some tricks for us? No! But still, we went along. The auditorium was in front of the so-called aquarium. There were 2 big tanks with, I have to say, enormous fishes in them, but that was it!

The animal show lasted about 5 minutes, and involved some parrots trying to educate people and placing old can of coke in a bin with their beaks… quite impressive (irony), and a baby orangutan climbing a rope over people’s head in the assembly, and then… oh it was so amazing I can’t remember!!

Oh, I forgot to say something about Dan. He’s a gothic! Why the hell would a Goth want to go and see an animal show, at the zoo!!!!

Right, you’ll have understood I didn’t hold him close to my heart.

Later that day we went to the KL Twin towers (with the most amazing shopping center at their base, every big designer in there, amazing!) that were pretty cool, we took about 100 pictures of them, in the light, in the dark with the lights on, every profile! They say it’s the tallest twin building in the world. We wondered if that was a fact before or after 7/11!

We managed to ditch Dan the next day finally, and we went by ourselves to the national museum. Unfortunately, the second floor was being renovated and that was obviously the more interesting bit. We did read though, about all the different clothing attires that the people of Malaysia wear for their weddings, circumcision, everyday life… They also had a whole section about a team of guys who climbed the Everest about 20 years ago, with pictures and comments like: “That’s when we started to be cold!”

We went to see the old main train station that an English architect who had also worked in India designed. Funny, the station is enormous, and it looks like it could still do a good job at being a train station, but it is almost empty. There are no ticket offices, but only a handful of people waiting on the platforms. All the offices are packed to the ceiling with junk that you can see through the windows, and it just looked useless now. Strange that they keep it in this state…

When we got out of there, it started raining, and we ran under one of the numerous road flyovers and hailed a taxi. He took us back to China town and we had some food at the top of a shopping center where there also were small karaoke boxes… Just a tiny little room, soundproofed, and 2 seats and a screen, and at about 2pm, a man was in there with a soda, practicing his “I will survive” or whatever version of it they have in Malaysia! Strange!

After lunch we treated ourselves to a foot reflexology treatment… forget about full body massage, the feet is the way to go! Especially after all the walking we had done that day.

Then we went shopping in that crazy fake things market, and then back to our hotel to meet Daniel.

We left KL the next day, by train, (this time Daniel didn’t follow!) and headed for Singapore.

This will be for the next update, hopefully soon, so I can get this thing really up to date.

We have about 3 weeks left on our Indonesian Visa. Staying on Bali and touring on motorbikes for 5 days, then going up to Java (next island up) and then maybe fly to the North of Sumatra (again, next island up) and back down a bit, and then we’ll probably also fly for Sumatra to Singapore, and spend a few days spending the last of our money there!

Hope everyone is still well, quite glad to know we will be seeing all of you fairly soon now, although our adventure will then be finished…

Take care,

Lots of love from the two of us xxxx

Now it’s time for a Bintang (indo Beer)

Jenny & Steve live from Ubud xxx

Koh Tao, Koh Phangan, Koh Samui

Hello Hello!



Today is the 13th of June, and we are in Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia.

Here is the update:



Koh Tao, 24th of May 2007, the day we met the shark...



Usually, looking for sharks as i'm swimming in nice waters would be the last thing on my mind (staying away from them would definitely be the top of the list), but everybody here seemed to think that those black tip reef sharks were harmless around here, so off we went looking for the beast. After all, everyone here had seen it, so we kind of had to.



We looked and looked, and after half an hour, decided it was time to go back. We had planned to get the 1.30 shuttle to town to get some money and things, and couldn't hang around for mister S forever.



But as we are swimming back, suddenly, a shadow appears over the sea weed at the bottom. I freeze, and by the time i have grabbed Steve's hand to point it at the "thing" it had reached a sandy part of the sea floor, sort of canals of sand underwater, and it was showing itself in all its sharkness. When i say reef sharks, you might be thinking of little things, the size of what... The arm? haha... or more like HAHAHA! it was the size of Steve!



I thought i'd completely freak out but i was just stunned! It came into view, swimming quite peacefully, showing itself to us, and... Showing off with its baby swimming behind it! Amazing creatures that inspire respect (and a bit of fear hey! let's not forget JAWS)

It just went in its little sharky way and disappeared in the distance. We had to swim back to shore (i was fairly happy to the idea of getting out of the water), but it made a second appearance, as Steve was swimming backwards, it came back behind us. Something tells me he was checking us out. What for? I don't want to know.



As we were driven to town that afternoon, we were able to recount the event to our neighbours, and state that finally, we too, had seen Mister Shark.



The day after, we went to the jumping rock, where we had been once before. We hadn't jumped from there yet though, just snorkelled in the same area, but this time steve did. I personnally was still thinking of my encounter with the shark the day before, and could imagine him with his jaws wide open, waiting for me to jump... So i didn't, and checked the waters carefully as i snorkelled to meet Steve around the corner.



Other event that day, the falling mentis, you know, Menthe Religieuse (in french), big green things that move as if they were dancing. One of them, as long as my index, maybe more, fell on my back as we were having a beer at the bar. I pushed it off, not knowing how big it was, but when i saw her, i was relieved i hadn't broken any part of her. Pretty impressive insect! It had eyes that you could see were looking at you! Amazing...



The night there were spent drinking beer obviously, by the beach at the open bar, watching lightnings in the distance, not only normal lightnings, but orange lightnings, like explosions in the distance!! We got one every night, then later, around 3 am or so, the storm would hit us. The other thing we did, was learn how to juggle with tennis balls on strings. Well, the whole thing about it is when you are good enough, you play with fire balls instead. Apparently, i was a natural, and so that night, after the falling mentis thing, the barman asked if i wanted to try with fire, and i did, it was really cool. To explain the concept, you have strings attached to your index and... middle fingers (no name sorry) and at the end of about 40cms, you have tennis balls attached (one for each hand) and you have to swing them around, and do figures and it looks ever so easy, but it's quite tricky! Anyway, on that night, i did my first fire show! I even got a little round of applause at the end from the bar! sweet



Next day, Steve woke up early hoping he would be able to get a fruit shake with breakfast, while the electricity was still on (goes off at 8am till 6pm) but as he was just ready to leave, our fan stopped, and the electricity was obviously gone again, til the evening.

We got an ENORMOUS spider in our bathroom, litterally over the toilets. So usually it's just infested by mosquitoes, but now we also have an 8 legged monster hanging over our heads while we try to "relieve" ourselves... Well let me tell you, what is relieving is to get out of the bloody place!!!



After spending quite a few days on the same bay, we wanted to change and try to get to an other one just north of our resort, and thought we had seen a trail that could lead to it from our road. It turned out unfortunately to be the local junkyard.. Not so nice. and an other one was the resort's generator house. So after half an hour walk in the sun and the jungle, we walked back. We thought we'd try to go through Jump Rock, by the shore, but that lead us to a dead end. We gave up then, and decided to try and snorkel around to that bay. The way there was a bit worrying cause it was very deep in places, and not great visibility (think shark), but on the way back, we realized that we could actually cut through all the big rocks, pass on top of them, between etc... Steve found a little cave and we went in. Inside were like thousands and thousands of little silver fishes, that as we got in, started circling around us, and more and more were joining in from outside. it was mad, and the best best part of our day.

We did indeed start feeling a bit restless in our little secluded paradise. Doing the same things and, instead of gaining more energy from the relaxation, we got more and more lazy day after day.

Oh, over highlights of the that day (27th may) we saw a monitor lizard (think that's what it was) not as big as the one Steve saw on the first day, but still... And in the evening, Steve taught me how to play chess. Well i'm still pretty hopeless at it, but at least i kind of know what it's all about.



So as I said, we were not really doing enough anymore. I could see my birthday approaching, and i didn't know if i wanted to be there at Laem Thiem anymore. The spider and the rat (oh yes, did i talk about the soap eating rat in the bathroom??) started to get seriously on my nerves, obviously the mosquitoes were at the next stage already, pushing me to paranoia!



So Koh Pangan, here we come. Koh Tao, thank you ever so much, you were fantastic.



Hum. Koh Pangan.

We arrived at the pier and, 1st, it was nothing like Koh Tao. No transparency there, just sandy and messy from all the boats. Not an old wooden pier, but a big massive ugly concrete one. An army of "legal" taxis and air con minivans. We headed for Haad Rin, the party area, where we figured we'd have a good time, and as we were planning on going to the full moon party, best to get a bungalow early. Steve found us a diamond. We have a technic when we arrive in a new place now. We don't listen to all the touts bragging about their resorts. We head for the first bar. Order beers, then, when relaxed enough, one of us goes and checks a few places, comes back with the details, and then the other visits a few places too, and again until we find a decent one that meets our criteria.

In this case, Steve found it for 500 Bath (6 pounds?) Surrounded by bay windows on a hill, wooden interior, fridge (for cold water) big terrasse, big bathroom with hot water and a cool view from the hammock of the bay between Koh Pangan and Koh Samui...

But dear dear dear.. the rest of the place is like Koh San road in Bangkok, relocated, and made bigger: Bars, shops, internet, banks, restaurants. That is all there is and that is all you will find.

The first night we couldn't help but to be glad to be back in civilization, and so we enjoyed some israeli falafels in pitta bread, watched the latest spiderman while drinking beer at one of the numerous tv bars, and then went down to the beach where they had a "warm up party" and, well, pass the details, got pretty drunk, and had a good night. The best of our stay actually.



The next day we felt like hell, and so we slept a lot, drank litres of water, had an english breakfast (of course you can find that!) a walk in the sun (not good!) and then watched about 4 hours of Friends. That is to say that Steve was hangovered. He didn't complain once, and at the end, I was the one to say we should make a move!! Not a very eventful day.



Next day we wanted some beach action, and went to Leela beach, to avoid the busy Sunrise beach. This beach was described in the guide book as quieter, pretty and shaded by palm trees. It was all that. What the book didn't say was that the waters are unswimmable!! Seaweed patches everywhere, really shallow and altogether not very inviting. So we went back to busy sunrise beach, and had a swim there, although swim is a big word, the water is really shallow there too.



Steve then discovered that there was a beach football tournament going on, and so we went to watch. An hour later, Steve was enrolled. He came to me saying: "Well, it's tomorrow too, i can't play tomorrow really can I?..." (tomorrow = Jenny's birthday...). I said: "Send me to a spa for the afternoon and you do whatever you like!" And so that's what we did. Steve started playing that evening with a group of guys from the UK, and then we went to check out the spas...



The next day i turned 24. How did i feel? Not very different, same as each year really!!

I went to the Spa in a 5* resort of the area, and got a body scrub, aromatherapy massage, facial herbal massage, manicure, pedicure, the whole set... 3.5 hours very well spent!



After that i went back to meet Steve on the beach, where he was still playing. They got to the final, and were very close to winning the 4000 Bahts price, but just didn't quite make it in the end... They ended up 2nd, got a trophe, and 2000 bahts instead, which was pretty good anyway!



Evening we had some seafood (tiger prawns, red snapper... yum yum...) and some cocktails... Kept it low as the full moon party was the next night, and so we would celebrate properly there.



So the next day we thought it would be a good idea to just chill the whole day, sleep a maximum, and just go out in the evening and be ready!

How wrong were we. Came 9pm, we were both, how to say, the absolute contrary of motivated? You see what i mean.

To be honest, the party wasn't so much. Well, there was plenty of loud music, but the bars were so close together, you could hardly get the difference between a song and an other. There were so many people you couldn't just stroll from one bar to the other, and, well yeah, the party mood just didn't show up, and so we were a bit disapointed. Maybe we should have come here a few years ago, or maybe we were missing our friends, with whom it'd be really cool...



The next day again didn't do much (well, we did stay out drinking until 2am...), and so the day after that, that restless feeling reappeared again. We were bored. We rented some little bike and went around the island on nice little roads, and were pleased to see that there are still towns that look like fishing villages, with loads of cafes and shops where the locals go (you can easily see the difference between tourist spots and local spots). We overall enjoyed getting out of the Haad Rin Circus, and spending the day doing a bit of exploration.

We still decided to check out however.


The next day we moved onto Koh Samui which we knew would be even more built up than Koh Pangan, but we thought we should see it anyway.



Indeed it was Koh Pangan times 10 000. Mac Donalds, Starbucks, enormous shopping malls, tescos for crying out loud!!!!

That's at the main beach of Chaweng. The street is just full of stuff that tourist might want. It's package holiday paradise.



This time we avaoided staying in the popular bit, and went to Coral Bay, a auieter bay. We found a hotel after a little while, and checked into an "expensive" (for Thailand) but amazing little room at Crystal resort. All white sheets, air con, doors with no holes underneath to let in insects and else, clean bathroom, again, with no insects, 2 leather armchair in front of a bay window, a large balcony and a double sun lounger... lush!!



It's 00.47 here in Malaysia, and i am pretty knackered, so i will write the rest soon, just not now.

Tomorrow we are going to Singapore, and we are catching a flight on the 15th to Bali in Indonesia, around 7pm, flight number ZSFRLT. Just so you know where we are...



Love to all, good night, or more, good day!

Take care



Jenny & Steve xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The Islands of Thailand

Oh we had been waiting for them. Not knowing what to expect of Asia in general, we were at least sure of one thing: The islands of Thailand, we were going to enjoy.

We arrived on Koh Tao on the 21st of May. Koh Tao is located in the Gulf of Thailand, so on the East coast of the South peninsula, about 500 kms from Bangkok. The boat that took us from the mainland to the island was a catamaran, same as the Isle Of Wight Sea Cat, maybe a bit bigger. Thais are nice and relaxed though, and on this one you can sit outside and not just stand inside listening to the health and safety tape!
There was a group of british guys on the boat next to us that, as soon as they got onboard took off their shirts, started spraying sun lotion on the milky white skin, they were funny... They just didn't count on the rain that started falling as the last one of them was finishing his painting job... Ah the British... No offence (it's the French Jenny talking, not the British one...).

The rain didn't last anyway, and soon the sun was shining, the island getting closer, the water getting shallower and at the same time... clearer.

As we approached the old wooden pier of Koh Tao's main harbour, we could see to the bottom, and exotic fishes were just wandering around there...

We met a girl from Venezuela (1st ever!) and a swiss woman in the boat, and as we were, as usual getting attacked by loads of taxis and resort touts, we decided having beer was the thing to do. Ok, it was 9am, but when you've spent a night in a bus, you simply don't call it a night, it's like it never happened, and you can just keep doing what you were doing before getting on the bus!

As we were chatting, and drinking more beer, a quiet little thai woman approached us. Unlike the usual touts, she didn't sound pushy, and just discreetly placed a photo album of her resort on our table. We looked, and it looked awesome, turquoise water, fish that come eat from your hands (bread, not your hands), little quiet beach, a few bungalows, a jump rock... Steve and I just wanted to relax, like i said in the precedent messages we've been feeling a bit tired of the moving around, and when we got into that truck on the way to Laem Thiem, Ping Pong's resort (Ping Pong is the woman... ) we knew that we'd stay a while.

The road we took was ... not a road, more like a mud track going straight up the mountain. Oh yeah, islands in Thailand are far from flat, they are covered with lush jungle, coconut trees, and pretty much only the coasts are inhabited.

So the road, well, you'll understand that it destroys less forest to make the roads straight right, instead of winding around a hundred times to just get to the top. Well, the people here just make the road straight. You sit at the back of a toyota (most of the time) pick up truck, and hold on, while the truck litterally climbs up the gravelly, rocky, sometimes muddy, dusty track up, and then obviously down the other side. To give you an idfea, the resort was just about 4/5 kms (2 miles) from the harbour, but it took 30 minutes to get there!

It was sooo worth it. As we arrived, the pictures we had seen came to life. The little round bay, the simple huts, the rocky landscape, the fish eating from our hands... everything was perfect!

We took a bungalow which already had a resident: An enormous geiko, when i say enormous i mean it, we've seen plenty on our trip, butthis one was the hercules of geiko. It didn't help against the monstruous spider that we met later, but hey, he had the right to be scared of that monster too (i know i was... picture will come, and you will understand).

Oh dear, it has happened again, half the message has just been deleted.
For the info, Steve and I haven't touched a cigarette in 6 days now, but strangely, tright now, i'm more tempted than ever...
I will continue the update soon, but just for you to know, today is the 8th of June, and we have arrived in Malaysia, and are staying on the island of Penang.

Will let you know more soon!!
Lots of love to everyone!!

xxxxxxx
J&S

Back to Bangkok

Khwap Ji la li,

Khwap Ji la li, li li li li li, khwap ji la li, li li li li li li

Or something like that!

That’s how we remembered how to say thank you very much in Laos! Singing it to the tune of I don’t know what….

‘So long Laos’ we said as we smoked on the banks of the Mekong river whiling away the last few hours in the country before our transport across the border to Thailand. A storm cloud approaching from the east, wait a minute, its approaching from the west too – we took shelter & ordered a bottle of beer each – (best thing to do in these situations) & watched the rain making its way towards us, for a few minutes we were having to shout to hear each other as the rain lashed down from the graying marshmallow above us, but by the time our beers were finished (yes only the one on this occasion) the skies were once again filled with sunshine, blue skies & the smaller more friendly looking fluffy white clouds, in about half an hour the only sign that the heavens had opened in such a torrent would be the odd puddle here & there, the ground & plants seeming to have slurped it up as quickly as it had fallen.

The time (approximately Chinese dentist o’clock) came for us to meet our transport to begin the journey across the border & so we loaded our bags in the back of the tuk-tuk type thing (they have many variations of this vehicle around these parts & the general road worthiness of said vehicles has about 20 times more variations ranging from ‘is it better if we walk?’ to ‘nice tuk-tuk!’ ‘it’s not mine sir, belongs to company’)

But basically they are the front half of a motor bike, welded to a small portable shed with a row of benches down either side; some are decorated rather nicely, some not so much.

So to re-cap! The plan was to catch a ride to the border control, check out of Laos, into Thailand (once again) & then catch an over night train from Nong Khau to Bangkok. The date was the 17th of May & we wanted to reach the islands in the Gulf of Thailand in good time for Jenny’s birthday.

We arrived in to Central Bangkok train station on the morning of the 18th. We spent a few days & nights in Bangkok, doing the Koh San Road bit (west meets east in down town Bangkok) & booked up for a coach & catamaran to take us to the island of Koh Tao (Turtle Island).
Oh one thing to mention in Bangkok was the Golden Mount which we went to one afternoon (man made hill started by Rama V, continued by Rama VI & completed by Rama VII a couple hundred years later) a few hundred steps to the top but the best bit was all the bells, I figured you had to give each one a ding dong on the way past (the Thai’s I saw agreed). The other thing I remember is that as with most places in Thailand if you go inside, you have to take you shoes off, outside of most shops & temples etc can be found a small mole hill of assorted flip flops, trainers & ‘shoes’.
Well here the top of the temple is outside & so the floor is hot enough to fry eggs on, probably even a 10oz steak or something big like that, so after taking in the views for a few moments (tourists) or prying to Buddha (Thai’s) everybody is doing a funny sort of skip to move around, like the roof was made of hot coals something.