Koh Pha-Ngan and Koh Tao - Days 151-156

Pha-Ngan is 15km north of Samui and reachable on hourly boats between
the two islands. Our timing was a little off on this one as the full
moon had passed and we would have had to wait another month to
experience the famous (or infamous - depends on which way you look at
it) Full Moon party. Having spent a couple of days on Hat Rin Noi,
(which is the beach on which all the mayhem takes place) you can sort
of understand why, under a clear full moonlit night this would be an
amazing venue. However, we can comfortably say that our raving days
are a thing of the past and on reflection after finding broken bottles
all over the beach during the day you can sort of sympathize with
those that feel the western influence seems to have devalued this
idyllic stretch of coast.

Like Leonardo di Caprio's character in the movie we tried to stay
clear of the lager lout infestation and headed west up the coast.
With no mythical map from a spaced-out dopehead to guide us to a
mystery island we once again hired a vesper and spent a few days
exploring the west side of the island between Thong Sala and Hat Rin.

Stayed in 2 different bungalows, both an underarm stones throw away
from the beach. That would all be fine an dandy if we had some beach
weather though! Like Brad pointed out to me on Facebook the other day
we seem to have arrived in Thailand during the Monsoon season and the
rain has been pelting down relentlessly since our last few days on Koh
Samui. Our days here and in Koh Tao have therefore been spent doing lots
of reading and playing cards. We're now onto Harry Potters 3rd year at
Hogwarts and the only break from Harry has been to feed and sleep -
some sun would be great around now. It's all a little confusing to us
both because the lonely planet guide says that in a week we'll be
entering the 'high season for tourism!?

Decided to spoil ourselves the other day when we found an Italian
place with a genuine Italian chef. We could not have found a better
spot for the change in diet. Kimmy claims that the bruchetta and
pizza was the best she's ever had and I'm inclined to agree with her
but not sure if our bias has been tainted by the Thai food overload
over the last few weeks - there's only so much fried noodle/rice your
body should be allowed to handle!

Hopping back to the mainland soon to get our visa's extended for
another 30 days and then off down the Andaman Coast to Phuket.

Post blogging note: the highlight on Koh Tao was that our room had a
tv with most of the DSTV Supersport channels. Watched the Currie Cup
Final on Saturday night - how cringeworthy was Breyton Paulse as a
wandering commentator? that Malmsberry brey should not be allowed on
national TV, let alone broadcast live outside the SA borders!

photies to follow, the net connection is ridiculously slow

Another Change in plans

Somewhere between Singapore and Koh Samui Kimmy and I started
discussing the possibility of not going further north than the South
of Thailand. The extended stay in Bali and unexpected expense of the
Singapore grand prix has burnt an even bigger hole in the budget. The
missed flight to Vietnam seems a little fortuitous now as travelling
north through Malaysia and Thailand has made us realise that the funds
we have left will simply allow for accommodation, feeding our ever
expanding bellys and transport/visas, not leaving a hell of a lot to
really explore these countries in any sort of detail. So, we'll spend
the rest of our time and money exploring the south of Thailand and
decide in the next few weeks on an appropriate earlier arrival date in
Cape Town.

We're both slightly disappointed that we'll be missing Vietnam, Laos
and Cambodia but agree that these are probably places we can return to
in the future.

More about Koh Pha-Ngan in the next couple of days.

Koh Samui - Days 150-155

The trip from Hat Yai to the island of Ko Samui took about 6 hours in total, firstly by by bus and and then by ferry from the mainland port of Surat Thani. Having skimmed through our lonely planet guide we agreed that the beach of Hat Chaweng sounded like a good place to be based. Arrived at Na Thon pier (Ko Samui west coast) way after dark and had to start haggling with the cab drivers for transport to the opposite coast which was at least 40minutes away. In our short stay in this part of the world we've come to realize that prices for 'westerners' are almost always double if not triple what you can get away with, so battering well is a neccessity. The intial quote was 600Baht but after 7 of us westerners ganged up on the driver the fare was whittled down to 150 Baht each.

Arrived safely in Chaweng late in the evening and booked into a bungalow on the beach. You pay a premium for aircon in your room so decided to try one with a simple fan - what a mistake! The bungalows are pretty simple but the humidity is something else! On the beach in Chaweng we've finally managed to find a set of beach bats so our days in Samui have been filled by an hour or so of bats, swimming in the sea, lying in the sun and finding a market for some cheap grub..... It's a really hard life!

Up the road from our bungalow we stumbled on restuarant with a massive banner advertising South Africa's own Supersport tv channel, the menu had boerewors rolls on it so we just couldn't resist investigating further. The owner Mike is a 45 year old Saffa who been in Thailand for eight years and after a quick introduction we'd been invited to join him for 'prawn night'. Our timely meeting coincided with mike's suppliers providing him with a surplus of gigantic prawns that he had no idea what to do with but show off his skills on the braai - all we had to do is pay for our beers all night. The festivities ended in the early hours next morning with all the guests watching the Jungle Book on the big screen, this, after another night of attempting to booze like 19 year olds - the beermonkey's visit the next morning confirmed that Kimmy I not the machine she used to be and I'm simply getting too old for 15 beers in a night!

Cabs in between villiages on these islands are expensive so Kimmy has
agreed to give the vesper thing another go. After a few days on the
back of the bike my angel has become a little more comfortable with my
driving. For 150baht/day (3 quid!) it's definately the best way to get
around the islands and see more than just the beaches and main drags geared purely for tourists and also adds to a sense of freedom as we whizz along the hilly roads with no helmets!

Hat Lamai and Bo Phut were 2 more villiages we stayed in and we even
managed a 3 hour hike to one of the many waterfalls on the island. Our
guide on this hike was free! We named him Rufus, a random dog that for
some reason saw it neccessary to show us all the way down the mountain
back to where we'd parked the vesper. True story, at first we thought
he belonged to the Chinese group who we sprinted past on our way up
but, on the return legg this mangy mut seemed to be guiding us all the
way down as he intermitantly stopped in front of us and waited for us
to catch up every time we seemed to be 'lagging behind'!

Next stop, Koh Pha-Ngan island, home to the Full Moon party.

Thai border crossing - Days 147-149

The days between Pulau Penang and Hat Yai(Thailand) were rather
uneventful. We wondered around Penang for 2 days acclimatising
ourselves to the local and Thai cuisine at the markets. We're getting
better at understanding how to order certain dishes without pointing
at pictures on a menu and as result we're saving a bucket load of
money by eating at the local markets. It's been a bit 'hit and miss'
to start with but the food is very tasty and in most cases quite
healthy. Did a book swap at a book shop - I've now started reading the
Harry Potter series- not challenging reading but entertaining none the
less.

Caught a ferry back to the mainland from Penang to Butterworth where
we waited for about 3 hours for the train that would take us over the
Thai border into a town called Hat Yai. Let it never be said that a SA
passport is good for nothing. Like all our crossings to date (barring
Vietnam which never happened) we've breezed into Malaysia and
Thailand. No visas required in either of them.

Hat Yai turns out to be quite a bit bigger than a town but, it's not the
prettiest city we've ever been to. If the city was anything to go by
then we really should not have been shocked by the dorm we'd booked on
the net. It took us about an hour and a half to find the place
wondering through the busy dodgy streets at night and when we finally
got there we we were greeted by quarters that could more closely been
compared to prison cell blocks at Polsmor! Seriously, this place was
bad - thank the Pope that we were only in there for one night! The one
solitary thing this place was good for was the travel desk at
reception that organized us a one way ticket outta there to Koh Samui.

Next stop Koh Samui, Koh Pha-Ngan and Koh Tao the three islands made
famous by the movie 'The Beach' and described by the Lonely Planet
guide as "part of backpacking folklore - a place custom made for
hammock swinging and navel gazing."

Cameron Highlands

With the transvestite backpacker at our backs we headed off to the bus
station to find transport from KL to the Cameron highlands. The bus
trip north to a town called Tannah Rata lasted about 4 hours, during
which we both managed to get through some quality reading (yes yes, I
have actually started reading novels). I was so engrossed in my book
that I probably only saw about 30 minutes of countryside. Anyone who's
read Manda Scott's 'Boudica' will understand. The drive took us into
the mountains to the highest point in Malaysia and the drop in
temperature came as welcome relief to the high 30's we've been
experiencing since leaving north Australia. It was so much cooler
infact, that I regretted sending all our warm clothes home when we
left Oz.

We stayed at a very quaint liitle hillside spot called the Father's
Inn which had beautiful 360 degree views of the town and surrounding
countryside. Spent 5 days or so on our lazy bums at the inn trying to
recoupe some funds and only on the last day did we take a tour of the
highlands. The minibus tour lasted about 5 hours and included a little
history about the area from our tour guide with stops at a local rose
garden, a strawberry farm, a honey farm and a butterfly farm. The
highlight however was the stop at the BOH tea plantation. BOH tea is
malaysia's biggest export product run by 4th generation of a Scottish
family since the early 19th century. It's a vast plantation
that spans over 6000acres of hilly country side in which the
harvesting is done manually by labourers that get about 6pounds per day for
filling their basket with 200kg of fresh tea leaves. Sounds like
exploitation but there's a bigger picture. The labourers come from all
over SE Asia to be part of the BOH family. They get free quarters,
free meals for the family, free schooling for their children and
exist as a community with 4 different religions. BOH have built a
villiage with seperate places of worship for Catholics, Hindus,
Muslims and Buddhists and it's really interesting that they are able to coexist in
complete harmony - sounds like they could teach the rest of the world
a valuable lesson? We finished the day with a strong brew of local tea
at the really cool Boh Tea Centre.

Next stop is Pulua Penang for a few days before we cross the border
into Thailand.

There's been a small change in plans - Days 140-141

7pm Changi Airport, Singapore: All packed and ready to fly to Ho Chi
Minh City but, then we hit a small snag.

We (that would be me) missed some of the small print on the Vietnamese
Visa web page that stipulates we have to apply for permision to get
our visas on arrival at the airport. So there we were, backpacks and
daypacks on our backs at the check-in counter and no where to go! Kim
was surprisingly calm during all this - I was bleak!

We were both not keen to go back to our dodgy landlord in Singapore to
negotiate another nights stay so decided the best option would be to
see if we could find a train overland through Malaysia via Bangkok.
Small detour but hey.... It's not like have to be in the office on
monday morning.

With 20kg on our backs(wearing flipflops) we raced through the
Singapore CBD to find an Internet cafe to research our options before
nightfall. As luck may have it, there was a night train leaving
Singapore for Kuala Lampur at 11pm. Having never been on a sleeper
train before we thought it best to book a private cabin in case we
both fell asleep and woke up with bags missing. �'28 bought us a 7.5
hour train ride in our own private cabin - they even woke us up with
coffee!

We'd booked a single night online in K L and what a "lovely" spot.
Walked through dodgy Chinatown at 7am and woke up the landlord to let
us in. My 'gaydar' started ring alarm bells immediately. After finally
checking in 'he' walked us up to our room and was a little surprised
to find someone already in it. He rushed to find the night duty guy
who minced his way over explaining that he had no idea who was in the
room. Eventually they knocked on the door, the first of two
individuals walked out very apologetically (Turkish looking guy) the
second, well.... At first glance this looked like a skinny oriental
girl that had just walked passed Kimmy and I but, when she opened her
mouth to sheepishly apologize it became abundantly clear that SHE used
to be a HE. Thank god they cleaned the room after these two left and
in all honesty I still was wasn't comfortable sleeping in the same bed
knowing what had been in it the night before.

KL is a 'shithole' apart from the CBD which, like Singapore, is
litterred with high tech retail outlets selling upmarket brands at
seriously cheap prices. We think we might be coming back here to do
some Xmass shopping but, there is simply NO chance of us going back to
the slimy, transvestite infested hostel.

We're off to the Cameron Highlands tomorrow which is inland and the
highest point in Malaysia. It's the centre of the tea plantation
industry. Should be interesting!