Important Update!

Hi guys,

We're safely in Vietnam, and I love it here!

Just to let you know, we won't have access to Facebook or Flickr while we're here in Vietnam, and we'll be writing the blog less just to be on the cautious side! We'll be here up to three weeks, maybe less, and the best way to contact us is our phones, on the comments here or emails (but I'm bad at checking them!)

We'll get up-to-date once we're in Cambodia or Laos (or, at worst back in Thailand!)

Penang, Ipoh and back to KL

Because we only had 10 days in Malaysia we decided to focus on the North-West peninsular, namely Penang for the dragonboat races, KL of course and Ipoh for the Cameron highlands. Lots to fit in to this post!

We headed out of the internet cafe at about 6, after John wrote the last post. We wandered around Georgetown waiting for a cafe to open and watching the sunrise until we managed to get some coffee and breakfast at a little cafe.

Since the purpose for our visit to Penang was mostly the races, we decided to try to find somewhere to stay closer to that area. We hopped on a bus that headed up to the dam and watched the amazing scenery. After quite a while, lots of people got off the bus at one particular stop and the bus driver was shouting something in Malaysian. Assuming this was the last stop (which ours was), we hopped off. We pretty quickly realised it wasn't our stop! We tootled off to get a taxi the rest of the way, and challenged the driver to find us some nice cheap accommodation in the village. It was handy we did actually, because the area was a small village and we'd never have been able to find the homestay we did without him! The house we stayed in was a long bungalow with quite a few others staying (most of them were a bit weird!) We got a shabby room with a four-post bed for the bargain price of RN35 a night and had the opportunity to read some government pamphlets on why most foods are highly dangerous.

We spent the day at the races, which were smaller than we expected but still amazing! We got there in time for the opening ceremony, part of which was even in English. There was one poor team who were just miles behind every race, and the Australian Navy team wasn't the best either!!

While exploring the village, we saw a wedding taking place! Obviously we didn't go inside, but there was a girl singing, people arriving decked out in their finest and lots of banners. The nest day, we walked past the same couple at the head of a street part wedding reception!

We spent our last Penang day in Georgetown, seeing the sights. My favourite was Fort Cornwallis, which is one of the forts that we used when we colonised Malaysia! We happened to run into the taxi driver around the town, which was a bit uncanny! He approved of what we'd done on out visit because we'd experienced the village and town life of Penang, which the man was extremely fond of.

Next, we got back on the train to Ipoh to head to the Cameron highlands. Ipoh had some stunning architecture and was very heavily chinese influenced, with many of the public signs and shopfronts in Mandarin rather than Malaysian. We got a cheap room with aircon and a private shower (although there were some ladies of ill repute on our street).

We got the bus to Cameron Highlands and were initially really disappointed. The pictures of it in the guidebook were of rolling hills, but when we pulled in it looked like any other town! Since the guidebook mentioned them, we stopped for a cream tea, which was decidedly odd. The scones were cinnamony and crumbly, but for reasons unknown, the baker had decided to put jelly sweets in them?!? And I don't even want to think about what was in the cream!

We decided to make the best of it and hired a taxi for a couple of hours to take us to the main tea plantation. When we got there it was amazing! Exactly how we expected Cameron to be! We took a tour around the factory, walked through the plantation and drank some special tea.

We then got the train back to KL ready for our flight! We stayed in the same hotel with our nice man and today went to see the Batu Cave, which was incredible. Lots of steps though. We're flying out tomorrow at 3 to Vietnam, so next post will hopefully be from there!

Sorry if this post seems rushed, it's actually taken 2 hours but it's just lots to fit in!!

Malaysia so far, mainly Kuala Lumpur and a tiny bit of Penang

After the excitement of missing our originally booked plane to Malaysia, we had the apparent struggle of getting out of the airport. While leaving there were stands trying to get us to buy coach tickets but we had no Malaysian money, so we found an ATM and got out the amount we would normally get at once in Thailand, which was RM1250. This came out of the machine the form of 24 RM50 notes and 5 RM10 notes, I don't think my wallet will ever be as full as it was at this point.

We eventually found where coaches to the centre of Kuala Lumpur were, this didn't cost much at all and took us to the transport hub of KL, KL Sentral. In our travel guide there was a hotel nearby which we were interested in going to, so we decided to try and walk to it. After walking for at least 2 hours pretty much in circles around KL Sentral, we realised it is impossible to escape and got a taxi. We had no idea where we wanted a taxi to, so we just took it to the shopping district of KL Bukit Bintang.

Next we very quickly found a decent sized and nice hotel right in the centre - the person running it was very friendly and very helpful! We even got free breakfast!

Our first day in KL was a bit of exploring the local area, we found some nice street food which was a very good way of introducing us to Malaysian cuisine! Later, we went to the BB Plaza which at first seemed like quite a small row of shops underground but once we went in (and lost a little bit) we saw it was loads of shops ranging from 3rd basement level to 6th floor!

Our second day in KL we became mega tourists. At our hotel we bought tickets for a bus tour which you can jump on and off whenever you like to go see the sites. We did manage to see lots of nice buildings on the bus, but we mainly wanted to go see the large park where there were lots of things to do! The first thing we did in the park was go to the butterfly gardens, an area with lots of butterflies obviously! After seeing all the butterflies, there were some other insects in boxes some of which were very scary looking!

After the butterflies, we went for a bit of lunch at the restaurant attached to our next destination - the KL Bird Park. We ate in the outside area, where you can see into the park itself and when I had finished a very cheeky bird came and ate my leftover rice! the bird park itself was really good, we saw loads! Roaming free were lots of peafowl, ibis and others I don't know the name of! We were walking around here for ages and ended up incredibly tired, probably due to our lack of fitness.

After this, we went to the planetarium, which was the cheapest attraction at only RM1 (20p)! This was pretty fun, mainly aimed at children but we didn't care! Lots of things to play with and do, definitely the best value for money thing we did in the park. After a short walk we were back on the bus and decided to get off next to a place on the map for "authentic malay food" - sounds good to us! We got off, went for a wonder and ended up coming across a pretty big night market, where we were the only tourists as far as I could tell.

After we ate, we thought we might just be in time for the (stupidly early - 8:30 pm) last bus to get back to our hotel. We waited about 40 minutes and gave up and just got a taxi...

That was it for KL! We decided to go to Penang to come and see some dragon boat racing so we headed back to KL Sentral to see if any tickets were available today, which they were but only in first class - still only 15 pound a ticket though!

The train was originally meant to leave at about 3 and arrive at 9 pm - this would have left us enough time to get the very cheap ferry over and find somewhere to stay. But then we were told the train was delayed until 4, that was fine - we would arrive at 10 and probably miss the ferry but there were other options. We got let on the train at 4 but it didn't leave straight away, there was a problem with the air conditioning so we had to wait another 2 hours and finally left at about 6:15! As if that wasn't enough, as we were nearing the end of our train journey we were told there is a problem with the line and we had to get a bus for the last bit! Once we arrived we shared a taxi with a nice Australian couple and we decided to stay up to save some money - so we are now wasting time in an internet cafe probably saving not so much money! We are planning to move north where the dragon boats are later today after breakfast (with lots of coffee) and sorry if this was all jibberish it is currently 4:20 am here!

Byee!!!!

Ao Nang post edits

I've edited the Ao Nang post because I realised I forgot to finish it! There is lots more there now, including our cookery!

Phuket

Did they make it to Malaysia?
Was the van a rickety 4x4? Find out here!

I'll break the tension now - the van was a mini bus! It was actually two, since they decided to make an extended stop to wait for a new van and to grill us about where we were going so they could try and sell us stuff. The journey was interesting - there were no seatbelts and the driver wasn't afraid to go at breakneck speed, even though his van made concerning creaking sounds going round corners. John and I were also in the front with the driver because they wanted to fit as many people as possible in! Funniest moment was when the driver looped his seatbelt round the hand break to go past the police, then removed it again afterwards, laughing.

We arrived exhausted at Phuket Town, and was immediately accosted by travel agents, who offered us a room for 500B. It was a shared bathroom, but good enough for one night (or so we thought!). We also booked an overpriced early morning taxi.

The room itself was basically a white box, with no outside windows (only one out to the hall) and a simple bed and wardrobe. It looked like what I imagine a psychiatric hospital would look like, and John thought it looked like a prison (which was quite apt as we later discovered). We actually had the bathroom to ourselves, but it was dank and down a dark hallway and I was actually so scared of it that I made John come with me in the night!

I wasn't sure if we needed passport photos to get into Malaysia, so on the advice of the hotel staff we popped over to the Tesco Lotus to get some done. I say popped over, but it was actually across a 10 lane busy road, and crossings don't exist in Thailand. There was a set of traffic lights, but not for all of the lanes. After much discussion of tactics and scouting of the traffic patterns, we eventually made it across unharmed, although I was close to being hit by a motorcyclist weaving through the lanes. To add insult to injury, a street dog trotted across quite happily just after we did.

The Tesco Lotus was enormous, and we had a good old look around while we checked on the photo requirements. It turned out we didn't need pictures, so we went for a walk to explore the area. We eventually realised that we were not, in fact, in Phuket Town. Or really very near it. We hopped in a taxi and went to the actual Phuket Town to find some food, then we got a nice early night ready for our early morning taxi.

I slept really badly because of the creepy room and the deserted corridor to the bathroom - I kept having nightmares! We woke up nice and early, had a random breakfast of food we'd bought the previous day at Tesco, checked our bags and headed downstairs to the back entrance where we were meeting our taxi. When we got down, we found that the back entrance was locked. as was the front entrance. As were all the windows. We were a few minutes early anyway, so we decided to wait for a bit. While we were doing that we checked the tickets and realised we had got the time wrong, the plane was actually 45 minutes earlier than we thought it was. Mildly concerning, but we'd left plenty of time so no worries. Since we were waiting anyway we decided to check in online to save time once we arrived. Oddly, the check in for our plane said it had closed at 7:30 - but it was only 5:50. Then I noticed the date on the check in, which happened to be a week previous. Oops! No idea how we did that!

There was still no taxi and our meeting time had passed so I rang the emergency number to say that we'd been locked in. The taxi driver came and let us out, but really! What if there had been a fire?!?

We easily managed to buy new tickets on the same aeroplane as we were originally scheduled to catch and we arrived in Malaysia at 10:30 local time safe and sound!

John is going to write a post about Malaysia so far and upload some pictures at a later date.

Ao Nang

Here's a quick and dirty post while we wait for our van to Phuket! We're a bit nervous about this "van" actually, because we have a feeling it will be the back of a 4x4, clinging on for dear life for 3 hours.

We'll, the last blog post was from Rai Lay, a couple of days before we left. The day after that, we went on a hunt for the viewpoint to the south of the beach. We didn't find it, but we did discover another gorgeous beach. This one was small and enclosed by the cliffs, with lots of climbers (Rai Lay is a climbing mecca, but John wussed out and I decided to retain my dignity). We sat watching the climbers and eating snacks for a couple of hours, then went on the hunt for a boat to Ao Nang, where we had seen a cookery school advertised. We were told that we would have to walk to Rai Lay West beach and try to get a longboat across.

We walked over to the West beach the next morning, and easily found a boat. The driver (captain?) said that we could wait for more people to arrive or pay for the whole boat with the two people who were already waiting. He insisted that nobody was travelling to Ao Nang that day, and we should probably just pay the extra. Handily, we had all the time in the world to wait! Six more people turned up well within half an hour and off we went on a bumpy sea!

We arrived in Ao Nang and went on the hunt for accommodation, but it wasn't as easy as the other places we'd been, and it was hot, so we went to a travel agent to see what was available. She suggested a near-by hotel which charged 400 ฿ a night. The room is quite small, but has a window, flushing toilet and hot water.

We've spent most of our time in Ao Nang wandering around exploring and chilling out. We've discovered a strip of street food which is about 40 ฿ a dish (80p) and have been eating there for almost every meal!

Van is due to arrive any minute now, so


To Be Continued....

EDIT

I realised on the train that I never finished this post, just skipped over to Phuket! It is 2:20 here, and we've just arrived in Penang too late to get a room so I anticipate this post may spiral into incoherence.

Anywho, Ao Nang! Our hotel was on a big road perpendicular to the main strip along the beach, so we spent the fist afternoon and evening wandering up and down the strip, looking in shops and being hounded by touts. John wasn't impressed that my method for evading the touts involves saying "we'll come back later!" because they all remembered us when we went past a second time! There was one pizza restaurant where I accidentally used the same evasion script twice (which was saying "Sorry, we've just eaten" while holding my stomach. Yes, I had actions and everything!") The second time I said this, the guy went"You walked past earlier and said you've just eaten, now you're saying you've just eaten!!". I told him we'd come back later. Since the restaurant was in the middle of the main strip, we thought we'd better go on the first night and get it over and done with. We arrived that evening to cheers and clapping from the touts, which was nice. When we left I told them they had to leave us alone after that, which they did. Mostly.

We took a couple of walks up the hill through the local village to the post office to post some mystery packages to unsuspecting people. It was about a 40 minute walk, going past lots of interesting shops (like a big bookshop!!) and a gorgeous mosque. We also both got our hair cut at a salon on the hill, mine was a trim but John got his all cut off! They blow dried my hair into a hilarious Princess Diana-esque bouffant and they combed John's forward onto his forehead with what was either some kind of heavy serum or wet look gel (I got a picture of this!) Lots of people have commented on my hair because it's blonde and curly - I guess it's exotic? All of the dyed sections have been trimmed off my hair now, so I no longer have roots! Hooray! (I know this detail will fascinate everyone.) The bill somehow doubled itself in the time between the owner showing us the price list and us actually paying, but we were too lazy to argue.

On our last day, and really the reason we went to Ao Nang at all, was Ya's cooking school! There were three other people learning with us, two friendly young Canadian guys and a nice Australian lady. As me and John got ready for the cooking we joked about whether Ya was on Gordon Ramsay's series on SE Asia.

We started the course by preparing the ingredients for our curry pastes. There were two steps to this, bang bang and chop chop. We were provided with batons for the bang bang and very sharp knives for the chop chop and got banging and chopping! Next we did Pad Thai and sticky rice with mango - which was my favourite dish. We also made spring rolls, two types of stir fry, two soups, three curries and a raw papaya salad.

It was a busy day but a lot of fun, and we got to eat the food. Well, as much of it as we could (and we took home leftovers!). When we were chatting to Ya, she asked us if we'd heard of Gordon Ramsay, which of course we had! It turns out that she actually HAD been on his show! We were very excited, she was quite bemused because she hadn't even heard of him before she was contacted to do the show. Apparently he was extremely friendly and polite and didn't swear at all. He was feeling homesick apparently, as he'd been away from home for a while at this point. We told her we'd seen the first in the series before we left, which was Cambodia. She was really interested in what they'd cooked because she's originally from East Thailand where the food is similar (they border each other). We told her about the half formed chicks and the cockroaches and she nodded away. Apparently they only eat cockroaches from the trees (some particular species) as they perceive the ones on the floor to be dirty.

That's me all up-to-date as far as the beginning of the Phuket post! Phew!