Malaysia-licious

After a very brief stint back in Delhi, only because we couldn't get on a flight to Bangkok the same day as our Kathmandu-Delhi flight, we headed on to Thailand. My goodness, I never noticed how clean and orderly that country is. Imagine if I had returned to Canada or Australia right from India - I would have been gob-smacked for days. As it was, I spent the first day wandering around open-mouthed and enjoying the peace and quiet. We even went to McDonalds - hmmm, little burgers for the first time in 6 months! - and everyone did exactly what they should. No one cut in. No one let their children make a horrible mess and scream and shout. No one left their stuff behind on the table (and floor, and chairs...). It just all worked. Ah, amazing.

We have spent most of the two weeks post-India not doing much at all. In Bangkok we walked around, shopped a little, both got haircuts (mine is very short now and a nice change). We flew from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and did the same - walked and shopped (though didn't get much as that city is expensive!).

About a week ago we flew into Kota Kinabalu (KK) and onwards to the dive resort of Layang Layang. The diving there was fabulous! We saw a whole school of hammerhead sharks (!!), a huge turtle, some nice reef sharks, some enormous tuna, a few excellent lionfish, as well as all the usual suspects who hang around on the reef. Housekeeping staff provided a new towel animal everyday, much to our delight.

The downside was that the resort was a bit of a dump, the dive groups were twice as big as they should have been (11-12 people), and simple things like mask de-fogger were missing. All in all, glad we went, won't be going again.

I should also mention that Phil fell through a step (the wood had rotten away) about 15 mins before our last dive, just as we were heading out to get suited up, and got a nasty gash on his leg which meant we didn't go out diving. Not to worry! We got Phil all pumped full of tetnus shot goodness when we arrived back in KK yesterday and even fanagled some free t-shirts from the resort. Except for some soreness (which seems to be a 50/50 split between his gash and where he got his injection!) and a cool scar-to-be he's doing well and in very good spirits.

The upcoming plan is roughtly this: we are heading to Kuching for a few days (national park, museums), then onto Melaka (near KL). From there we will head North back to Thailand for a few weeks of loafing in the sun at Krabi and Ko Phi Phi (maybe Phuket as well?), then back to Bangkok where we are hoping to take a quick hop over to Hong Kong to see some friends of Phil's, then back to Australia for early June. This is all very likely to change.

Sorry for not keeping the blog up well lately! We'll try to update more often. Now, we're off to eat satay!

NEPAL

Quite surreal arriving in Kathmandu, it seemed so quiet, yeah OK there was the occasional honk of a car horn, but it was so quiet! It didn't even seem to be that polluted, or maybe we were just still scarred from India. We got a nice hotel for a few days and we managed to meet up with Andrea's friend from home, Barb, so that was nice seeing a friendly face, even if it was just for one day! Our stay in Kathmandu became extended as we both suffered from a dose of the flu, so most of the time was spent in our hotel room, oh the joys of travelling. We didn't miss much, we checked out the busy tourist area of Thamel, which is perfect if you want to buy counterfeit clothing or watch young kids sniffing solvents on the street, but quite frankly we could have stayed in Sunderland to see this. We did enjoy the tourist friendly restaurants, something that India seems to have completely missed the boat on.

We did check out the marvellously surreal temple to the tooth ache god! A gnarled lump of wood that is completely covered in coins which have been nailed in the wood?? I can't think of anything witty to write about the possible link between toothache, a lump of wood and nailed coins. Any suggestions please....

Once we'd semi recovered we headed to Pokhara, a wonderful, albeit touristy, town on the side of a lake with magnificent mountain views. But with it's easy to walk on streets, lack of hassle, great selection of eateries and bars. Compared to India it was heaven.

It was from here we organised our trek. We were to do the Annapurna Sanctuary trek to the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) 4100 M , and we selected a route that would take 11 days.

The trekking was amazing, and it's made so much more comfortable due to the number of small guest houses that line the trails. So unlike other treks there's no need to sleep in a tent and eat out in the cold. No, here you got private rooms with real beds (!), hot showers, a fine selection of food choices and even heaters under the dinner tables. Luxury! Our guide and porter made the whole experience hassle free.

We had good weather which allowed us some wonderful views. It certainly got colder the higher we got, and we were very thankful for our rented down sleeping bags and jackets.

Unfortunately Andrea's knees were playing up, if she had made it up to the base camp it would have meant a slow and very painful descent. So to avoid any major knee damage she took a rest day as I pushed on. Once at the base camp the snow fall was so heavy I couldn't actually see anything! The snow continued during the night and there was a risk of being snowed in here! Fortunately the snow had stopped and the morning was virtually clear and the views around the base camp were amazing. It sits in this large bowl surrounded by a ring of peaks, some over 8000m. I didn't stay long this morning as we had to get moving incase of any more snow and we had to pass a few avalanche prone areas before it got too late into the day.

This also gave me plenty of time to catch up to Andrea.

With Andrea's knees giving trouble on the down, we opted for a short cut home, which saved us 2 days! Hooray!

We didn't spot any yaks or a yeti, but we did find a dead drowned rat in one of the toilets!

The last few hours of the trek were relaxing. It was funny passing trekkers who were just starting their trek, should they be envious of us on the brink of being home after 9 days, or should we be envious of them having marvellous days of some of the world's best trekking ahead of them? I think we looked happy, relieved and they looked happy, excited.

The day we finished the trek was the Holi festival day where people (mainly kids) take great joy in covering people (mainly themselves and tourists) in coloured powder. So it was great fun seeing these brightly coloured people everywhere, Andrea ended up with bright red cheeks!

So it was back to Pokhara to get cleaned up after 9 days, get shaved and put on some clean clothes and head out for a few beers and hoped we wouldn't get recovered in paint!

We then headed back to Kathmandu avoiding Maoists, Tibetan demonstrators and anyone else who would slow us down.

India, the final chapter! Camel Strike!

So we rolled on to Jaisalmer, truly in desert country now. We started seeing more of those classic scenes of hundreds of people traveling on the roofs of buses. We also saw a curious convoy of army trucks transporting dozens of office chairs all covered in camouflage material! Who knows where they were heading....hide the chair perhaps? The fort at Jaisalmer was impressive, over a hundred bastions enclosing a 'working town', however a few bastions have collapsed recently due to overcrowding within the fort as it's ancient drainage system can not cope with the volume of er, sewage should we say. Which is quite ironic as since we've been in India we are now quite used to coping with a lot of shit.

We decided to do the tourist thing and a take a Camel safari and stay over night in the desert. So we were driven out into the wilds to met our camel drivers and of course the stars of the show, our camels. Well, they were ill tempered, had shocking teeth, bad breath, constantly farted and were generally a bit miserable......and then we met the camels!

Being on the camels was fun for the first half hour or so, and soon became very boring. Things livened up a little when we reached the sand dunes, but we both felt like kids on a donkey being led up and down a beach. It just seemed a little pointless. The evening was amazing though, they set up a bed for us and we slept in the dunes under the stars. It was so cool waking up in the morning at dawn and watching all the colours change.

We decided to cut our trip short and have one more hour's ride in the dunes before we headed back to town, MISTAKE. Going down one of the steep dunes, my saddle worked it's way loose and started sliding down Simon's neck, ( Simon was the name of my camel), obviously this gave Simon the hump ( sorry, it had to be said!). I'm not an expert but I don't think camel's necks are designed to carry such a weight that was dumped on to it, we have eaten a lot of curries in the last few months. I presumed Simon didn't take well to either my apology or explanation, as this was when he started trying to bite me. I don't think I'll ever forget his face or the noise he was making. Equally I don't think he'll forgot my face or the noise I was making. The saddle continued to slip forward and then sideways, I had flashbacks of Spirit (an unfriendly and ultra high speed horse I had the misfortune of sitting on [I certainly wasn't riding it] in S. Africa) and images of being unceremonilessly dumped head first from what seemed like a great height into the sand. It was quite scary. I managed to free my feet from the 'stirrups' and fortunately Andrea's camel (Daniel, if your interested) was in reaching distance and I ungracefully boarded him.

We decided to walk the rest of the way.

We then took our final train back to Delhi, enjoying the fact that we wouldn't have to do this again. Certainly a time to reflect on our time in India, the negatives certainly outweighed the positives. It certainly can be a frustrating and baffling place. This was completely summed up on a Delhi train platform, in the middle of hundreds of people, where a man had stripped down to his undies and was taking a shower, however no one was taking any notice of him whatsoever as they were all to busy gawking at Andrea, who was dressed very conservatively.

Back in Delhi we took things easy, well as easy as you can in Delhi, and counted down the hours until our flight to Nepal.

Delhi International airport was a joke. You've never seen crowds like, hundreds and hundreds of people at 4 a.m., and this was outside! We thought maybe The Beatles were landing here. Anyway, that wasn't our problem anymore, we'd soon be on a plane out of here........eventually, after the delay of course.