Thailand - Lazy Style!

We got back to Thailand a few weeks ago and haven't done much of anything with our time. We stayed in Hat Yai for a few days then continued up North to Krabi. We first tried beaching at Ao Nang but it had a distinctly "5 star family resort" feeling about it. And while that's not a bad thing, it isn't really what we had in mind.

As luck would have it, two friends of mine from Canada happened to be on Ko Lanta, an island a few hours away from Ao Nang. We boogied over there and had a fabulous four days, possibly longer, with them before their visa ran out and they had to head over to Malaysia*. We ended up staying on Ko Lanta for 10 days and enjoying each one, though neither of us have any idea where the time went. Our usual day consisted only of a 1.5 hr walk in the morning, breakfast, 2 h on the internet, lunch, some tv/reading, dinner, movie on tv, and bedtime. That isn't much to accomplish in a day, but it was a nice chance to chill out.

We eventually decided we needed a change of pace or risk permanent settlement in our lovely Ko Lanta cabin. We moved over to Ko Phi Phi and were suddenly in the thick of backpacker-land. This isn't to say it's bad, but it's one of those beach towns that doesn't pay much attention to the beach. Instead, the "town" is made up of snaking alleys of pubs, t-shirt shops and booze stalls. Some people's heaven, I know, but after a few days of grumpy service and drunk 20-somethings, we'd had enough and decided to dash back to the mainland for a few days in Phuket Town, where we are now.

The only other thing to mention was the terrifying ferry crossing to Phuket. I would never claim to be the best in boats, but we were both somewhere between green with seasickness and white with fear by the end of the trip. The boat kept luching and rolling side-to-side while huge waves smashed into the boat head-on. If this wasn't bad enough, the unatural creaking of the ferry, screams of locals and retching of tourists was enough to make fear creep into the boldest heart and bile rise in the most resolute throat. We were both very happy to hit the mainland, ship intact.

Tomorrow we head to Hong Kong and the real countdown to home is on - only about two weeks as of now. We'll be in Hong Kong for about nine days, then back in Thailand for another five. We head back to Australia on the 27th (and Broome on the 2nd), so to the people there, we'll see you soon!

Sorry about the lack of photos. I'll try to post some soon.

* We have come down with a serious case of "island time" and can't distinguish one day from another, so exact day counts can be tricky.

Things we did in Malaysia

Okay, behind again (surprise, surprise).

What we did long ago in Sabah...

We arrived in Kuching after our time diving near Kota Kinabalu. What a fabulous place! There were so many things to do in "day-trip-able" distance. We started it off by heading out to see the Rafflesia, Malaysia's big smelly flower that can grow to about one meter across and apparently smells like badly rotten meat when it blooms. Happily we missed the reek, but had the good fortune to see two of them (they have no specific blooming season and are only open for about nine days). This is one of the few things that Phil had not seen during his two previous trips to Malaysia.

The other happened to be some rehabilitated orang-utans. We met a very nice Aussie on our last day in KK who had been to the Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre and said that not only had he seen about seven of them, his whole group had been chased by Richie, the dominant male. Richie looked a lot more chilled out when we saw him (thankfully because he's huge) and we also got to see a number of mellow females and some very active babies. They only come down to be fed when there isn't much fruit available in the forest, so we were lucky to be there at the right time and get to see all the fun.

And continuing with the theme of luck, we got to see some great stuff in Bako National Park. Not only did we get to see a lot of fabulous Proboscis monkeys (all of whom look like little old men wearing white underpants) but we also had the amazing luck to see a flying lemur (a nocturnal animal) during the daytime! It was great, but of course I don't have a picture to post (though Leigh should be proud because all the ones up are ours, including the proboscis monkey who was only about five meters from Phil, happily munching on leaves, when this picture was taken). We did a number of very sweaty walks in the rainforest but saw the best wildlife near the park headquarters.

After Kuching we headed to Melaka, a town on the coast just South of Kuala Lumpur. Like everything we saw in Malaysia, we were happily surprised. The town was lovely, with a nice little canal running through it which you could stroll beside. We stayed in Chinatown and had the good fortune to be there for the weekend evening market where we ate our fair share of dim sums and little chocolate/caramel filled pancakes. Yummy.

Melaka also offers an astounding number of museums and historical buildings which we checked out. Phil obviosly enjoyed the Maritime Museum (yarr!) and there was an interesting, but incredibly hot, Beauty Museum which documented various types of mutilation-for-beauty (piercings, neck/ear/etc stretching, waist-cynching).

After a very full few weeks of intensive sightseeing (well, for the likes of us anyway), we had one evening in Kuala Lumpur's chinatown before starting our two-day bus ride up to the border with Thailand on some very comfy buses.