Oct 2006

After another fantasticly speedy connection from KL via taxi – bus – taxi to Malacca, Malaysia’s Cultural Capital, we checked into a nice enough big room for a bargain price of 28 Ringit. Unfortunately, it didn’t have air con, and the heat was stifling. After walking to reception, my shirt was soaked. Sheesh. We asked yer man to keep an auld air con room for us for the morrow and decided we’d have to make do until then.

We headed out onto hazy streets and found shelter in another shopping mall. It’s no wonder they like to shop a lot in Malaysia & Singapore, it’s too bloody hot to be wandering around anywhere without air conditioning. Phewf.

Later we sweated buckets while trying to use the internet and had a terrible time trying to get some sleep in the heat.

The next morning, we gleefully left our bags in reception while a small man cleaned up an air con room for us. We went out and hit a vegetarian food place – only the second one we’ve been in since we’ve been away. We had some fake chicken with cashew nuts and fake ham sandwiches. The fake chicken was quite good, the ham was a bit plasticky.

Anywho, our new room was fantastic. It was huge, clean, bright, had air con and a bathroom and even had two chairs and some places to hang stuff with plenty of hangers. Holy moly. We decided to stay a few days here before hitting Singapore.

We did more shopping, and went on our own guided tour of Malacca. Malacca was in turn invaded and ruled by the Dutch, the Portuguese and the British (surprise surprise) before finally gaining Independence in 1957. There are lots of different ethnic groups here. Descendents of Chinese and Indians whose ancestors sailed to the port here, more than likely to trade and ended up staying and marrying local women. Some retain their religions but yet dress and speak Malay and the Portuguese-Eurasian group speak their own language but dress a lil Malayish.

We visited St Pauls Church, Christ Church (built by the Portuguese), the Stadthuys (official gaff of the Dutch officers), Chinatown, the Mosque, the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia and an Indian (chitty) temple. The sweat was pouring off us and into our eyes. We stopped for lunch at a small café that was housed in an old Chinese house. It was huge and had a really cool courtyard in the middle of the house, where we sat and ate our tuna salads/full breakfasts whilst sipping lemon freezes and ice coffees and perusing a Simpsons Comicbook.

Afterwards we continued on with our sightseeing (see above) and bought me an original Orangutan t shirt from the Orangutan House (there were no orangutans there). Jim didn’t want one although I thought the sausage dog one was cool and would have looked very grand on him.

Then it was onto the shop for two large beers and back to our gaf to shower and drink them in the coolness of Paradise.

Later we went for Indian food in Restaurant Dtandori across the road. The owner was a jovial fat man who chatted to us afterwards for hours about politics, Malaysian culture here and questioned us on the troubles in the north. The food there was scrumptious(I’m tired of saying yummy and delicious). I had boneless fish masala – wow. Jim had butter chicken and we split some naan bread, rice and spinach. Roll us home.

Then it pissed rain so we legged it, the thunder and lightening was very loud and very bright and hella cool.

The next day I got an ear infection somehow, I think it may have been from the air conditioning (saint & sinner) and my head swelled up. The pain was humoungus so I slept all day and then tossed and turned with the pain at night.

Still grimacing with pain the next morning, we jumped in a cab at 8.30am to go to the bus stop, only to discover that there was no available bus to Singapore til 12pm. After booking our tickets however, we discovered another ten bus ticketing counters around the corner. doh! They had a bus leaving at ten am. I ran to the first atm - doesn't take plus cards, to the second - out of order, to the third atm - queue of 6 people, indured 20 minutes of ejits unable to use the machine, a weirdo singing 'how do you solve a problem like maria' at me and trunty other smart asses (men always) practising their Engrish phrases on the girl on her own.
The big balls on them all while jimbob's not around. lol
Anywho, it was all to no avail, as the guy at the counter said that the 10am bus was going via Mwoh or somewhere and wouldn't get into Singapore until the same time. *sigh*

So we went to the net cafe and waited.

Well we headed out into KL to watch the Pool Match.
Finnegans pub was recommended for drinking and sports watching but the drinks were incredibly expensive (all beer is very dear here due to it being a muslim country and what not) so we sipped a couple of beers and watched a terrible Liverpool match. By the time it ended, my eyes hurt from watching so much krap football (he he ) and we were starving so we hit this open air joint for some late night curry and veggies. Delicious and expensive. Eek.

The next day we went to the mall and basically stayed there all day. There was oodles and oodles of stores and they all had so much stuff hanging outside of them that we were bombarded with pictures and sounds… Sensory Overload!! Malaysia is quite westernised and there are lots of cars, less motorbikes, many shops and malls, restaurants, banks etc etc. That evening we went to Chinatown, which is basically a big outdoor market with stalls of t shirts, bags, belts, food, drinks etc. We stumbled across the English girl and her bloke at one of the tables whilst on our search for food. They had had to stay the night in Termerloh after filing a stolen goods (??) report at the police station. They said the police asked them very weird questions like how long were they together and what was her father’s name etc.. :/

We continued on our search for presents and food and finally hottailed it back to the Golden Triangle for some outdoor grub. Here I encountered my meat problem again. Everything has bloody meat in it (well not bloody but I could feel the blood being spilled). So I settled for Spicy bean curd rice which does in fact have bean curd in it (i.e. tofu) but also has krap, pork, prawns and some other unknown meaty substance in it. Yet another occasion when McDonalds sprang to my mind. (ARRGH)
(I meant krab)

The following morning we decided to get up early and queue up for some tickets to the skybridge – the bridge that joins the two Petronas Towers. We got up at 7am, ate some toast with peanut butter and jam stripes (they have peanut butter with jam in the same tub over here – it’s a marvellous timesaving device) and decided to walk up to the Petronas Towers. Well it was a sweaty 40 mins walk, but was going to be well worth it we reckoned. Except for the fact that it was Monday, and the towers aren’t open to the public on Monday! Ahem ………
So back to bed we went for a few hours kip. Later on we explored more malls and Jimbob got a haircut. We drank some expensive beer and decided to try see the towers again tomorrow morning.

Well I couldn’t have been arsed getting up early again the next day. I read in the paper that they’re not all that anyway. I reckon Jim wanted to see them but without me telling him to get up every five minutes, he can’t get it together. Lol.
Anywho, we hit the road to Melacca.

The minute we entered Malaysia via the small town of Kota Bahru, some jolly dude was offering us a ‘special price’ to the Perhentian Islands. These islands are supposed to be absolutely gorgeous with one of the best beaches in South East Asia on Kecil Island. However, we’d just spent two weeks on a beach, plus it is now monsoon season. The dive shops, beaches & hotels are all closed until March or so.

So we kindly rejected his offer and hopped onto the number 29 bus to Kota Bahru – the most Malaysian city in Malaysia – according to some Polish dude we met at the bus stop. He was a bit odd in my opinion as; he LOVED Bangkok, he didn’t like the rest of Thailand as it was too developed, he had a tinchy ponytail, he wanted to stay in Kota Bahru for five days even though there is nowt to see there as he thinks it is a purer part of Malaysia and wasn’t going to do the islands or get the jungle train but go straight from Kota Bahru to Penang. Hmmm. He said he had work to do. He he

Trying to get ourselves and our bags onto the bus itself was a bit of a pain in the nads. We had to step over a bunch of young fellas doing their best English impressions – “my names is michael Jackson, ooh you are so beautiful, do you have a map of Malaysia etc” and sit down the back in front of Madser McGinty himself. A slightly jovial, crazy dude who was telling me he was from Australia (yeah right you are buddy) and then tried to make friends by giving me a present of some money. I wouldn’t mind but it was Thai money. No good to me now, ‘mate’.

We jumped off the bus, bid adieu to the Polish guy – who had opted to stay in the scuzziest backpacker joint in town (probably to be cool) even though it was the same price as the nice one we were off to, (it’s even described as ‘grungy’ in his guidebook??) and headed up the road.

Kota Bahru was a nice enough joint, but more of a stopover town. The hostel we hit was quite homely and we got a fairly breezy room for our one night there. We headed out to get a bit of grub. The majority of people in Kota Bahru are Muslim and they’re all off their food at the moment for Rahmadan. So basically it’s tough to get a decent bite to eat round these parts. It is also not a good country for a vegetarian. There is a huge Chinese & Indian population in Malaysia too and of course they all have their own restaurants. There is a large amount of Chinese restaurants but everything contains pork. In contrast Muslims don’t allow the eating of pork, and they don’t like pork on their premises. It would have been very difficult and maybe even dangerous if I had been travelling with a small pot-bellied pig.
Anywho, grub was basically rice as some people obviously don’t know how to make chicken noodles with vegetables into a vegetarian dish.
Off we rambled around town but there really wasn’t much to see. We went to ‘The Store’ and bought some supplies. Wow. I know.

The main reason we had come to KB was to catch the Jungle Line Train from Kota Bahru all the way down to Mentacab, and onto Kuala Lumpur. So the next morning, it was up and atom again at half five and off to the train station with another couple – one English bird and her fella. The train itself was a bit like a truck attached to a carriage attached to a carriage attached to another truck. It stopped at every little kampung along the way and lots of ladies in headscarves and men in tiny hats lugged bags and boxes and carts of beans, chillies, fish, potatoes, vegetables and other assorted goodies on and off the train. We had very comfy chairs however and we settled down to enjoy the ten hour journey through the jungle.

Weeelll it wasn’t half as scenic as I thought it would be, but it was comfy and there was a toilet. We got to see some ladies praising Allah in the seats in front of us and there was much hustle and bustle going on to amuse us no end.

There was a couple of Canadian lads beside us and the couple we had arrived at the station with had sat down the back of the carriage. Towards the end of the journey, the English girl – Vicky – told us that while they were asleep, some guy had propped a towel up around their seat to cover what he was doing, and stolen their ipod, camera and money from under their seats. Apparently the robber had been sitting behind all of us Gringoes at some stage or another during the journey but luckily for the rest of us, he didn’t manage to get his greasy paws on our junk.

The couple were getting off at Mentacab with us, but they had to take a detour to the police station, so we jumped in a private car and headed to the bus stop to kick on down to Kuala Lumpur. We could have waited with them, but Jimbob wanted to watch the Liverpool match so we had to get to town to watch it.

Well twas the speediest of connections. Within a half hour of getting off the train, we were on an icy cold bus to Kuala Lumpur. We arrived at our hostel and were showered and ready to go and watch the match by 9.50. Wow.

Well the rest of the week in Koh Phangan was much the same. Sleeping, sunbathing, drinking whiskey and generally being lazy arses.

On the final day of our second Thai visa, we thought we had better get a move on. Although on the way down the beach we DID consider extending our stay again, but good sense got the better of us, well not really. We stayed up drinking and shenaniganising til all hours in the morning, and then had to get up a few minutes later at 5.30am to get the ferry.

We gottttttttt (Deep Breath) a mini bus to a ferry to another bus to a shop where we got duped into changing our money into Malaysian ringitts at an extorniate rate, then a jeep to a mini bus to a car to a place where we got another mini bus all the way down to Sungai Kolok – aka the eastern border crossing point between Thailand and Malaysia. This 600 km journey took 15 hours.
Rediculous I know.

Needless to say by the time we got to the border town of Sungai Kolok, the border was closed. (That bint in the shop was going hell for leather urging us to change our money into Malaysian Ringitts even though she knew we wouldn’t see that side of Malaysia today – she left us broke and sharing one eggy-ricey dinner between us as we couldn’t pay for two –much to the dismay and anger of another fat old Thai woman.)

So our very nice mini bus driver dropped us to a small hotel in Sungai Kolok. It was a fabulous room with some very welcome air conditioning. We headed around the corner to a small ‘buffet’ (ahahahha) where we pointed at dishes and laughed nervously as small Thai women piled weird food that had probably been sitting there all day onto humoungous mounds of rice for us. That was munched with a GIANT beer each, which was desmegginglicious.

The next morning we climbed onto the back of two motorbikes with our giant bags on our backs (Vietnam Stylee) and zoomed off to the border crossing point. We had to pay a tenner each for overstaying our visa by one day (that ould biddy’s fault again) and then onwards we trotted into the Kingdom of Malaysia.

We left Phi-Phi on a smaller boat than the one we arrived on. It was full of people all basking in the sun out on the top deck nearly all of which were headed for the Islands on the East coast. The trip from phi phi to Phangan took a little longer than we originally estimated. In the tour shop it said “arrive Phangan 5:30pm” this however turned out to be “arrive Phangan 10:30pm” grrr. After the first boat trip we had to wait around for about 45 min to get on a bus to bring us to a bigger bus that proceeded to drive at a top speed of 40km per hour. The roads are excellent and there isnt that much traffic on them at all, but the buses still drive very very slow (Everyone drives slower than Vietnamese drivers).

So from the big bus to a lunch stop for some tasty noodle soup and an hour wait, then another bus to the port - another hour wait. Finally we boarded a car Ferry at dusk and headed off on the 4 hour 2 knots an hour journey to Phangan. We kept our spirits up with a nice cold chang beer and the backpacker’s trusty friend… Mr Super Noodle.

Since we were arriving kinda late, we didn’t want to have to go looking around for accommodation. So we booked a bungalow near the port area for the night. The place was new and quite nice, but WAY to far away from all the full moon party action the far eastern side - “Had Rin” Beach. We got up early the next morning, checked out and left our bags in the overnight place to go searching for some accommodation near Had Rin.

We jumped in the back of a local taxi and headed for had rin, keeping our eyes pealed for names of resorts we (Lisa) had been looking at online. All the places we had read about were a few miles away from Had Rin and up REALLY steep hills. We rented a moped in Had Rin and drove about the place looking for a bungalow with a nice beach view and not to far away from the centre. This proved to be very difficult, and after a lot of looking on the southern part of the island we decided Had Rins beach (sunrise beach, on the East side) was the one for us. With lots of nice white sand and being right beside everything, we would put up with the loud party town reputation it has and stay there.

On the quiet end of the beach we noticed some bungalows on the small hillside overlooking the beach and the sea. Ten minutes later we had paid the (so-so interested
) lady of Moutiainside Bungalows for our first night of many we would stay in our little tropical bungalow. It reminded us a lot of the one in Koh Tao, but with less places for woogies to crawl in at night. Plus it had a great view of the whole beach, all the bars and importantly the sea. It was also only 350baht a night and meant we wouldn’t have to rent a moped to get anywhere. It took us two runs, some sunburnt arms and all the petrol we had put in the bike that morning to get our bags over to our new bungalow.

We spent the next week exploring Had Rins shops and restaurants and lazing about on the beach during the day. It’s a nice little town with lots of restaurants showing movies all day and a couple of cafes (which we became fond of) exclusively playing friends episodes every minute of the day and night. The weather was gorgeous most days with the occasional shower that lasts for a few minutes and then out comes the sun again. We even bought a big yellow hammock for our balcony to lie in and read Jeffrey Deaver books in. After Wordsworth (AKA Lisa) seen the secondhand bookstore, shes been going through Jeffrey Deaver novels like a fat kid goes through cake. Now she has me obsessed with them, they are a good read tho. Like CSI on the TV, but without all the slow motion boob shots. Anyway what else we get up to, I got my phone fixed for a tenner so we could finally get some texts again. We drank more lovely Thai Whiskey and beer, bought some pirated DVD’s and bummed about til the full moon party.

Everynight running up to the party we contemplated whhyyy did we pick this beach to stay in as we tried to get some sleep. At about 12am each night, all the beach bars/clubs lash up the volume of their speakers trying to outdo eah other. We kinda got used to it tho and some tissue in the ears worked a treat.

The day before the full moon party I felt like shit, must have gotten a bug or the flu… but I was not in good form. Luckily the evening of the party I felt better and was able to help Lisa drink some buckets!!! The party was well organised with about 6 areas playing music. One place near us, a big place on the beach erected especially for the party, the usual bars on the beach further down and finally at the end of the beach the original party organisers at paradise bungalows also playing music.

Come 11pm the place was packed with loads of drunken people all over the beach with lots of fleurecsent paint on them. Their was a good atmosphere about the place and occasionally we heard one of two good tracks in diff places but all in all the music as we much expected left a lot to be desired. Then again I suppose we are a copule of music snobs, whereas everyone else there just wanted to get out of it and dance to something familiar, or just really fast and loud and maybe jump through the odd hoop of fire. The party went on until about 8am the next morning with speedboats constantly picking up and dropping off partygoers from Ko Samui nearby. I think we stumbled home around 3ish Lisa donning some lilluminous glasses and a half drunk bucket of whiskey.

The next morning our water wasn’t working and the Aussie girl next door told us they had seen some guy out of it on a mushroom shake climbing around the back of our hut and ontop of their roof trying to find the party. They told him he was in a bush and not the beach. Then he told them he was trying to get to Devon LOL.. so they brought him down to the beach and let him swim to the English channel. Unfortunatley for us tho, this was not before the twat had climbed over our water pipe, breaking it and sending water everywhere. One of the guys next door tried to fix it and turned off the tap to stop the flow til it was fixed. Which wasn’t til about a stinky 5pm the next
day haha.