Photo update

View from the balcony of our first bungalow in Koh Tao.

View from our Shark Bay bungalow in Koh Tao.

Nang Yuan island and the beach that connects three islands, near Koh Tao.


Part of a Burmese Buddhist temple in Georgetown, Penang island.

Kapitan Keling Mosque, Georgetown, Penang island.

A Chinese Temple near Kapitan Keling Mosque.

Roof of a Hindu temple, just between the Buddhist temple and the Mosque.

Hawker stall food market in Georgetown (off MacAlister Road).


Fields of tea in Cameron Highlands.

The jungle path that we followed on our trek near Tanah Rata in Cameron Highlands.

Copyright of all pictures: Boyfriend.

Ipoh & Cameron Highlands.

We spent two days in Ipoh, a non-touristy normal city with some colonial history and amazing mountain views. The mountains were exactly like the ones in Guilin (Southern China), but covered in dense jungle and hence very green.

On the first day we visited a water park called Lost World of Tambun, located just at the base of those gorgeous mountains. First point of interest was the advocated swimwear. Non-Muslims were allowed normal swimsuits, but everyone seemed to wear a t-shirt on top of it, so that's what I did too. Muslims however had to wear full-length swimwear covering arms and legs, and for women it included a scarf made of swimwear material, and this was called the burkini.

The second point of interest was the water slides. For all of them you had to sit on a double tube, so for all of them you needed two people. The maximum weight for the riders was 200 kg, and being not-so-small non-Asians we were on the upper limits of it. We figured that it can't be that bad and went for the first one. It turned out to be a blackened out tunnel, so we could see nothing, and due to our heavy weight the ride was scarily fast and there was nothing we could do to slow it down! The first curves I screamed out of joy, then the next ones out of fear, and then we flipped over! After landing to the pool and checking that no damage was done, we went for the next ride! That one was half-open tube, and we realised that we might flip over the side if we got too fast... so I did all I could to slow us down. And there wasn't a third ride as we were brought a form to sign saying that we've been advised that we are not fit for these rides!

So rest of the day we floated down a long waveriver admiring the mountains, swam in the wave pool, went to see the tigers they had and sat in hot springs. It was very relaxing day all in all. In the evening we sampled local Chinese food - boiled chicken in soy sauce with some delicious Ipoh beansprouts.

The second day we spent touring the Old City with some impressive colonial buildings and Mosques, and I've never been so hot in my life! The sun was really intense, and we were no longer sticky with sweat, but slippery from the streams of it! We lunched on a small food court, and after we'd finished our nasi goreng and mee goreng, an older Malaysian man came to chat with us. He asked where we were from, and started telling about his life, job, salary, Malaysian school system (how it all used to be in English) and his opinions on news and politics. Very interesting, and shows how open the people here are. And how well people speak English! Just like the other night in Penang where Boyfriend went to ask an older lady which stall she'd bought her noodles from, and he got a detailed explanation in pristine English!

So after the very hot day we took a local bus to Tamah Rata in Cameron Highlands. The local buses here are great - I've never had as much leg space in any other bus. And on arrival to Cameron Highlands we were positively surprised - it was no longer hot but lovely and even cool 25C. We found a relaxed hostel, but it was full, so we got a discounted price for the hotel of the same chain. However we didn't want to let go of the hostel atmosphere, so we've been going to the hostel bar every night to sit by the campfire and meet people.

On our first full day here we went on a Mossy Forest tour. We toured the beautiful tea plantations and visited a tea factory, visited the highest point in Cameron Highlands (at 6666 ft, or bit over 2000 m) and had a very short and fairly muddy walk in the very mossy forest. After that we had a chance to visit the Butterfly Garden, and it was definitely worth the visit as I've never seen such large butterflies and all the interesting insects and reptiles too - we could've spend there hours. So the tour gave us a really good impression on the surroundings.

However, the tour didn't include any jungle trekking, and that is something that Boyfriend has been really wanting to do. So this morning we went trekking on one of the local trails which was meant to be relatively easy and level, but turned out that it went straight up to one of the taller mountains. The jungle was beautiful, the path up was steps formed of tree roots, and the view from the top was much better when we'd done the hard work getting up there! But I have to say we're exhausted now and need an early bed to catch a bus to Kuala Lumpur tomorrow morning...!

Penang, Malaysia.

Whilst wanting to stay on Koh Tao for the next forever, we realised that if we want to see more of SE Asia we'd better get going again. We considered other Thai islands, but decided that they would be very similar and a bit over our budget. So we took a night boat (very cramped but ok for sleeping) and about five different minibuses to get to Penang Island (Western Peninsular Malaysia). The first impressions when crossing the border included surprise how clean and developed the country is! No rubbish by the roads, most buildings are modern and well-kept, and everyone seems to drive a nice car (instead of a pick-up like in Thailand). And how everyone here speaks fluent English!

The last bit of minibus drive from Hat Yai in Thailand to Penang had a nice twist, as the minibus broke down on the 14-km long four-lane highway bridge leading to Penang. So we sat by the roadside waiting for our rescue (the driver didn't exactly communicate with us what was happening), which turned out to be a towing car and another minibus picking us up at the other side of the bridge.

We've been staying in the old area of Georgetown, which is a world heritage site and quite beautiful although in some state of disrepair. The population of the island is a mix of Malays, Chinese and Indians, with some European, Burmese, Javanese, and many others thrown in. In the old city there is Little India with some great curry houses (for example Kapitan's) and a more Chinese area with Clan houses, jewelry shops and dim sum restaurants. On one of the streets there are a Catholic church, a large Mosque, a Buddhist temple and a Hindu temple... so quite a melting pot!

Yesterday we did a larger tour of the island and visited a beautiful Burmese temple with impressive woodwork, another Hindu temple, a Chinese Buddhist Snake temple and apparently SE Asia's largest Buddhist temple (Kek Lok Si) with a 30-m tall Bronze statue of Goddess of Mercy. The tour also included a visit to Botanical Gardens where we took the opportunity to walk a bit in the jungle, and ended up with visits to Batik factory and a chocolate shop!

When we've been asking people what we should do in Penang, everyone always answers: "Eat!" So we have! We acquired a map of the Penang food trail (in Chinese though), which handily shows pictures of all the local specialities and where to find them. But as the map is in Chinese, I really don't know the names of the dishes too well! We've had soup noodles, dry noodles, fat noodles, thin noodles, medium noodles, egg noodles, rice noodles, green noodles, and some rice-based dishes and Indian curries! Almost all of our food has been bought from hawker stalls, each selling only one or two different dishes, and eaten on the street. Very cheap and very delicious!

Although Georgetown is about half a million people, the backpacker area and historical centre are quite small. There are not too many travellers here, but enough for the guesthouses to exist, and we keep running into the same people again. Makes it feel like we know this place! And as small as the world is, we also ran into a university friend of ours last night at Kapitan's, leading to a fun night out with his entourage and lots of travel stories being told.

Tomorrow we're maybe headed to Ipoh (about halfway from here to Kuala Lumpur), but that's still uncertain. Obviously not a lot of pre-planning goes on here!

Scuba diving and Chalok Bay.

The diving school we chose for Boyfriend's Open Water course and my fun dives was Scuba Junction, which turned out to be a stellar choice. The instructors were top quality, the safety top priority, but still the atmosphere was relaxed and friendly. In addition to usual equipment, training and discounted accommodation, they also provided diving insurance (one of the very few dive schools who do that), free internet and help in finding our next accommodation and even a free ride there! I warmly recommend Scuba Junction to anyone planning to dive at Koh Tao!

Boyfriend had very hectic four days learning all the theory and scuba skills, but I feel he was taught a lot more than I was last year at Phoenix. I did a quick refresher course to update my skills, and I felt much more comfortable with my dive master than I ever previously did. She did perfect job briefing the dive site as well as the fish and corals that we'd encounter underwater. Last year I had no idea what we'd seen!

As Boyfriend was the only person on his course (!), I got to dive as his buddy on his final two dives. First of those was at Southwest Pinnacle, a fair distance away from the calm waters near Koh Tao. There we saw huge schools of large barracuda, maybe thousands of them, circling around the pinnacle and around us. Amazing! The pinnacle was covered in sea anemones, which I've always found very pretty and unworldly. On the second dive we were at Twins, and somehow it was full of life (unlike a couple of days earlier) with lots of exotic marine animals, including a huge titan triggerfish swimming between us (they bite, but luckily not us!), blue-spotted stingray, white-eyed moray eels, butterflyfish, batfish, angelfish, etc etc. Boyfriend dove really well and I'm really looking forward to future dives with him.

To recover from all the diving we've retreated to other side of Koh Tao. We've been spending time in the beach cafes of Chalok Bay and are going snorkelling on Shark Bay later today. It's been very lazy, lots of reading, but also a lot of walking from place to place. The atmosphere on this side is much more relaxed and less party-oriented than on Sairee Beach. The Full Moon Party on Koh Phagnan was about a week ago now, and the party-goers from there seemed to hit Sairee on full force, whereas on this side there hasn't been any sightings of the neon-coloured tops declaring FMP attendance. This side also has a couple of posher resort, so it also brings a quieter nature to it. Our bungalow is once again right by the sea, but this time the shore is rocky and we fall asleep to the sound of waves splashing against the rocks. And we can spot palm-sized crabs hiding in the cracks of the rocks after dark.

A bit of a paradise in Koh Tao.

We successfully made our way to Koh Tao, and the weather has been great! There were a couple of showers on the first day or two, but since it's just been even too sunny! To get to the Turtle Island (Tao = turtle, Koh = island) we took an overnight train from Bangkok to Chumporn. If any of you ever take that train, be prepared for very cold aircon especially on the upper bunk! Other than that the train journey went smoothly, and is much more comfortable than the VIP bus I last time took due to getting a bed to sleep on.

Unlike last year, the catamaran ride from Chumporn to Koh Tao was smooth (or maybe it was the anti-seasickness pills we took?), but having travelled a whole day we arrived quite tired. As we hadn't decided even on which beach we were going to stay, the arrival was not the optimal. However we just hopped on a pick-up and a friendly Norwegian diver recommended a couple of places on Sairee Beach. It turned out that the first place was all too expensive for us, but in the second one, Blue Wind, we managed to get a bungalow just by the beach for a reasonable price! The view was gorgeous, that stretch of Sairee Beach was quiet and we had our own hammock. We really enjoyed the four nights we stayed there!

Mostly we've been just lazing about in beach-side cafes and restaurants, having short swims and avoiding the direct sun (so hot!). We've both had massages; boyfriend had "the best one on the beach" by grand master Samsok and that was actually very good and given on the beach, and I had one in Spa Aurori and that was lovely and luxorious! Evenings we've sitting in the beach bars watching fire-shows and enjoying the atmosphere (much more than the beer - Chang beer is the evil Thai cousin of Stella I think!). Yesterday we even ventured to the Queen Cabaret, which obviously was a ladyboy show and very entertaining. I still struggle to understand the role and mentality of ladyboys, but all of them were amazing performers and seemed to be enjoying it!

This far the only more organised day has been Monday, when we took a taxi boat to the close Nang Yuan island with white sandy beach isthmuses running between three islets. Although we had long clothes for the boat, sunblock for the day, umbrella to sit under AND t-shirt on whilst snorkling, both of us managed to obtain sun-damage. I burnt tops of my feet and boyfriend burned his ankles whilst snorkling. As one does. I think snorkelling was a good way to get excited about the underwater world, as there were large-ish schools of pretty fish as well as some corals on Nang Yuan beaches. So now we've signed up with a diving school! Excitement! Boyfriend just started his theory for Open Water, and I'm doing a quick refreshers' course and we get to action already tomorrow! Yay!

Muay Thai.

Last night to counteract the unsuccessful trip to Grand Palace, we successfully went to see Thai boxing (Muay Thai) at Bangkok's largest and biggest stadium. We ended up paying the tourist price and getting ringside tickets, but it was pretty exciting seeing the matches so close up. Most of the matches were about stamina and a lot of knee and elbow hits to various parts of the body.

However, the main match (with the current champion? not sure what the lady told us) was much more exciting. The boxer in blue shorts was obviously leading with his continuous hits to red's body, but surprisingly red got a direct punch to blue's face completely unexpectedly (as it all had been so much in control previously)... and the red boxer just promptly went limp. He tried to get up again, but after two punches was in no condition to stand up. I felt faint watching him!

After the main match there was a chance to get photographed with the winner, which we obviously took as what's the point of paying tourist price if you don't take the full advantage of it?! Other highlights included realising that the music wqas provided by a team of four old guys; two with drums, one with a whistle and one with some short of shaking-tingling instrument! The music they made was described by Boyfriend as "two cobras fighting and ready to strike"!

Bangkok (once more with a feeling).

Quick hello from Bangkok! We arrived here two days ago, and it has been quite busy and surprisingly fun with my boyfriend. If you remember, I wasn't too keen on Bangkok the previous two times, but this time somehow Khaosan Road seems friendlier, people selling us stuff less attacking and food excellent. Jetlag is not too bad either.

So far we've eaten yummy Thai food about five times a day and been on the river and in the China Town. We've also unsuccsfully been to Grand Palace (rained too hard to tour it) and cinema (nothing interesting showing at the time we were there)... doesn't sound much but I feel like I've been on my feet going somewhere all the time!

Our initial plan was to go to Koh Tao or somewhere on the beach after a night in Bangkok, but the south has been stormy and rainy. So we stayed in Bangkok to sightsee and get used to the heat, and our next step is still uncertain... maybe a short trip to old capital Ayutthaya to see the ruins? To the islands if the weather clears? Southern Laos to Thousand Islands to take it easy in a hammock in the sunshine?