Thailand bound - 7th September 2007

The morning of the 7th saw us up bright and early for a 5am depature by mini bus (which turned out to be a van) to Krabi, Thailand.  The journey was by and large uneventful after an initial heated arguement between the Thai driver and an old German passenger who insisted he needed two seats on account of his bad legs.  I suspect our mini bus actually had a switch instead of a throttle pedal - at least our driver seemed to treat the acceleration controls as an ‘on/off’ kinda thing.  If we weren’t braking then the pedal was to the metal and we were humming (and bumping) along as fast as the little van could go (including some rather hair raising overtakes).

The actual border crossing was the most laid back of any I’ve experienced - by a margin.  After lining up to get our passport stamped and so forth we just then wandered back to the van parked on the Malaysia side of the border, hopped on and drove through.  First stop across the border was at Hat Yai and this was a transfer to a new minibus.  The most striking initial thing to me about Thailand was the power lines - they are just strung up haphazardly all over the place in criss crossing spiderwebs of mayhem.  Many drooping down so low you have to duck under them while walking down the sidewalk.

 

 

Then we were loaded on to a new mini bus for some more crazyily fast driving to Krabi.  After checking in to guesthouse we were offloaded at (price seemed good enough for what we got) we went for a wander into ‘town’ and ended up meeting Mr Tuar, who talked us into a long-tailed boat tour for a couple hrs.  He took us to the cave featured in the movie “The Beach”:

 

And then just some random crusing around to check stuff out.  Those little boats are groovy.  Celine had a go at driving and I think gave Mr Tuar a few grey hairs with her insistance to look back at the propeller instead of ahead at the trees and banks she kept almost steering us into:

 

 

 

 

 

Penang - 5th & 6th September 2007

If you stay in Penang then you absolutely have to stay at the travellers lodge (75 Muntri st).  The reason is the owner, Mr Loh, is quite possibly the happiest guy on the planet.  Whether it is the first time you walk in or the 12th time you wander in from a day exploring he has a smile for you (all three teeth of it) that seems to be trying to split his head in half.  From bending over and waving frantically at the floor to show how to pronounce his name (my name Low, you know *wave at floor* LOW!) to demonstrating how the hallway is so long you can jog up and down it for fitness (he reckons he does 50 laps a day) he is always quick with a joke and jollier than Santa.  

I don’t have any shots of him unfortunately, nor many of Penang at all, but I do have a pic here of an incredibly ornate Chinese temple just a couple doors up from where we were staying.  The whole surface of the temple was that grey stone and every inch of it covered in beautiful stone carvings:

And another spectacular sunset that we experienced after nutting out our way through the twisting streets to the ocean:

 

Journey to Penang (Malaysia) - September 5th 2007

After our (all too) brief sojourn in the lap of luxury it was time to hit the road again on our quest north toward the Thai border.  We decided to make Penang the target for the first day and were all set for another day of painfull stinky hot bus trips and transfers when Celine’s social tendencies saved the day again.  A conversation to the couple next to us on the ferry got us a couple seats in the car they’d hired for their trip around Malasia.  They just happened to be heading to Penang and even better was that despite the fact that their accomidation budget seemed much higher than ours they just so happened to be staying a block away from several Lonely Planet recommended backpackers.

On the way we decided to search out some food and happened across some huge candle looking things:

Turned out they were giant joss sticks and it was some sort of buddhist ceremony.  Yet again Celine started gabbing with the locals in Chinese which resulted in a bunch of info, a free bagfull of guava (*shrugs*) and demands to take a picure of them and (as translated by Celine): “put on internet, let whole world see!”.  So here you go world (the two on the right are the couple that gave us a lift) :

 

This was also the place I discovered this great drink (I originally bought one just because the name tickled me, turns out a bloody good drink, tastes like mountain dew):

 

Stay in Pangkor - 3rd & 4th September

As I said before our stay at Pangkor island resort was the splurge part of the trip.  I very much doubt I’ll be staying in anything other than budget accomidation for the rest of my 6 months over here, certainly nothing that will measure up to the luxury that this place had.  A beautiful villa, right on the beach, complete with a private outdoor shower that would probably run Wivenhoe damn dry in about 10mins.  Top it all off with a sunset most postcards would be envious of and it was bloody close to perfect.  I’ll let the pictures tell the story:

Singapore girl - 4th September 2007

You can take the girl out of the city…..