You always come through Bangkok

Back in Bangkok I helped Nadine with finalizing her ticket-change and brought her to the Airport to say goodbye after a day of shopping on Khaosan.


Nadine's last Singha beer. She was so sad to leave...

Then I went back from Khaosan to Asha Guesthouse for some recovering (I had sprained my ankle while dancing on Phi Phi and also had some herpes cold sores) and to have a nice quiet place to contemplate if I should extend my trip for another month. I met some nice people there, but it wasn't a partycrowd like Rachel, Caz, Kieren, Konstantin, Richard and Jamie back in May. But I had some really quality conversations with James, an electronic music and experimental audio nut who's been living in Bangkok for a few years and who liked hanging out at the Asha Guesthouse bar (I had met him in May already).
I ended up extending for another month, and I barely made it: Unfortunately the flight was on monday morning at 3:15 (!) and i decided to extend on friday night. The problem is that Emirate Airline's Bangkok office is not manned during the weekend, and there was just nobody reachable on the airport counter under the "emergency number", too! So I shot off a mail to my travel agency calling for help on moving my flight another month while desperately going through the Emirate Airlines website trying to find either information on how to change your flight online or a number of a 24-hour-hotline (there is NOTHING, don't bother checking!). My travel agency was manned till 13:00 on Saturday, and with the time difference it was just 12:00 when i sent off my mail. So just before they closed i got a mail back that some angel there had just changed my flight! Hooray! ;-)

Phi Phi - Three's a charm?

So we did go back to Phi Phi. It was basically Nadine's stage, and I just tugged along as an extra, but I knew that already when I agreed to come. We didn't stay at Tropical Garden this time, but at her place, Phi Phi Chukit, right next to Hippies Bar down by the beach strip. The room was okay, but they were a bit bitchy about the "free breakfast", which ended way too early (10:30) and was all of a sudden not part of our 500 Bath accommodation anymore, even though they said so when we checked in.
Nadine really enjoyed hanging out with the Thai guys from Apache and Hippies Bar, but they wouldn't go anywhere near her while I was around, so I offered to leave early (around 2am when the music stopped) while she'd hang out with them till the early morning. Not very social of them if you ask me, but whatever, I guess that's Thai guys for you..
The course of the day was pretty much the same every day: Get up around noon, have a chicken sandwich at her favourite place, chat and practice English, maybe go to the beach for a while if the sun was out, get a bucket and kill it infront of our room, go to Apache at night. Any of my tries to break the cycle, like going to Cosmics for food or to the Sunflower bar for some live music were thwarted by "the leading lady"! ;-)

On the last day before leaving we did finally get our asses up to actually do something different, so we went cliff jumping. The highest ledge I jumped from was 12 meters, it was quite fun! We did go to Monkey Beach (yet again) and some snorkelling (yet again) afterwards, but for Nadine it was the first time snorkelling, she had never worn a mask or fins before, and I think she quite liked it (not the fins though).
We flew back to Bangkok on One-Two-Go Airlines, a budget Airline I hadn't been on before - but Nadine had, and she said it was a really really scary flight. And sure enough: The plane that crashed a few days later killing about 90 people on Phuket was One-Two-Go!

Back in Malaysia: Langkawi

Langkawi is on the west coast of Malaysia on the top, pretty much opposite the Perhentians on the other side, and you can go there directly by ferry from Thailand. We didn't get to see very much of the island, since taxis are fairly expensive, as is renting your own car. Nadine was outraged when I told her that the muslims there expect their women to always walk behind them and never do the talking. So we (mostly) did it the other way around, which i happily agreed to, because it was fairly confusing for them, and spreading confusion is always fun! ;-)

This cat from our guesthouse had 24 toes, 6 on each foot!

Nadine, an optician who had just decided to go back to school after her vacation for her "Abitur", is a really sweet and pretty special girl and never ceased to surprise me with not-very-common talents (e.g. drumming, wrestling (!), playing chess). However, English wasn't one of them, so we practised every day, and I feel it improved quite a bit during that time, since she's a quick learner. But only when her "attention light" is on, which seems to happen fairly random! ;-)

(Click for animation! 8)

We did go to the Underwater World on Langkawi, which is quite expensive but really amazing and worth every Sen (Sen is the Malaysian Cent). Just when we thought "is this it?" when reaching some restaurant that looked like it was leading to the exit we had actually just entered the REALLY amazing aquariums. They have hundreds of different species there, ranging from penguins to seals to crustaceans to sharks to sea dragons. Basically everything interesting living in the sea can be found there, some of the aquariums are even built like a tunnel, it's very highly recommended!

I call this the "Airbrush shark", looks like some badly airbrushed haunted house façade from the fair..


Sea dragons must be among the strangest creatures on this planet

We usually hung out on the beach at night watching the great sunset and chatting, one night we built our own "Jurassic Park" by making dinosaur footprints in the sand - fun!
After I helped her move her departure flight ten days later we went back to Thailand on the fourth day. She desperately wanted to go back to Phi Phi (She'd been there twice before already as well!), and I really didn't want to go as I was fed up with it and would've much rather have gone to Kho Tao, which I haven't seen yet. But you know how some women are when they've really got their mind set on something - you just don't stand a chance! ;-)

Re-visiting Raileh Beach

So after planning it every single time I was in southern Thailand I finally made my way back to Raileh Beach, where I spent a great week with Steve and Matt from England two years ago. Unlike Phi Phi, the place hasn't changed at all, probably because it wasn't affected by the Tsunami.
There wasn't much to do, cause it was mostly raining all day with the occasional streak of sunlight every now and then. I was mostly hanging out with some great dutch guys i had met on Phi Phi, Judith and Harro, a really nice couple that got engaged in Kho Chang, and Nephtalie, a really clever and charming English teacher, all from Utrecht (though Nephtalie is originally from the Dutch Antilles, Curacao to be exact).

Me, Harro, Judith and Nephtalie in the Lucky Restaurant

One night I was only going out for one beer and ended up almost with a broken nose, a ripped shirt and a really wasted bar owner ("I am mafia on this island!") threatening to kill me, and all just because i helped some Canadian girl bring home her totally wasted friend. More details are available on request! ;-) Let's just say that "Ladies' Night" at the Gecko Bar seems to mean "spiked drinks for all the Ferang girls"..
The day after that I met Andrea (Austria) and Nadine (Germany) at the pool, two fairly crazy girls that had just run out of digital cameras (rain treatment and pillowfight respectively), so I offered to be their "Kamerakind". ;-)

Nadine and Andrea and a lovely sunset on Phranang Beach

We had one really crazy night out at the Gecko Bar, and the next day Andrea came back from the internetcafe in tears: Her grandfather had died some days earlier, the last thing you want to hear when you're on vacation... So she flew back to Austria for the funeral (which was on very short notice, but she made it in time) and Nadine and me went on to Langkawi - In Malaysia, where I had just come from, great! But since she hadn't been anywhere else than in Thailand for almost three months and since there's no Visa fee to be paid for Malaysia (and since I hadn't been to Langkawi) I came along.

Back in Thailand - yet again!

So I went back to Kho Phi Phi, the plan being to return where I started out from in April (I won't count Patong Beach, in retrospective it mostly sucked! 8) to "go full circle", as they say. Ofcourse, I did stay in the Tropical Garden again! ;-)
I spent almost 2 weeks there and had some good times with various people from Australia, Ireland, Holland, Austria, Canada, Spain and England. We had a fairly good posse, but not as good as back in April/May, which was really something special.
It was back to partying every night once again, but it got kinda boring after a while. Too many people don't go to the bars just to have a good time, but merely to pull something for the night.. Some exceptions though: The Sunflower bar on "the other beach" (the one opposite the pier) had a live band playing twice, and it was both times a really really good fun night with alot of bouncing around to the music! ;-)


Apart from lying around on the pool all day working on my suntan or reading Terry Pratchett in the hammock or watching movies and ofcourse partying at night I didn't do much. Oh yes, i went up to the viewpoint and I did finally go on the sunset trip that included some snorkelling, which i hadn't done on Phi Phi before! ;-)


A boxfish! I hadn't seen that before (sorry for teh blurry, best picture I could get!)

When the weather got bad for several days in a row (it is the rainy season after all) I decided it was time to move on to Raileh Beach, which I always wanted to go back to (had been there 2 years ago and liked it lots!)

Exploring Malaysia

Coming back from Bali, I planned to stay in Malaysia for a few weeks to check it out. Also, I was supposed to meet the Aussie posse (Becs & Nat) for the third and final time there. We met in Kuala Lumpur and (after checking out the view from the KL Tower, 335m without antenna!) went pretty much straight to the Cameron Highlands. I enjoyed it a lot there, because it was so different: Being the highest spot in Malaysia at 1500m above sea level, temperatures and climate were completely different then what I was used to. It was still very humid, but cold enough to want a blanket at night. It was quite refreshing for a change to wear the same T-shirt for 3 or even 4 days before having to wash it! ;-) Also, it rained a lot there, but Daniel's Lodge, the place where I stayed, provided a small "movie theater", free WiFi and comfy areas to sit around and chat to pass the time. I had a go in Photoshop to fix a new profile picture for Natalie, some random idea Becs and me had when uploading her pictures to Facebook. Check it out, it turned out really nice (and Nat was overjoyed! ;-):


You can go hiking in the mountains there and go on trips that take you to various sights. They're awfully proud of their strawberry fields, the Cameron Highlands being the only place where they grow (as so many other things like f.ex. Tea), but obviously all the Europeans weren't quite so impressed! ;-) The Insect/butterfly farm was probably the most impressive thing, they have all kinds of weird insects and reptiles there.



Daniel's Lodge was really awesome (and no, i didn't get a discount! ;-). I met loads and loads of awesome people there every single day (most of which were always set to leave the next day - grr!), and at night they have a comfy bar with a campfire right next to it. Spent some quality nights with people from England, Scotland, Australia, Switzerland, Holland and Germany, happy times!



Next up after about 12 days was the Perhentian Islands, Long Beach on the big island to be exact (which is the most popular place). It's fairly underdeveloped compared to the Thai party islands, but it's still good, only Diesel Generators but fairly fast Internet via satellite. Lots of huge (about 1.5m) Komodo dragons walking around there, quite scary! They seem to like to hatch their eggs or take a shit in Bungalows, so watch out!



I re-met Kirsten from England there, who I had first met in the Cameron Highlands (left). She was with Stasa from Slovenia (right), not exactly a common nation to meet while travelling. She also worked in PR for Microsoft Slovenia, but that didn't spoil the fun we had in any way! ;-)



I also met Andi from Germany, a really great guy that I unfortunately only have one really bad picture of... One of the few people that would still keep regular email contact after splitting up, very cool! ;-)

There's really long snorkelling trips available for small money, and this was really the best snorkelling I've ever had. We saw beautiful corals, huge shoals of fish, blacktip reef sharks, eels, clownfish and TURTLES! Yes, they had turtles, and if you wanted, you could go watch them lay their eggs at night.



After that it was back to Thailand, Kho Phi Phi to be exact. Combined journeys aren't quite as readily available in Malaysia as they are in Thailand, so the trip was quite an experience and involved a fair bit of figuring stuff out for yourself, e.g. how to get where exactly for the next connection ride.

Summing up: While not very different geographically, Malaysias population is pretty different than Thailand. First of all, most of them speak really good English, since they were part of the Commonwealth until just 50 years ago. Then there's very many Chinese and Indian people around, which adds to cultural variety (and food-choice! ;-). They also like to chat to you for merely having a nice chat, something that barely ever happens in Thailand (people there will only talk to you when they want something from you). This took a bit of getting used to, since the suspicion was rooted pretty deeply by now! ;-). In general, they're very nice and friendly people, and only in Malaysia you could meet a girl like Ruby, who at the age of 6 spoke 3 languages fluently (Chinese, Malay and English).



It's a predominantly muslim country, but it's quite mellow (probably also due to the ethnic variety of Chinese and Indians!), not like you'd expect muslim countries to be. You could buy booze everywhere and see women with scant clothes walking around in Kuala Lumpur, and that included local women, too! However, you occasionally see BMOs (Black Moving Objects, women covered completely in a burka), usually with their husbands who were dressed quite western with baseball caps and printed shorts. Oh, the good old irony of "do as i say, don't do as I do"...

One quite surreal experience happened in a gas station. Some malay guy asked me where I was from, and when I said "Germany" he threw a Hitler salute and asked if I liked Adolf Hitler. When I said no, he replied "Why not?", which really had me dumbfolded for the mere surrealness of the question, I didn't know what to say! I also saw a guy with a swastika (not the Hindu sun-wheel variety!) on his motorcycle helmet, and a malay guy showed me his passport which said "valid for all countries except Israel", which is in every malay passport. Considering that Intel, a jewish/israeli company, has a fab in Malaysia it does make you wonder how the people working there visit their headquarters in Haifa..

It's a small world

Here's a list of all the different nations I've met on my trip (and with whom I atleast spent a few hours). Will be updated when neccessary!

Argentina
Chile
Brazil
Belgium
China
Japan
Germany
Switzerland
Austria
Australia
USA
Israel
England
Scotland
Ireland
Wales
Spain
Italy
Holland
Sweden
Finland
Norway
New Zealand
Denmark
Slovenia
Ethiopia
South Africa
France
Canada
Thailand
Indonesia
Malaysia
Laos
Cambodia
Russia
Oman