After our time in Kanchanaburi, we unfortunately had to head back to Bangkok to get a bus down to Surat Thani where we could get a boat over to Koh Phangan. As we had a few hours to kill in Bangkok, for our sins we decided to head back to Khao San Road to pick up some cheap food, clothes and most importantly - a hair braid. Something I haven't had since I was about 10 but I think its really set off my traveller chic look. The night bus we had booked to go down south seemed dodgy enough when we were told to go to the train station and wait at the back door of KFC at 7pm. We did as we had been instructed, but of course the bus didn't turn up for hours and when it did, our 'sleeper' bus turned out to be a standard coach with non reclinable seats, what a long night!! After arriving in Koh Phangan, home to the infamous Full Moon Party, we set out to prepare for our friend Laura's arrival who would be joining us for two weeks. By prepare, I mean we bought the standard full moon outfits, florescent paint, alcohol and flowers. The next day we headed to the pier and awaited her arrival only to greet her with a beer which she had to shotgun as her initiation. So weird (but amazing) to see a face from home! The shotgun is where it all went down hill to be honest.... The Thai islands are beautiful but very focused around backpacking, drinking and partying. Our time here was no different and we spent the next two weeks island hopping, drinking alot of Chang and a lot of Sangsom & redbull buckets, staying out all night and spending the days trying to sleep off the hangover on the beach. We basically had a LADS holiday and didn't feel like travellers at all. It was the most fun two weeks but after Laura left, we were officially broken women who didn't leave our hotel room for the next 28 hours (exept to top up on hungover Mcdonalds of course) The two most amazing things we did see were the viewpoint and Maya Bay or 'The Beach' both at Koh Phi Phi (easily my favourite island by far). I wont bore you with every funny, or unfunny story but the time went a little like this:
We had a flight from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur which we had booked before we even left home as we had heard that the southern border crossings between Thailand and Malaysia were quite dodgy. The flight was an easy one hour and luckily we'd already booked somewhere to stay in the Chinatown area. We grabbed a taxi from the airport and our driver was teaching us words in Malay, Cantonese and Mandarin (not sure how we were supposed to know when to use which) and warning us about how bad the in-town taxi (or teksi, as the write it) drivers were. "The worst taxi drivers in the world" apparently, which we were soon to find out. Our hostel was strange as it was very modern but very dark with only blue lights everywhere, but it was close to chinatown so we were happy and thats where we spent the next day exploring. Chinatown houses the longest street of knockoff goods I have ever seen - trainers, handbags, watches and everything in between so we had a good look round, bartering for some 'Nike' trainers and then hit the central market which was a very strange place which involved being stared at by almost all of the locals and Lisa being shouted at for her belly being open (she had a crop top on) and once this happened we started to realise that a high percentage of the population in KL are Muslim and almost everyone is covered up, so not only did we stick out because we are white, we also had our shoulders and knees out, whoops.
We had already had quite a few struggles with the 'worst taxi drivers in the world' as even though it says on the side of the cars that they are to use the meter only and not allowed to haggle, none of them would as the traffic was too bad for them to make any money. After about 10 drivers refused to put their meter on, we finally gave in and once in the taxi found a whole list of rules that they weren't allowed to break, including not putting the meter on. When we pointed this out to the driver, he simply laughed. After this, we decided to take the metro everywhere we wanted and actually it was pretty simple and soo much cheaper and easier than the tube - it even has aircon. So the metro served us well until we aquired a chatty local who it was a struggle to understand even without the train noise over the top. He left at the same station as us and then asked if he could join us at dinner - all looking at eachother, saying ummm for an unconfortable amount of time, Lisa finally gave in and said no and we all had an awkard goodbye at the station - sorry!
That night, we decided to head to time square to have a look around, I think it is one of the biggest shopping centres I have ever seen and it had a rollercoaster at the top, my mind was blown. So that night, we decided to go in search of some traditional Malaysian food, we asked for recommendations at our hostel, and they could only say where the best Chinese food was. So off we went, and no, we found nothing of the sort. We had already had Chinese food in Chinatown so we eventually gave up out of hunger and had a Nando's. I think that was what put me off Kuala Lumpur - I was expecting it to be more western than the other places we had been, but I wasn't expecting what we found. There are so many sky scrapers and huge shopping centres with designer shops mixed with highstreet brands like Topshop and H&M as well as Starbucks and most fast food brands. You really don't feel like you are in Asia, you could be in London or somewhere, so I found it a little strange and didn't feel like I was seeing the real Malaysia or experiencing traditional culture.
After our pretty western day at the shops, we decided to head to the Botanical Gardens and again, didn't find what we were expecting (a nice garden with birds and monkeys) and instead walked for miles and miles around alot of roads and not much garden. We finally found the bird enclosure but it was expensive to get in and wasn't anywhere near the nice open garden we were expecting, so in a huff, we went back to find a new, cheaper hostel. What we found was Podz - The Backpackers Home... Hmm, home as in you have to make your beds yourself and make your own breakfast, but otherwise not that homely at all. It was a strange place as the walls only went three quarters of the way up so you could hear the other 40 people in other dorms and private rooms on the same floor and they had a lights out policy at 11pm.
We had already been inside the shopping centre underneath the Petronas Towers, but we wanted to see them from far away along with the rest of KL's impressive skyline so we donned our best clothes and headed to Sky Bar, at the top of a swanky hotel. As we walked, we saw a water and light show (like in Vegas, but on a much smaller scale) and got to the entrance, already feeling like we stood out like a sore thumb. We quickly got in the lift before anyone could notice we were just dirty backpackers and got to the bar only to be asked for ID. ID?! I don't even remember what my ID looks like and not once had we needed it anywhere else. Luckily, we managed to sweet talk our way in when the manager came over and i'm so glad we did because this was the view of the towers and all we had to do in return was buy an over-priced drink.
Safe to say we didn't stay very long, since we felt very out of place so we called it a night and headed back to our hostel where the lights were out and you couldn't talk without fear of waking someone up, welcome home...
The next day we headed to Batu Caves, just outside of KL which is a natural cave at the top of a limestone hill and is also one of the largest Hindu shrines outside of India, so we found out once we got there. We also found that we would need to climb these 272 steps to get there:
The cave would have been very impressive if it had not have been for the mountians of litter and the religious paint/temples/shrines that were actually covering the natural beauty up. I think the only thing that made climbing the steps worth it were the hundreds of little monkeys running around them, chasing eachother and climbing up the arches. They were cute from far away, but when you got too close, and they started showing their growling teeth, it was actually quite scary being that close to wild amimals.
We ended our time in KL by googling the best place to get Malaysian food and going to one of the top ten restaurants in town called Songket. We are used to eating in shacks and peoples front room/kitchen/shop so this was a weird experience again, as we were waited on and were even called madame and ladies (haha). It was strange as a two course dinner and drinks still cost us all under £12 each and it was easily some of the best food we had eaten in a long time - the owner even offered to take us up to Sky Bar to show us the skyline, but as we had already been we decided to politely decline. During dinner, they even put on a traditional dance and music show which was good to see but slightly weird when they decided to ask you to go and join while you were half way through eating your dinner but there we go.
We were told that the nearest toilet was 500m down and through the tunnel. After asking the driver if he really expected us to walk through a motorway tunnel and him just laughing, we decided to brave it. We got beeped quite a few times but managed to make it safely to the service station, only after realising it was on the other side of the motorway and having to run across 6 lanes to get there. We finally got back to the coach realising that still nothing had happened and waited at the side of the road when at about 4am, the driver decided to take us carload by carload to the service station to wait for a new bus to come and get us - who knows where this mysterious car came from but we jumped in anyway. We waited for the bus by sleeping on some plastic cafteria chairs until around 8am when the bus set off again when sure enough, this second bus also broke down! We thought it must have been a joke but nope, we again had to wait at the side of the road whilst they fixed it. The fixing just sounded as if they were banging the underneath of the bus with a hammer which was quite unnerving to say the least but it seemed to work. So once the second bus was on the move, it took some people back to KL and finally set out to Kuala Besut.
Once we arrived, 14 hours after we were supposed to, of course the boats to the Perhentian Islands had stopped. We paid some dodgy looking men to take us in their 'speed boat' which was basically a plastic shell with a motor on the back. They were driving the boat so fast that it was hitting the waves so hard and jumping about a metre in the air and crashing back down. The whole boat screamed every time while the driver just laughed and carried on. The main problem with this was that even though I was holding on for dear life, the plastic seats made my back kill for days from the impact and I couldn't move it without being in pain - shame all we had to do was lie on the beach...
As if our luck hadn't been bad enough, once we got on to Long Beach on the smaller of the two islands everywhere was fully booked. We walked up the beach asking in everywhere and finally a kind man let us sleep in their new rooms that were still a building site so we had no doors, plasterboard walls and a mattress on the floor that night but at that point we were so shattered that it seemed like a five star hotel. We ended up staying here, at Lemon Grass for our entire time on Long Beach - we moved in to a little bungalow and it was so nice to actually stay in one place for 6 nights. As good as travelling is, it is absolutely exhausting moving around all of the time, so it really felt like we could relax here. We had planned to move on to the larger island but actually decided to stay on Kecil as it was so nice. We spent the days tanning on the beach and the evenings having dinner at Coral Bay on the other side of the island and watching the fire dancers and chilling with some new friends. Its not really a place to party, there is a high population of Muslim's that run the restaurants so they don't serve alcohol and there are only two bars but I don't think it really needed it, and we also wouldn't have appreciated this view if we'd have been too hungover.
One thing we did do was go on one of the organised snorkelling trips where we saw a huge turtle laying on the bottom of the ocean. It's shell must have been at least a metre long and while we were taking photos on our disposable waterproof camera (lets hope they come out), it started to swim up and along so we could swim behind it until it came up for air. It was an amazing sight and the turtle didn't even seem bothered about us being there. We also went around and saw real life Nemo's, stingrays, lots of coral and other fish. We headed to shark point but unfortunately (?) we didn't find any. When we told our hotel owner we hadn't seen any, the next day he decided to take us out on his own around the bay where we found two Black Fin Reef Sharks! They were only small, but again its pretty cool to say we have swam with sharks in the clearest sea water I have ever seen - even when you are a far as you can go stood up, you can see your feet so clearly, and I think thats why I was so at ease.
So now, its time to leave this little slice of paradise and head to Singapore for our last four days of the trip. I'm so sad to leave Kecil Island, its become like a little home but I'm excited to see what Singapore has to offer, but getting more and more nervous about getting home and facing the real world - but lets not think about that just yet.
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