If You Catch Me at the Boarder I've Got Visas In My Name!

The trip and the dream seems to be sailing by at an alarming rate, moments and places come and disappear over the horizon before i can even blog them! (sorry peeps!) :c) Already A month has almost gone.


Taste of Paradise - Krabi

After Khao Sok National Park our Intrepid group was bundled into an air conditioned (AC) mini bus and taken to a place with the purest of blue skies (mostly), the clearest of turquoise waters (mostly) and whitest of sandy beaches...... (mostly). One thing is clearer than all those tho, and that is that the tourist industry is booming here, even out of high season. Three nights were spent in Krabi, and i could have spent a life time here - This was the place that put Thailand on the map. They love the Jack Johnson here. Actually Metallica seems to be a regular name on T-shirts too!

A daylong speed boat trip around the Phi Phi islands, snorkeling, food market and a kayaking activity made us feel like we had a good sample of what this area had to offer. Along with a decent night out for dinner and heavy drinking session... (which unavoidably ended with the legendary bucket of a spirit and mixer). We all manged to drag each other back to "Ben's House" (the hotel) safely. The sun sets here are awesome as well as the deep night skies.

Krabi vid to be inserted here!

If You Catch Me at the Boarder I've Got Visas In My Name!

The next stop was Penang, a few hours south across the boarder in Malaysia.

We walked across the boarder check point fine and everything was in order. However, we'd not been driving in the mini bus (which got across the boarder fine too) for more than 10 minutes before a police car pulled us over! The armed police man checked the drivers papers and questioned our trip leader - Mira - for a what seemed longer than two minutes! Turns out it was a bent copper with too much time under his mustache just trying to "get some coffee money" out of us... Pha!

The lush green foothills and snaking roads of Malaysia were bizarrely instantly noticeably different to landscape of south Thailand.

The next destination Penang was a British colonial town - the architecture gives this away, with a fort and the oldest Chinese temple in SE Asia! Alittle ashamed of the way the British and the East Indian Trading Company came along with all their arrogance and spread their religion, language and ways. The place seems quite quaint and dilapidated, while the older people seemed to have surrendered to the furious heat of the sun and tiredness.


KL - Kuala Lumpur

The capital of Malaysia is a clean, green city which has grown in its post modern style drastically in the past 10 years due to enjoying an economical boom. It had more than enough to keep us busy for the two days and two nights we were here. The highlights of which I'd say were The KL City Center Petronas Twin Towers, the 420 metre KL tower (which was excellent for viewing the Petrona towers... See Video below).

The first night (A Saturday night...) was spent in the Petronas twin towers and in a chilled reggae bar with the Liverpool vs. Man united match (4-1) HA! I say bar, but it was more like a shrine.. a place of worship for all lovers of the Bob Marley and all things reggae. The bar was followed by a club...meh. The next day me and Swedish Daniel spent being productive and doing a couple of attractions.

The Batu caves are a 30 minute drive out of KL. However being in Malaysia - Where many random tangents are taken - this 30 minute taxi drive turned into a 45 minute ride as we were conveniently heading in the direction of our drivers home and he seemed to think nothing of picking his wife up on the way so they could go for breakfast once he'd dropped us off! lol?!
The way the contrasting blue and warm light glowed in the cave and played with the water dripping in the cave made for some atmospheric snaps. next we zipped across town to get and elevator up the KL tower and play on the tilting monorail system between shopping malls. Inevitably me and Daniel bumped into the shop-o-holic half of the group. Shoes are tooooooooo cheap here! :cp

KL tower vid to be inserted here!

Your World Comes Crashing Around You...

I've had technical failures with every electronic device I have with me within the past three weeks...

My half decent Sony camera has been getting a little too warm in the Asian baking heat and sometimes has problems focusing... Also if i take the camera from a heavenly air conditioned hotel room outside, the camera quickly gets condensation forming on the lens and LCD! ha... A camera bag has helped to reduce these two probs...

Secondly my phone display stopped working randomly for a few days and i declared it dead.... even tho the alarm went off at 8 am every morning, obviously i had no way of turning it off because the of the screen! Eventually the battery died! Miraculously, a few days ago the phone screen decided to start working again!!!

Finally my Zen mp3 player crashed, so i rebooted it, however every time i turn it on now it has to re-build the music directory. This whole process takes about 10 minutes... It also seems to be unable to find all the mp3s..

Still i persist ;c)