Tioman Island

Our last stop in Malaysia was the island of Tioman off the south east coast. For those fact fans out there, it was here where they filmed the Bali-Hai shots from the movie South Pacific (cue the singing...)
We decided that it was about time to hit the beach again, it had been a while so thought a few days on an island would be suffice. The area we stayed in was really sweet. It was very quiet, no cars, just a single track for bikes and scooters and the people were extremely friendly.
The highlight of our time here (aside from topping up the tan) was our boat trip and snorkeling. However, I'll tell you now, it wasn't all plain sailing (haha).
We were taking out on this tiny little boat, across the open sea which I'm pretty sure was a bit of a death wish but our driver seemed to know what he was doing. It was crazy though, the waves were huge and every so often we'd hit a wave the wrong way and I would actually be thrown up from my seat. Added to that the constant salt water thrashing our faces, and our clothes being soaked through it was probably the worst boat journey I've ever experienced (yes Marshall family, worse than our infamous trip when I fell asleep). It was all worth it when we made it to our snorkel points and the nicest beach I've seen so far.

The snorkeling was very cool, not much coral to see but there was plenty of fish. At one point, Emma and I had got a bit carried away looking in the water that we were quite far from our boat and I was a little bit further away from Emma when I looked down and almost had a panic attack when I saw the biggest fish ever! We're talking massive! I know I sound like a lying fisherman, but it really was huge and I began to look at my options to escape this fish. I could swim to the rocks on one side, but I didn't think I could climb onto them with my flippers, not very practical footwear. Or I could make the long distance swim to the boat...I had to swim. I looked in the water again and it was still there and then I looked at Emma who had spotted it too and we both made some kind of noise through our snorkel. We made it back to the boat in one piece and after sharing the enormity of the fish with the others (and realising we'd been a tad silly in our panic) we carried on to another bay where there were lots of nice small fish. Much better.

Chinese New Year

Since we entered Malaysia we had been hearing about the big deal that is Chinese New Year and our naive backpacker heads had no idea just exactly how big a deal that this holiday was. It turned out to be a 10 day holiday where a lot of things were closed, locals were going on holiday to the places we wanted to go and then couldn't get a room (cheek!) and generally it scuppered our plans up a little bit. However, we ended up finding ourselves in Kuala Lumpur for the celebrations...and we weren't dissappointed.
There was a parade and big party type thing going on our last day in Kuala Lumpur and as we had been waiting a long time to experience this big deal we thought we better get there early and get a good spot. We were just a tad too keen and only a few old people were sitting in the stands when we took to our seats, but we were soaking up the atmosphere so it was all good. We saw a few performers do their warm up acts and gradually more and more people filled up the street and it got very exciting. By 9pm (we had been there since 5pm!) the main part of the evening was just kicking off with the arrival of the Prime Minister! Thats right, hows that for a celeb spot. Well we weren't exactly sure which one he was but we reckon it was the guy that was waving the most. There was such a party atmosphere, it was so fun. The New Year is the year of the Rat so the street was lined with kids holding up bright red signs with a rat on them and then little kids dressed up in gold rat costumes walked down the street which was very cute. Then came the dragon dance which was pretty cool and then the best part of the evening started...the lion dance. This happened right in front of our seats (see, it pays to be early!) and for those who haven't seen it before I shall try to explain. It was a row of podiums of different heights and two young guys dressed up in the Chinese lion costume, one as the back legs and one as the front. And what they did was jump from podium to podium lifting each other as they did it and bounding about not really seeing much of where they were going but doing it with such precision. I cant really describe it the way I saw it, it was just one of the most incredible performances I've ever seen. Emma took a video of it and I'm pretty sure all you'll here is me going 'ooooh!' and 'wow!'...It really was wow! And while it was happening there were fireworks and those confetti explosions going off, it was so much cooler than our New Year!

Once all the excitement had finished the PM got his own wee private show of all the acts further up the street so we went to investigate. We stumbled upon an area where to get in the guard on the gate said 'tourist?' to which I wanted to say 'what do you think?!' however we politely replied 'yes' and he let us in. It turned out to be a backstage area for all the performers where they mingled and practiced before going on stage. We were able to hang out there and watch as they warmed up and was able to speak to them and take photos up close of some of their moves which was really cool and then when the acts went to perform for the PM we were able to watch it on a big screen. There was so much going on and loads of different performances from singers and dancers to acrobats and karate style acts and even more lion costumes running through the street. The whole evening was just an incredible experience and so far one of my highlights of the trip.
We also got to see a lot of the Petronas Towers...my new favourite building! Look how shiny!

Krabi - Penang - Cameron Highlands

It's been a while since my last update and I'm getting very behind in my news so with that said I'll crack on. I'll warn you though, it could be a long one, you might want to prepare yourself, maybe grab a wee snack...
We sadly had to leave our private beach and head to the nearest big town of Krabi for a night, before getting a bus to Malaysia in the morning. The owner of the hotel said she would drive us in as she needed to go into town herself. Once in the town, she dropped us at our hostel, came back for us once we'd checked in and had arranged for her taximen friends to drive us to a few places of interest in the afternoon. It was really good of her because we had no idea what there was to do. At about 11am we were dropped off at this temple and told they would pick us up again at about 2pm. 3hrs in a temple?! I know they're quite impressive but I thought this was a little extreme. However, this was no ordinary temple.

It was up a massivo hill...which you had to climb...1237 steps to the top. Oh and just to make things a little harder for ourselves, we were climbing it during the hottest part of the day. Good! Let's just say I'm glad we had 3hrs. It was really worth it once we reached the top.
There was an amazing 360 view of the town below plus a giant golden buddah!
And on the way back down we got to be the smug people saying to the poor people struggling up, 'keep going, it's not far'...It's always fun to be that person.

So the next morning, we were off to Malaysia. A new country, another stamp for the passport. Aside from a pretty cramped and bumpy 9hr bus journey and our driver getting pulled over for speeding (not ideal) we arrived in Georgetown on the island of Penang in one piece. It had such a different feel to Thailand, there was such a great diversity of cultures. On our first morning, we headed to Botanic Gardens. It was really beautiful, much like a lot of Botanics but this one had monkeys! Everywhere you looked there were monkeys running and jumping about...it was ace! We had seen the monkeys stealing food from people so when we each bought a drink we thought we'd be safe. Turns out monkeys are quite partial to a drink of ice tea. I had already finished mine but Emma was still drinking hers when a monkey made an advance towards us. Emma asked if I'd hold it as the monkey came closer and closer, which I was fine with, what would a monkey want with a can of ice tea? It's not like it was banana juice. But then it came closer and in a moment of panic I put the can on the ground and stepped back. I wasn't ready to risk a vicious attack from a monkey to save Emma's drink! The lucky monkey, courtesy of my slight irrational move, then had a nice drink to cool him down and off he went. Our next plan was to get a bus from the gardens to Penang Hill, the highest point on the island. To get up Penang Hill you had to take a funicular which was really slow so it took about 30 mins but it was very cool at the top. Well really it was another amazing view of a city but what can I say? I'm a big fan of views. We had a little while at the top but then decided to head back down when the weather started to change and we a had a bit of thunder and lightning. This last picture is us eating in our favourite place. It was called Red Garden - Food Paradise and it really was. It was unbelievable. It was kind of indoors/outdoors with loads of plastic tables in the middle and around them there were about 30 different food stalls of every kind! Malay, Thai, Chineses, Japanese, Western, things we recognised, things we definately didn't, it was so fun trying to choose what to have. Plus there was a wee man playing a keyboard for the evenings entertainment...what more could you want!




From Penang we went to Cameron Highlands. I had been really looking forard to this part of the country as I'd heard alot of good things about it but sadly I was a little disappointed after our first night. To start with our hostel was a dump. Our room was practically a garden shed, which was dark (there was no light, we had to use our torches in the evening), damp and kind of had a bad smell. Parts of the hostel were ok, they had a bon fire every night which we enjoyed but after the really nice places we'd stayed in so far, this was a hole. Things picked up the next day when we decided to do a half day tour of the area. There was just the two of us, a guy from France and our driver which was really nice to be such a small number. Our first stop was a drive up to the highest point of the area were there were incredible views of the highlands, everything was so green and lovely. It was just beautiful.

After that we went to the Mossy Forest. This place was really cool. We were clambering through this forest with roots and branches coming out of everywhere and we were still really high up so at some points we were looking over the forest canopy and because it ws mossy it was really damp and squelchy.


I'm sort of rushing through this because this entry is getting stupidly long and you've probably long finished your snack by now. So after the forest we went to what Cameron Highlands is famous for...tea plantations. We went to the Boh plantation and were shown the fields, a look at the factory and finally a wee drink of tea at the end. And for someone who's not a big fan of tea, it was pretty yummy tea!



So I think that will do for now, I'm still about a week behind on my news so I'll do my best to catch up soon. Everything has just been amazing so far and we're both having an unbelievably good time. Oh and one last thing... I held a scorpian, eek!

The Beaches

So what's been happening recently? Well as I'm sure you can imagine, life has been pretty stressful so far, so we thought we better head for the beach to relax and unwind a little. We headed to Phuket first and then on to Aonang back on the mainland. We were staying in Karon, and as you can probably see, the beach was quite beautiful. White sand, crystal blue water...just a shame we had to share it with a couple of hundred other tourists! (It's just a deceptive photo!). I can't complain though, it was pretty nice to be on a beach. We only stayed here for a couple of days and then headed to Aonang, or to be exact, Nopparatthara Beach, back on the mainland. To get there we had to take the ferry and I've never seen anything quite like this ferry terminal. We were given a sticker with our destination (I felt like I was back on a school trip) and then we had to find the right boat through the hoards of other tourists, it was manic! Once we discovered where our boat was, we had to clamber (we still had our rucksacks on our back) over two other boats before we got to the right one, craziness. So anyway, it continues...once we were approaching Aonang we had to change boats (this is where the sticker became rather useful) some people had to go on another ferry and others had to get into long boats. In all the confusion, I just pointed to my sticker and hoped for the best. Once we made it to shore, Emma and I then had to get another long boat over to our private beach where we were staying (oh yes, a private beach). Then came a problem...our hotel had double booked us, peeving. Being the nice Thai people that they were, they were very appologetic and arranged for us to stay at their friends hotel (a better one too) further along the beach. So the man at the first hotel put my rucksack on his shoulder and drove me (then Emma seperately) along the beach on his motorbike which was pretty fun. This new hotel was basically 7-8 beach huts with a decking area for eating, right on the sand of the beach, it was beautiful. We just walked out of our hut on the sand, a few metres from the sea. Our next problem though, was we had little money left and had to go into the town to get more out. The nice lady owner said we could walk along the beach and that the tide would be out so we could just walk through the little river separating us from the main beach of Aonang. We gave it a shot. Well really I waded in up to above my knees to see how far I could get while Emma looked on. Turned I out I couldn't get very far and we had to head back, I was a little dejected. So really the rest of our time here was spent on the beach, which we pretty much had all to ourselves, in the peace and quiet....it was perfect.