Off to India tomorrow!!!!

Hey everyone.

I thought I should put something on this seeing as I dissappear into India tomorrow. I fly into Tiruchirappalli, if anyone wants to know. It's the only place in India that air asia fly to, and as such, it only cost 56 quid for the flight.

Malaysia has been a bit of a quiet one to be honest. Penang was cool although it took me a day and a half to fully recover from my all nighter followed by minibus ride. I stayed in George town for a few days and nothing of note really happened, people in my hostel didn't seem to go out at night, and prefered instead to stay in and watch DVDs. After a couple of days I headed over to the Beach area of Batu Ferringhi (probably spelt wrong, but the place wasn't interesting enough to warrant me looking up the name). It was even worse than George town, just couples everywhere, which being a lone traveller you can meet and get to know, but the situation has to be right, you can't, for example, just walk up to a couple in a candle lit bar, sit down, and start talking about films. Plus it was expensive to stay there, double what i had payed in George town, and no where near as nice. I stayed on the beach for a while and played fetch with a dog that turned up, then at night I watched a Bolton game and gently nursed one very expensive bottle of Carlsberg. The day after I went back to George Town.

I stayed in a different place the second time, the cheapest place yet (and to date the 3rd worst place i've stayed, although at the time it was 2nd worst), at only 7 ringetts a night for a dorm bed. The man at reception said the dorms were full, but he gave me a private room in which the fan didn't work, for the same price. It was dirty, etc, precisely what I expected for 7 ringetts. I only saw 1 other person my whole 2 nights there, so I doubt that there even were any dorms. The good thing about staying somewhere bad is that you can't just stay in and watch films or the results of who gets the olympics with other people in silence. So I went out and started talking to people, the first guy, who's name and home place I wont mention for reasons I will later explain, didn't talk very good English. We got on ok though, although I admit there were times that I just nodded, or said yes, or smiled, or did any combination of those things. After a few beers he went and got some food and offered some to pretty much everyone else in the bar. So we both got talking to a girl from Holland, called Steph and a guy from England, who's name has slipped my mind. Then after a while two more guys turned up, another from England, called Luke, and a guy called Dave, who was 40 something and from Australia. Dave had supposedly told Luke and Steph that he was going to take them to a bar where you get given a little bamboo fishing rod and there's a tank with prawns in it, and any prawns that you catch you get to take home, but he was late, and drunk. We decided that tomorrow, we would all go. The no named guy told stories of his past, one of which involved him living in an airport for 6 months, because he went somewhere, I can't remember where, and when he came back his "country was closed", those are the only details I could get from his slightly drunken babbling. He also told us that every couple of months a friend he has in Dubai sends him a credit card with a new name and a new pin number, and that is how he gets his money from travelling. I don't think mentioning his name and where he's from would land him in any trouble, but best to be safe I guess. After a few more beers people started leaving and I left too, and headed back to my dirty room, and tried to lie on my bed with as little of my body touching the sheets as possible.

I went up Penang hill the day after. It was ok, it's a hill.... Some good views from the top, and the trains that go up and down were kind of good. There's a couple of temples at the top. I went back to have a shower and stuff in time to meet for the prawn fishing at 7. I went there and only Steph was there, then a while later Luke showed up. Dave never came, Luke, having met him a couple of times now, wasn't annoyed or dissappointed, he never expected it to happen. I talked to Luke all night, who was drinking ice lemon tea, or something like that, because he didn't have much money and was leaving Malaysia the day after, so didn't want to withdraw any more Ringetts. I started drinking the tea aswell, I think we looked pretty gay, but we were watching football aswell, so it kind of cancels out I think. I can't remember how long Luke had been travelling for, but he'd set out to spend all his money and was down to his last "couple of hundred quid" so thought he had 3 or 4 weeks left tops. I went to bed at 2 ish, and had to get up to get a minibus at 6, I didn't mind because it meant less time in the dirty room.

I was headed to The Cameron Highlands on the early minibus. The place had a definate look of the lake district about it, little villages surrounded by hills, only here there were jungles on the hills. My hostel was much cleaner here, so I had a nap. When I got up I got some food, and swapped my long finished book about a guy crossing Congo overland for a weird book that was just a transcript of a web forum in which a guy posted about how he'd saved a girl on a train from a drunk man. It wasn't a tough read, but it was different. The next day I set off on a Jungle trek, in my sandles, with my tube of superglue, as a part of one of them was going to break, like the other one had some weeks before. Sadly, when it did break, part way through this trek, I tried to glue it, but my glue had dried up... So I completed the trek in broken sandles. I got back to the hostel at 1:30, somehow an hour earlier than the poster with the route on had said I would complete it. So I carried on reading the weird book. A while later a couple came in with a big hairy dog. I recognised them from the bar in George town, they had gone there on the night before I went to the highlands. I said "Hi, you guys were in George town a couple of days ago weren't you?" the man said yes and I said "I recognise your dog, kind of hard to miss". This is the type of situation when you can approach a couple, you're not interupting anything, and there's a common interest, the hairy dog. I could assume they were interested in it because it was theirs. After chatting for a while, Simon, the man, obviously, invited me to go with them to a tea plantation the next day. Simon and his girlfriend Koong, and their dog Bilbo, live on Koh Samed in Thailand, and were on a road trip in their big blue truck. The tea plantation was huge, we went for a little walk, then went up to a cafe that overhangs part of the plantation. I got a cup of tea, it was good, but didn't taste massively different than a pg tips, or whatever. Simon got a cup of mango tea, and I was angry at myself for not being more adventurous. Lots of Malaysians had their photos taken with bilbo. Bilbo's an old english sheepdog by the way. Not an old sheepdog, a young, old english sheepdog. We went to a bar afterwards, got a bit of food and some beers, then went back to the hostel.

That night we went to a bar that had a fire and had a few beers. Nightlife wasn't huge in the Cameron Highlands, I think there were 3 bars, and one of them only sold cans... So we went to the fire bar both nights we went out.

I stayed in a 4 bed dorm while I was there. Room mates included an asian French girl, and then the last two nights a British guy who coughed all night the first night, and a Canadian guy called Ben, who both me and Simon agreed was very weird, and who I think had something of Napoleon Dynamite about him. Simon hasn't seen that film, so couldn't agree.

On the last day there we drove to the top of a big hill (one of the benefits of meeting people with a car). But it was really foggy on the top, so we couldn't see the views. Some Asians had their photo taken with Bilbo, so at least it wasted trip for them.

My next destination was Ipoh. It's crap, I stayed in my second worst hostel to date there. MASSIVE bed bugs, i didn't think they were ever even visible, but these were the size of big ants. So I wasted no time and headed to Pangkor, another island. I went to an area called Teluk Nipah, which was really beautiful, possibly the most beautiful coastal place I've been to, but it was also extremely quiet. Only person I really met was a philipino guy called Wen, a guy who worked in the hostel, who was obviously gay, and gave me beer on the first night I met him. This was a dilemma, but I chose to accept the beers. One day while I was there I swam to a little island, i'm not sure how far away it was, but it took possibly half an hour to swim there. Other than that not much happened, there was hardly anyone around. I read "The White Tiger", which is a VERY good book. And I also started reading Jaws, pausing for a swim at the end of every chapter (usually just after someone gets eaten)

When I was leaving Pangkor I wanted to get a taxi to the Jetty, but every taxi I passed in Teluk Nipah clapped at me, or shouted "Yes Boss" or something equally shit, so I decided to walk to the next little village bit and try there, same again. In the end I ended up walking the full 6KM to the jetty in 37 degree heat and boarded the ferry a sweaty and smelly mess.

I got the bus to Kuala Lumpur, then got the Monorail to Chow Kit, the area that my hostel is in. It took a while to find it, but I managed eventually. This place also has a common area with tv and dvd collection, and free internet. There are currently 8 people sat around, quietly, they acknowledge each other occasionally, but you can tell that no one is making any lasting bonds. I don't mind too much though, i've been getting ready for India. I've bought a guide book and have been creating a plan of attack. Yesterday I got up early to go and get one of the free tickets for the Sky bridge between the two Petronas towers. It was ok for what it was. I'm my group though there was a woman that just complained from beginning to end. In the lift on the way back down she said "It wasn't as scary as I wanted it to be". Whether she was expecting some kind of rope bridge, or just a big plank or what I don't know. And she kept moaning about "the process" with which the tours were handled. And at the start we were stood waiting for one group to come down in the lift so we could go up, and she was moaning about being too tired to stand up... This thing is free, you just have to get up early and join a queue, no one forced her to do it, if she had just left rather than waiting for the lift she could have gone and sat outside on the kerb and wouldn't have lost anything. If it's free, why stay all the way through and just complain? Stupid.

I've also been to a Lake, which had a good view of the towers in the distance and their reflection in the water. Today was really hot so I wandered around some shopping centres because they all have air conditioning. One of them had a fashion show on, because they were opening up a debenhams. I've never been that excited about debanhams (I think i'll spell it differently every time), but they were very excited about getting a debnams. I watched untill it finished, and then an announcement came over that said thanks to everyone, the models, designers etc, then it said "Remember Debenams is opening soon, in April 2010". That's not soon, 6.5 months in advance is too early to get excited about debenhems. There was also a national geographic shop opening soon, sadly they didn't put a fashion show on. I went to the roof, looked at the views, then went back down. When I got to the bottom a guy was on the stage doing weird dancing and shouting into a microphone, amongst the people copying the dancing were some of the models, it looked as if they might break if they put their full energies into the moves. I went to Mcdonalds.

The guy who works in the hostel went out for dinner a while ago and left me in charge, thankfully nothing has happened. He told me to just tell people to wait for him to return if they want anything. If there's a fire or something people will not be waiting.

Oh, also, the other day I went for a shower. All the proper shower cubicles were in use, but the toilet cubicles had shower heads in them (sometimes the only showers in hostels are like this) so I used one of those. After a while the water stopped, I put a towel on and opened the door and the guy from above was stood there. I said "the water's gone off", "I turned it off" he said.

"Why?"
"Because thats not the shower, the showers are over there."
One of the showers was free now.
"I know, but I thought... these have showers..."
"Sir, that is obviously a toilet." he said, while pointing to the toilet.
"Wel... I know it's obviously got a toilet in it, that is a toilet, but it has a showe...."
"It's obviously a toilet, the showers are over there." He said this quite sternly and was obvoiusly getting annoyed that I was questioning his ideas of what is obviously a toilet.
"But in a lot of hostels the toilets and showers are in the same thing and... Sorry, i'll move over there." I started to listen to what I was saying and realised it was not only pointless, but also completely ridiculous.

I think he realised that he'd been too angry with me over something so trivial, as the next day I watched the end of Transformers on Tv and he asked me if i'd enjoyed it when I walked past him and asked if i'd seen transformers 2. He has put tape over the shower heads in the toilet cubicles now though. I surely can't be the first person thats done that, loads of hostel showers in Thailand and Malaysia have been in the same place as the toilet. Plus i dont know why the shower heads are there in the first place.

Anyway, i'm not sure how often there'll be internet cafes in India, but i'll try to do another post soon.

Bye

I'm in my 14th country (if you count Tanzania and Qatar)

Hi everyone.

I'm in Malaysia after a horrible journey yesterday, but more on that later.

Trat picked up a little bit as I found a night market and ate loads of food, then I found a bar that had a westerner in it. He was German and 41 years old, and he had a Thai girlfriend that was 22... She wasn't at the bar, and I didn't question whether she had been purchased or not. I went on to Koh Mak the day after. Koh Mak was very quiet, it's a small island anyway, and being low season there was practically no one there. Some of the beaches were fantastic, with no one on them at all. I did meet a guy who owned one of the resorts there, it was closed because it was low season, and he was also a carpenter so during low season he did work for other people opening resorts on the island, not a bad life. We got talking about what i'm going to do in the future, and his only suggestion was get 5 million pounds and be a philanthropist, conveniently not metioniong any set the wheels in motion for that career path.

I stayed on Koh Mak for 3 nights, but it was too quiet, so I headed back to Bangkok to get my passport back complete with india visa, and then planned to take Jens' advice and head down to Ton Sai. I spent two nights in Bangkok I think, I don't really like Bangkok, I just wandered around temples and parks during the day, and went to bars at night. There was a good bar on Khao San Road that was up a few flights of stairs, so you could look down and watch people get hassled for suits and massages and be glad that you're not one of them. I met a few people, but no one really of any interest, and I think I had the shortest conversation with a fellow traveller that I have initiated so far, with a german girl, she just gave one word answers, I tried three times to make it flow, then gave up and turned to the English people on my other side and started talking to them instead.

The bus was an overnight bus to Krabi, then I had to get a boat to Ton Sai bay. The bus had a television and they put the film "Jumper" on. It was in English, with English subtitles, which didn't say anything like what the people were saying. It was funniest when the actors were just saying single words or phrases, "First Class" was translated from English, to English and writen in the subtitles as "Donkey". There was a point when someone said a drink, it could have been Martini, I can't remember, but it was written in the subtitles as "vegetarian food".

When I got to Ton Sai I was really tired, so I found somewhere to stay, got some food, then had a nap. When I woke up I went and sat by the beach, two guys were playing frisbee, not sure enough in my frisbee skills I didn't ask to play, but I went to speak to them when they went to the bar afterwards. They were Americans, and called Miles and Jordan, they had met on the bus on the way to Krabi, Miles was traveling alone, and Jordan with his girlfriend Lisa, who was having a nap. A while later, Lisa showed up, angry because Jordan had locked her in their hut and she had been shouting for ages for someone to come and let her out but it was just Thai people walking past so they couldn't understand her. After a while we moved from the hostel bar and went to a bar called Small World Bar. I think you'll probably remember it if you went there Jens, really chilled out and a lot of fun, free table tennis. After that we struggled to get home in the dark, at one point Miles suggested that we turn the torch off and we'd adjust to the light, it didn't work.

We spent the next day together on the beach, plus we went over to Railey beach when the tide went out, it had nicer sand, but it didn't have the same atmosphere over there. At night we went to Small World bar again, after getting food from a place I don't know the name of, but was really good.

Miles left the next morning for Koh phi phi, while Jordan, Lisa and I rented Kayaks and set off on an 8Km journey to an island we could see in the distance. It took about an hour and a half, but it was beautiful and it was kind of cool pulling up in a canoe when everyone else there had come on organised tours in big boats. I rested for a while then carried on to another island that took around 30 mins to get to. When we got back we ate lots of food and had an early night.

When I awoke, feeling the ache of the previous days adventure I did nothing and just lounged around on the beach all day, meeting Jordan and Lisa for a few drinks on the porch of their bungalow.

I got up early in the morning and headed to Phuket town. I wanted to see what it was like and then move on and stay at kata beach. There wasn't much there, people hassling you to get into taxis etc, so the next day I packed up my stuff and headed to Kata beach, it's only a short bus ride, and when I got there I couldn't find anywhere cheap to stay, so I lounged on the beach for a while and headed back to Phuket town, where I had found a great hostel. I went out for food with a guy that was in my dorm, I can't remember what his name was or where he was from (I should start writing this stuff down), then we went back to the hostel were a few people were watching dvds.

The next day I rented a scooter, I did wear a helmet and long trousers. It was a fun day, I went to a few of the viewpoints and took some photos, went to a few of the beaches. The only problem was that it rained a couple of times, so I had to quickly find places to pull over and go inside.

I headed to Phi Phi the day after that, and ran into Lisa pretty soon the day I got there. Her and Jordan had met up with one of their friends called Nicky who had been teaching with them in Korea, and they were all heading out for the night along with a girl from Canada called Fiona who was from the same set of bungalows. I joined them and we went first to a bar on the beach with a fire show (doesn't narrow it down much, most of the bars had fire shows, especially if they were on the beach). Lisa won a free bucket for a balloon game, and I got a free beer for doing fire rope skipping, we got some photos but you can't really tell its me doing it. Then we went to the street that the bungalows were on and got some buckets, as it was cheaper than in the bars, while there we met Miles again, along with a welsh guy called Lee and an English guy called Jake. Then we all went to another beach bar untill it closed. I lost my sandles, but managed to claim a pair of flip flops, but the day after Nicky found my sandles again, so I put the flip flops on a concrete blog in the beach bar, they had dissappeared later on, but I'm not sure if they went to their rightful owner. There was lots of lost sandles and flip flops on the beach so I didn't feel too bad, and sure the owner of my borrowed flip flops found some others.

That was kind of the routine for the time on Koh Phi Phi, the same thing happens every day on that island, go to the beach, eat, shower, go out, same music in the bars, you meet the same people, drink the same buckets. There was a bar called Reggae bar, which had a Boxing ring and people could volunteer to fight, which mainly resulted in slightly drunk people flailing their arms about. One night a Scottish guy bust a French guys nose, another night someone who had obviously done a bit of it before was kicking another guy in the head, then in the second round the losing guy finally landed a punch and everyone cheered. I didn't quite have the courage to volunteer although I was tempted by the free bucket that they gave to every volunteer.

We also met a guy called Ali, who had been travelling for 1.5 years and played poker online to get money, I would love to be good at poker and just do that for my life.

Me, Jordan, Lisa, Nicky and Fiona took a boat trip one day to Bamboo island and Maya bay (where the beach was filmed). The sea was really rough, and at times it seemed too rough for our tiny little boat, but it managed it.

On my last night on Phi Phi I decided it would be a good idea to stay awake all night drinking buckets untill I had to get my boat at 9, that way I would sleep in the minibus. This is not a good idea, minibuses and roads in Thailand are in some way and for some reason designed to prevent sleep. We stayed in the club untill it closed then on the way back Ali decided to get a tatoo, he already had one drunken tatoo, "Flavour Country", on one of his ankles, so he got another, "Beach Bum", written in Thai on his other ankle. Then we went back to their bungalows and listened to music until 7 am, when I went back to my hostel to pack my things.

On the bus, if my bum wasn't numb, then the road was bumpy, it was impossible to sleep. Plus I was really dehydrated for a long while until we stopped at a petrol station and I could get some water. I will not be doing that again...

General feelings about thailand are mixed. There are some really irritating places, I am never going to get in a taxi when the driver claps at me and shouts "taxi", I don't want a massage, I have better things to spend my money on, no matter how many a's you put in it("Massaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage?"). But past the annoyances there are some beautiful beaches, and a lot of fun to be had if you can look past a few of the more irritating tourists. I think in general you have to stay out of Bangkok for as long as possible, I was there for far to long because of the visa thing, and just don't go to phuket, it's pointless.

So now I'm in Penang, Malaysia, Just booked a ticket to India from KL on the 19th, so i've got a bit of time to explore a few places and cobble together some sort of route for India before I have to leave.

bye