Singapore to Ko Lanta

Our home of the beach in Koh Mook
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Blogs are boring.  Or, at least, they can be.  I very much doubt that you really want to hear what I had for breakfast this morning, unless there was something particularly notable about it – which there wasn’t…. today.  And you probably don’t want to know exactly how many Thai baht the boat to Koh Muk cost, or how many beers we drank last night, unless they made us do something stupid.  (Although you would’ve laughed when I approached a random Thai man, mistaking him for our waiter, and assured him that we would pay him tomorrow.  The random Thai man thought it was a good arrangement too.)  No, I lack any desire to subject you to a chronological drone about each day’s events.  And yet, in this respect, reading through many of the other blogs on this site is a real chore.  “We took the bus to Trang – it was okay, but it took about four hours when the lady said it would only take two.  And there was no A/C.  When we got there we chilled out for a bit, and met this guy called Christophe who told us about this island ….so we took a taxi to the coast and made some enquiries … “ Bla de bla!  I don’t wish to merely account for our whereabouts!  I want to describe the people we meet.  The delicious (and not so delicious) food we sometimes eat – but not every meal!  I want to describe how we feel, the plans we make, the plans we break, and the reasons why.  Most of all, I want to be entertaining!  I really hope this isn’t boring you!  I think it’s so good of you to read it and you deserve some greater reward than a list of placenames we’ve ticked off, surely!?

Dan and Vic start their Thai island hopping adventure
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Does it sound like we are enjoying ourselves?  Well – several of you say it does not!  And whilst those people are wrong it does not come as a complete surprise to learn that this blog, to date, has given that impression.  I think it’s because this is not a ‘gushing’ account of how ‘beguiling’ this or that waterfall was, or how we were wowed by endless temples.  (I don’t like temples (waterfalls are by me though) – they are usually old relics surrounded by touts.  If we’d visited every temple listed in the Lonely Planet guide to India I think we would still be in Greater Delhi.)  People build up these “big trips” and put a lot of pressure on themselves to enjoy it.  And I’ve certainly been guilty of this.  I’ve just tried to write an “honest blog” – to tell you how it really is for us – in the immortal words of Ali G, we’re trying to keep it real!  You may wince at your desks reading this but we’ve actually found travelling to be very hard work and it certainly has its fair share of highs and lows.  But, the experience has been, and still is, amazing.  I just choose not to bore you with all that.  Hopefully you will find some remnants of these sentiments between the lines. Singapore seemed like a very efficient place.  It lacked the hustle and bustle of Bangkok but there was still more than enough to hold our attention for a couple of days.  We took the train to Johor Bahru, Malaysia, and appreciated Singapore’s cleanliness in a retrospective way.  We made our way quickly up the west coast.  The Lonely Planet guide waxed lyrical about Malacca – one of Malaysia’s top drawer destinations it said…  turned out that it was one of the most dreary places we’d visited.  We hurried on to Kuala Lumpur and marvelled at the Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest buildings in the world until 2003 when the Taipei 101 was completed in Taiwan.  It’s amazing to think that there are skyscrapers already being constructed in the United Arab Emirates that are planned to be over twice the height of these – over a kilometre high!  That’s surely worth a visit to Dubai in 2012 – and I hope, unlike at Petronas, they let you go all the way to the top!

“Thailand-laos-vietnam-cambodia” seems to be one word over here.

Vic encounters some crazy excited young muslim girls
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We loved Malaysia.  (There you go, I’ve said something positive!)  This year is visit Malaysia year (well, in Malaysia anyway) and the prime minister has apparently briefed everybody to be super friendly and accommodating to tourists.  Gone are the “I love Bin Ladin” t-shirt shops that were apparently on every corner in Kuala Lumpur a few years ago.  The people of Malaysia are a credit to this young country (just fifty years old).  They really couldn’t do enough for us.  Whether the smiles and hospitality wear a bit thin by the end of the year, or beyond, remains to be seen – but for us, the people of a place make or break it.  There was such a diverse range of people and culture – and everyone seemed to be getting along just fine.  We found it hard to track down some authentic Malay cuisine – it tended to be either Indian or Chinese – but, apart from the odd chicken-kneecap curry, it all went down very well.

Breakfast in Hat Yai
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The biggest problem with Malaysia was the weather.  Hot and sweaty, mixed with a liberal dose of cloudy, and rainy.  Not a great combo meal.  So we decided to carry on heading North, and cross the border into Thailand where there were far more sun symbols on BBC’s weather website.  This all went without a hitch.  A friendly laundrette manager not only washed our clothes for us but also arranged a super cheap, air-conditioned mini-bus to take us there.  All whilst we relaxed watching The God Father II on his TV.  Excellent.

The cook and the cooked
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As well as seeking sunnier, drier parts of the world, we were also hoping to give Thailand a second chance.  It’s unfair, well downright na๏ve, to dismiss Thailand after only briefly visiting Bangkok, Koh Samui, and Koh Phangnan!  Thailand part two has really come up trumps so far. We ditched our Lonely Planet guide before we left New Zealand (only because we didn’t expect to be returning and were keen to shed some weight) and decided to just go with the flow when it came to deciding where to go, what to see, where to stay, and what to eat.  We saw some amazing Chinese New year celebrations in Hat Yai – and you could count the number of westerners on one hand!  (Probably because it’s listed as a hotspot in Thailand through ongoing problems with Muslim separatists.)  Perhaps this ditching of the Lonely Planet is all part of Lonely Planet’s big scheme of things, over and above their commercial aspirations, in that ‘independent travellers’ one day ‘see the light’ and graduate from using their guides all together – and become truly “independent”.  LP guides are so ubiquitous that you needn’t burden yourself with carrying one at all – there’s always some guileless traveller within reach who have their noses in a copy, oblivious to the world they are reading up about so studiously, passing them by.  I’m sure that Lonely Planet would say that they are publishing a guide, not a bible, and I would agree – it’s just that their guides, through overuse / misuse, are fast becoming a misguide – a guide of where not to go.

Why a guide of where not to go?  Well, when travelling the last thing you want is to be surrounded by other travellers.  Most people, I’m talking about westerners here, are annoying.  Teenagers and people in their early twenties can be very annoying – mostly because they are, what my father used to describe as, “rather too delighted with themselves”.  But put a backpack on their back and send them on a plane to Bangkok as part of a ‘round the world ticket’ and suddenly, they not only think they are special, they are special – and incredibly smug.  These people carry the Lonely Planet around like it’s some sort of club manual.  They talk incessantly about themselves – nothing deep or insightful, just the countries and places they’ve “done” (what they’ve “done” to them other than pollute them with their presence I’m not sure) and the places they plan to do.

Damn it.  Here I go again.  Bitching.  I’m such a bitch.  And I love it. But enough of that for a moment.

So anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I was telling you how superior and experienced we feel now that we’ve shed our Lonely Planet..  It’s great because we speak to more people, local people that is, about where to go, what to see, where to eat, and where to stay.  The local people form a comprehensively more up to date and entertaining edition!

We’ve just arrived on Koh Lanta - after spending a few days on Koh Muk, a small island on the west of the Thai peninsular, just through a series of random meetings with people and a vague intention to head north via a few more beaches.  Admittedly, based on a rather small sample, one Thai island is pretty much like the next.  Nice white sandy beaches at the edge of impenetrable jungle, dotted with rows of huts and bungalows, distinguishable only by the hammock occupiers in front of them.  There’s a sort of beach one-upmanship that’s still played out amongst the travellers here but we prefer not to get involved.  A few islands is more than enough for us … we’re not after fool moon parties, just a few relaxing days here and there before heading North to Bangkok, and into northeast Thailand and Laos….Vietnam….Cambodia….. oh god I’m sounding like those tryhard gapyear do-ers now !!!  “Thailandlaosvietnamcambodia” is spoken as if it’s one word over here, just like  “moreschoolsandhospitals” in a party election broadcast.

Another change, I guess, is that we now have an ‘end date’ to our travels.  Our flight from Singapore to Birmingham is booked … probably our biggest culture shock is yet to come.  Maybe I’ll carry on the blog!?  Hmmmm … maybe not.