Hello massaaaaaage.....

We've been in Thailand now for a couple of weeks and absolutely love it. It's got such a nice atmosphere and more laid back than Malaysia. Also the perv situation seems to have disappeared which is good!

I'll continue from where we left off. Penang Hill was pretty cool, except it rained and we got wet! :o( The bhudda was pretty impressive as were the statues surrounding it. The temple (South East Asia's largest apparantly) was cool too. We had to trek (yes trek) up this huge hill to get there, but it was worth it in the end. By the time we actually took the cable car up Penang Hill the weather got worse and the clouds were getting lower. At the top, we just managed to get a few snaps before visibility was reduced to about 5m, which isn't great when you have gone somewhere for the spectacular views! Typical Kyle and Jade luck!

We also checked out Batu Ferringhi beach resort which was skanky to say the least and not a reason I would go back to Penang for! Lots of dead fish on the beach and scum in the water! There were kids swimming in it, which didn't seem like the healthiest thing to do!

We caught a minibus to Krabi (10 hours) from Penang crossing into Thailand. We had the most uncomfortable minibus with the most annoying driver who refused to turn up the aircon even though it was nearly 100 degrees inside (I kid you not!). I was ready to spark the guy out by the time we reached Krabi!
Krabi was pretty nice, and we saw our first Boots (the chemist) since leaving England 8 months ago! It was such a novelty and we spent lots of money in there! :o)
We did a a tour of James Bond island by long boat, also going to a floating village called Gypsy village, as well seeing Monkey temple. Long day but worth it. Although my camera ran out of batteries before getting to the main part of James Bond island, so we have no photos of anything which was pretty annoying!

We got the ferry over to Ko Phi Phi island and had our first experience of being ripped off by touts! We were sold a ferry ticket to Phuket for 450baht which we were told would cost 500 on the island, but which turned out to cost 250 on the island! We wont be fooled like that again. We now assume that everyone that talks to us is a liar! :o)

Ko Phi Phi was really nice and we stayed in a room that was the best one of our entire trip, but still cost less than 7.50 a night between us! It also had sky tv with a channel that played continuous films 24 hours a day. As soon as the credits of one film finished the next film started! So we didn't get much sleep! All the films were pretty new too!
We did a tour of the 2 Phi Phi islands, Don and Leh and went to the actual beach from the film 'The Beach'. It was pretty good, but there was clever camera trickery in the film! The scenery around Phi Phi was amazing and the water was gorgeous. We did loads of snorkelling (which still doesn't beat Raro) and swam to a tiny secluded island. Jade also tried to feed the fish with watermelon, and got bit. You could actually see the teeth marks! What is it with Jade and getting bitten!?! :o)

We had 4 nights on Phi Phi before getting the boat across to Phuket. We stayed just along from the main resort at a place called Kata. It was really nice, although for some reason everything there was Danish. Never found out why either??? So if anyone knows, email us!
The weather wasn't that great while we were there as it is now heading into Monsoon season. We had to take our waterproof jackets around with us as it would just suddenly starting p*ssing it down.

We went to Phuket town, Ao Patong (the roudy resort) and Ao Karon. All ok, but not somewhere we'd go back for a holiday. No where near as nice as other parts of Thailand.

We then took a minibus from Phuket (west coast) to Surat Thani (east coast) where we caught a ferry to Ko Samui where we are now. It's really nice here and we have already bought quite a few bargains using our haggling skills. Weather still isnt that great here either, and is supposed to pick up from Sunday onwards, so we'll be hitting the beach then.

By the way, the title for this post is because in Thailand every corner you turn you are offered a massage. Well actually it's not a massage, it's a massaaaaaaaage! They either don't know how to say the word properly or they just like singing it to us! It's so funny.

Hope you are all well.

Take care
K&J
xxx

Sunshine's Calling...

Well well well, we've had a rather pleasant last couple of weeks skipping from island to island. I know, I know, it's a chore but somebody has to do it!
Right here goes....While in KL we did the usual sights of the twin towers, sky tower, markets, golden triangle, attempted to see some temples but failing miserably, saw some he/she's, got harassed (but's just the norm now being a westerner/white person in Asia), sweated a lot, bought some fake stuff, and I think that's about it. We skipped around KL on the monorail and tube, and had some quite funny experiences. We went to this market in Chow Kit, which was recommended by our 'Rough Guide' book as a good market and nice place to eat. Well, when we got there it all started off fine until we hit the centre of this market which turned out to be harder to get out of than the Labyrinth! To top things off, this was also the 'wet' section of the market, meaning the fish, meat, poultry etc, which is all well and good, until you saw it. The place was horrific, how anybody who buys anything from there doesn't die from food poisoning or something far worse is beyond me. As far as I was concerned it was pretty disgusting, but Jade was finding it quite a bit worse. The guys were sweeping fish water into the walkways (which were about 2 foot wide), as well as chicken off cuts etc, and the smell was awful. Jade started to feel a bit sick at this point so we decided to head out of the market to get her some fresh air, and this is where it all started going wrong. We couldn't find our way out and were going deeper and deeper into the fish guts and chicken heads section. Jade was fighting back the urges to chuck right there, so I had to push our way through the stalls to where I could see sunlight (it was all undercover). We managed to get to sunlight only to find that we'd hit the back street behind the market where the bins were. The smell was twice as bad here, with squashed whole chicken heads on the floor, old fish remains and basically any old bit of fish, meat etc that hadn't been sold, or that was so gone off that they couldn't sell it. Combine that with 30+ degrees and you get the picture. We practically ran out this ally before Jade added to the smells. We got her some water and she started to feel better. We had actually headed there for lunch, but decided to give it a miss after that! I still find it funny, but Jade doesn't see the funny side! :o)

Oh as a side note, another thing that we have found in Malaysia is that the whole country is full of perverts! There is rarely a guy that walks past Jade without staring or beeping his horn. You'd think they'd never seen a white girl before. The worst thing about it is that they are so obvious about it. I'm not sure the word subtle exists out here. If they are travelling from behind us, they actually slow down enough that they can turn there heads to see what she looks like. We were speaking with some other couples out here that have had the same thing. Dirty old b**tards!

Anyway, back to KL. We went to this one cool market (Petaling) where they sell all this knock off gear and I got a billabong bag for 2 or 3 pounds as well as a Tag watch that is literally a complete replica of the real one. Can't wear it in the water, but never mind eh! :o) Some of the watches there are amazing, they do all the kinetic ones, with sapphire glass, water resistant etc etc. They go for around 20 quid but it's still a bargain when they look exactly like the real ones. They have all the catalogues there to compare them to. I was well impressed. If I hadn't just bought a new watch in Oz, I'd have had myself a couple of the good ones!

Think that'll do for KL now. Next we caught the bus to a place called Cherating on the east coast which we were told was amazing. Ghost town springs to mind. The first few hours we were there we didn't see a single person! Beach was OK, place was clean enough but the hut we were staying in had so many holes in it that it felt like we were sleeping outside! We stayed in that one for a night then changed to a much nicer one. The place didn't get any better so we skipped town and headed for Marang where we caught a ferry to the Kapas Islands. This place was amazing. It was tiny, but it was so clean, and really was like a mini paradise island. There wasn't much there, so excellent for relaxing, which we really needed to do after the hectic life style that we are leading! ;o)
We stayed in a hut that was actually on the beach, so we didn't have far to walk in the morning! We only stayed here for one night as our excellent planning skills got us over there the day before bank holiday and everything was fully booked. This gave a good excuse to head straight to the Perhentian Islands, so weren't too fussed. However, this damn bank holiday nearly caught us short again when we got there. We got the speed boat over to Perhentian Kecil after being told that no one books accommodation on the island and people just turn up. Well we just turned up and the place was heaving. We went to stay at Long Beach and got dropped off by the water taxi at the far end. We tried to get a room at the first place that was fully booked, so we dumped our bags and I headed down the beach checking the resorts to see if anywhere had a room. 30 mins and 5 places later, still no room, every one was fully booked. It was sooo hot and I was sweating buckets, so I headed back to the bags to get Jade to check the rest. She worked her way down the other half of the beach and every single place was fully booked. We were starting to panic then as we'd just got the last boat over to the island and there weren't any boats back until the next day. Jade got to the last resort and they had just had a cancellation and had 1 room available. So she took it without even looking at it (luckily it wasn't a sh*t hole). Straight after that 2 more sets of people turned up looking for rooms and we'd just gotten the last hut on the island! That was such a relief. It was very nearly a bad start to the one place we were looking forward to going to the most in Malaysia! With all that sorted we started to relax, and started off with some grub and beer!

I've just realised I've written and waffled quite a lot so I'll try to keep it short.
Perhentian Islands are amazing and I highly recommend to anyone to go there. We did a 5 hour snorkelling trip and saw giant turtles, squillions of fish and went to place called shark point where they always see sharks, but guess what, today there weren't any there! We swam round 3 times and didn't see a single one! I really really want to see a shark now. I was pretty much dead against it at the beginning, but we have both now warmed to the idea!
Anyway, we sunbathed a fair bit, chilled out, ate a lot etc. Had a cool time.

Our next port of call was/is Penang where we are now. We've been here a day but not really done much so will write about this later. We had the worst bus journey to get here though. First we had to get a taxi for an hour to the bus station (a fiver :o) ) then wait 4 hours in the bus station for the bus before the 7 hour journey. We caught the bus at 10pm, so had a night journey which should've been fine, except the guy in charge of the aircon must've been wearing thermal undies as it was set to full for the whole journey. It was soooo cold. We had to put socks on, have our beach towels wrapped around our legs, Jade had her jumper on with another towel over the top of that, then we had a towel over our heads! I've never been so cold on a bus before. It made it so uncomfortable, and to top it off, my seat was broken, so everytime we went over a bump (which is a lot over here) my seat jumped from reclining to upright and back to reclining again, which pretty much stopped me sleeping the whole time! I know what you're thinking, yes reclining seats on a bus is pretty good, and it usually is, but this one felt like we were sitting on an iceberg when the titanic hit it!

I'll stop moaning now, it's nice and hot here (very humid) so we'll try to see some sights tomorrow. Off to see Malaysia's largest Bhudda and a trip up Penang Hill on the cable car.

Hope you guys are all well, and feel free to email us whenever you want.

Take Care
K&J
xxx