Days 87-88: Similan Islands, Thailand

Wow! After going snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, we thought that any other snorkeling we did on the trip would be something of a let down.

We were entirely wrong! I found some info about the Similan Islands on the western edge of Thailand, 70 km out from Kho Lak. It’s a group of nine islands, now turned into a national park, with no commercial developments, although the park runs campgrounds on two of the islands. We decided to do a two day snorkeling expedition, which turned out to be a perfect amount of time and only cost $150 per person, including 5 meals, an AC bungalow on the island, gear rentals, and door to door bus service! If anyone is interested, we highly recommend Jack Similan tours – although their email response wasn’t the best, the rest of the tour was excellent!

On the first day we had to leave really early (6am) for a 2 hour bus ride up to Koh Lak, then an hour and a half speedboat ride out the islands. We then did one dive (each dive was an hour) in some of the clearest water I’ve ever seen. The sea floor was 6 to 10 meters, and visibility was perfect to the bottom and about 40 meters all around us! The sea was calm, the sun was bright, and there were thousands of fish and dozens of types of coral.

We headed to one of the islands for a tasty Thai lunch, then headed back out to visit another couple dive sites, seeing some different fish and coral varieties, plus lots of new rock formations and island scenery. Then we headed to the island where we’d be spending the night and had a few hours to explore and rest. Mary slept while I went rock hopping and swimming, sending thousands of crabs scurrying for safety. Later on we had dinner, then saw an incredible sunset, including having the entire sky turn yellow and then orange (seriously, check out the pictures!). Everyone passed out early, except for us, since our mattress turned out to be a piece of stone :-(

The next day came way too soon, but we were revitalized by a nice breakfast on board, then headed out for another couple dives. The first stop (Miang Island, I think) was the most incredible site I’ve ever seen – turtles, Moray eels, coral snakes, octopi, sea horses, sea stars, lots of parrot and trigger fish, visibility farther than I could measure, and no one there besides our group of ten snorkelers! Plus we chased some Barracuda for a brief bit, until they turned on their jets and blew us away. The second stop had just as good of visibility, although somewhat less sea life, but had tons of fun shooting through gaps in the rocks, riding the surging waves through them! Then we outran some jellyfish, did some deep dives, and headed back in for lunch.

On both the islands we set foot on (lunch the first day and our overnight stop) there were fun climbs up to rocky peaks of the islands, offering great vistas and lots of photo ops. Even if you don’t normally check out our photos from the trip, I’d highly recommend these, they’re a lot of fun!

We met a lot of great people on the trip, including a few very nice Canadians (there seem to be a lot of them here in Thailand!) and several Brits. Everyone had a wonderful time and was tremendously happy – how could we not be? Even the trip back was exciting, as we saw a whale surface four times, including a couple within ten feet of the boat! Needless to say we were very tired when we got back to Phuket that evening!

Days 83-86: Phuket, Thailand

We took a short flight from Penang across the border to the resort island of Phuket to avoid the long train and bus ride up from Butterworth (the airline is called Firefly, a big hit for fans of the TV show, such as Mary!). We made some friends in the airport by retrieving their ATM card from the machine. With our new friends, we proceeded to share a shuttle bus down to the (infamous?) Patong Beach. On the way down we stopped briefly at a travel agency where they tried to sell us tours, but we spent the whole time playing with their cute kitten.

I’m sure Patong is nowhere near as bad as the real centers of the Thai sex industry (such at Pattaya), but there were prostitutes everywhere! Mary didn’t recognize them as such, and there is some question as to which of them were simply women looking for farang (western) husbands, but many were clearly working the streets. At times it seemed that every third western man we saw walking down the street had a Thai woman on his arm (frequently half his age and vastly more attractive). On the streets with all the go go bars and nightclubs, there are lines of women just standing around, all dressed up and waiting for company. The bars are also filled with women, to keep the men interested, and presumably buying drinks.

That aside, Patong is a nice town, with a lot of great food. We found a small restaurant with reasonable prices and had such good Tom Yum soup that we decided to come back several times. The soup got spicier each time we came back, starting with no chilies (but a spicy base, hotter than anything you’d get in the states) and gaining about 3 chilies a visit, until on our last visit it reached our limits – how much hotter it would’ve gotten is hard to say, but it did seem they were reaching a limit as to how many chilies they could fit into the bowl! They had a lot of other good food too, but the soup was definitely the highlight.

Patong originally became popular due to its beach, and it hasn’t gone anywhere, although there are many more beach chairs on it now. We spent a relaxing day on the beach, interrupted only by the passing trucks blaring the details of tonight’s Muay Thai boxing match – every night is the biggest match of the year! Later on, we got Thai Massages to relax our sore muscles from a day on the beach! Very relaxing – great on the legs, perhaps not refined on the upper back, at least where we got them. And not sketchy at all, despite the reports we’d heard beforehand about what may or may not be included in a Thai Massage.

There's a lot of great snack food on the streets of Patong (although not much in the way of real food), including roasted corn on the cob, fresh fruit, and "Pancakes" -- thin crepes stuffed with sweet and savory fillings, including our favorite of banana and Nutella. Great for keeping you going while walking around the town and watching all the other tourists and locals!

Days 74-82: Penang, Malaysia

The train ride from KL up to Butterworth on the northwestern corner of peninsular Malaysia was similar to the ride up from Singapore, although the country is clearly more developed towards the northern end. We passed several large towns, including Ipoh, the gateway to the central highlands of Malaysia. It would’ve been fun to stop there and see the national park, but we decided to go straight up to Penang. Similarly, we were sad to miss Malacca, on the southwestern coast, but the train doesn’t go there. Next time! There’s a lot of Malaysia to explore, including Borneo, which I’d love to visit.

After getting off the train in Butterworth, it’s a short walk to the ferry to Georgetown, on the island of Penang, The ferry only takes 15 minutes, and is somewhat reminiscent of the Star Ferry in Hong Kong (not surprising, given that they’re both former British colonies, I suppose), although Georgetown is not nearly as built up as HK. All the locals on the ferry (especially the kids) were very interested in us, and had a hard time deciding whether to look out over the water or at directly at us. One guy actually did a double take as we sat down and asked where we were from.

We decided to stay in Penang for a while so that I could have some solid time to do some contract work for my former employer, Black Duck Software, as well as do planning for the next few stages of our trip. When we weren’t working, we spent most of the rest of the time sampling some of Penang’s spectacular hawker food. There are hundreds of food carts along the roads, selling a wide range of food, including local Malaysian specialties, fresh fruit, Chinese, and “Western” dishes. The food is uniformly excellent, and an entire meal for two can be had for 6 US dollars.

Every night, but especially on the weekends, there is a large night market stretching down one of the roads near our hotel. Incredibly, the market is entirely disassembled every day, and all the stalls are pulled off onto hidden alcoves, only to reappear and be reassembled in half an hour every night. It was fun to watch the locals roll the stalls out into position, pull up a car or truck packed to capacity with goods, and load everything directly onto the racks. The highlight of the market was the food court, which had 20 vendors offering a variety of food. There were also delicious fruit drinks. We tried, but failed, to sample them all.

Days 70-73: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The train from Singapore to KL starts off very oddly. The train station is Malaysian property, just like an embassy, so you go through Malaysian customs then and there. Then you get on the train and travel through Singapore for 30 minutes until you reach the border, where you disembark, go through Singaporean customs, then start off on your journey once again. The transition from Singapore to Malaysia is quite abrupt; fancy suburbs are exchanged for miles upon miles of palm trees (palm oil plantations) and occasional shacks. The train ride takes about seven hours and is quite comfortable, at least in our first class train with AC.

The best parts of KL are the night markets, filled with vendors selling food and knock off goods. The city is quite large and switches from run-down buildings that are ready to collapse to the Petronas Towers in the blink of an eye. The people are as diverse as the buildings, with a seeming even mixture of ethnic Chinese, Indian, and Malay peoples. Apparently the British brought in the first two groups less than a hundred years ago, but despite some earlier racial tensions, things seem very well integrated now. The muslim heritage is very strong, and many of the women walking down the street wear head scarves, and some cover their faces too. We’ve seen many more tourists here than I expected too. I knew very little about Malaysia before arriving, and still have a long way to go.

We’ve walked through the beautiful Lake Gardens, Chinatown, Colonial District (yes, another one), and the Golden Triangle (business district). KL’s downtown is relatively small (if not highly walkable), but the city stretches out for miles. The Petronas Towers were closed the day we tried to go up, but even from some of the hilltops you can see the city stretching out quite a ways. There are quite a few interesting museums here; due to time constraints we only made it to the Islamic Arts Museum, which had a good collection of pieces from all across the Islamic world.

Days 66-69: Singapore

Singapore is a shopper’s paradise. It feels like every other building you pass is a shopping mall, but in reality it’s EVERY building. In a lot of cases, the malls are interconnected and you can walk from one to the next for up to four or five malls, leaving you entirely disoriented when you emerge. Rooms here are very expensive (partially due to the fact that we arrived at the trailing end of Chinese New Year, which is a month long event here), but the food is cheap and excellent.

There were double-decker tour buses with open-air seating on top driving all around Singapore (motto: Be Hip/Go Topless). While we appreciated the sentiment, we decided to walk around with our guide book instead. We’ve had a great time here, going from one end of the city to the other. Our hostel was in Chinatown, near the CBD (Central Business District, seems to be a British term), and from there we’ve walked to Fort Canning Park (where the British surrendered the island to the Japanese), Little India (a little slice of Mumbai), and Orchard Road (the shopping mecca, with the fanciest stores and biggest malls). Singapore is very much a first world country, and we enjoyed having sidewalks again. Mary got some new jeans and now feels civilized!

The Singapore Art Museum had several very good exhibits. There was an impressive collection of seals (for signing papers, not the animals), a collection of Chihuly glasses, and some amazing weavings. The rest of the (British) Colonial District was also a lot of fun. However, after three days in Singapore we were ready to move on, as there’s not much to do after you’re done shopping.

Days 62-65: Sanur, Bali

We’ve spent our last couple days in Bali resting up in preparation for continuing on our travels. Neither of us was feeling great (the infamous Bali Belly got us in the end), but we still managed to enjoy the last of our time here. Sanur is another gorgeous stretch of beach, and I found some Swedes to play volleyball with. We also dealt with sending back many of the presents we bought here. And we forgot to take any pictures...

Days 55-61: Ubud, Bali

Ubud is the artistic center of Bali, and the skill of the artisans here is incredible. There are several towns that make up what is usually referred to as Ubud, and each town has an area of specialty, with families there practicing a craft for the last couple hundred years. Mas is devoted to woodcarving, Ubud to painting, Batubulan to stone working, Celuk to gold and silver smithing, plus assorted weavers, kite makers, and others thrown in for good measure. These artists are both skilled in the traditional artistic styles of Bali, as well as having learned from others from around the world that have traveled here. We met a very nice man by the name of Wayan Darma who turned out to be a very talented woodcarver and part of a collective of around 130 woodcarvers with a large compound just south of Ubud. He was a master level woodcarver, creating some truly amazing pieces (even by the standards of Ubud), but ended up making most of his money working as a taxi driver. We hired him as a guide since his English was good and he was very straightforward and never tried to pressure or fool us. He was a university graduate and had very in depth knowledge of all the arts, proving to be a great teacher as well.

We visited both his woodcarvers collective and a painters collective, both of which were amazing. They each had about 10 large rooms full of works, ranging from student pieces up to works of the masters. We learned a lot about the styles of Balinese art and the traditions and got to see works by some of the same artists that appeared in the Neka Art Museum, which we enjoyed greatly. It was incredible seeing the range in quality and complexity between the student and master pieces. We ended up buying some woodcarvings from him, and an amazing painting at the art gallery.

We’ve seen several Balinese dances, including the Kecak Dance (Monkey dance, with a hundred or more men doing an a cappella chant in a circle, with the dancers in the middle), the Legong Dance (with female dancers and a traditional gamelan orchestra), and the Barong Dance (Lion dance, featuring a two person lion much like those used during Chinese New Year). They’ve been amazing, featuring both very talented musicians and dancers. And being in the front row, ten feet from the dancers is pretty incredible too.

Ubud is much quieter and less hectic than Kuta, which was a welcome respite. The locals claim this is because there are fewer people from Java there, but I also got the suspicion that they blame everything bad on the people from Java.

One of my favorite things to do while walking or driving around Ubud was to watch what was being carried on the mopeds that crammed the streets. There are probably 3 or 4 mopeds for every car, and very few of them seem to be single occupant. My favorite sights include

• Two adults, three kids
• Three teenagers
• One person, one surfboard
• Two people, two surfboards
• 20 geese
• One large (8’x4’) painting
• Two fifty pound bags of concrete (sitting on them)
• Two large bushels of greenery

For Valentine’s Day we went to Mozaic, a French-Asian fusion place whose food would fit amongst the best restaurants in NYC, but whose prices are more at home in Bali. Even amongst all the great food we’ve had on the trip, this was a true standout!