Koh Samui

Things were getting tense – the stark difference in incomes was easily seen. On either side of the river, the middle class Malaysian village to the south, the poor Thai shantytown to the north. After going through customs, we had a kilometer walk in the humid heat to the Sungai Kolok train station. We were told we’d be able to take a train all the way up to Surat Thani where we’d catch the overnight ferry to Koh Samui, but southern Thailand, in particular Chumphon and Surat Thani had been devastated by flooding from recent unusually fierce storms and typhoons. As a result, the train could only go as far as Hat Yai. We really didn’t want to spend our first night in Thailand in Hat Yai or Surat Thani, but without a whole lot of information to go on, we set off on the train.

The train was dirt-cheap and we found out why quickly enough – they only had 3^rd class trains with brutally hard seats. Our car was packed solid with hundreds of boxes of foodstuffs that were loaded everywhere without regard to other passengers. It was actually pretty fun watching them try to unload their shipments at each station before the train started up again – a French girl even pitched in and helped unload boxes from under and above her seat. The ride was nearly as bad as the 5-hour haul to Pangandaran in Indonesia.

When we arrived in Hat Yai it was pouring. We immediately searched for a bus company to get us to Surat Thani by 11:00pm – it was 4:45 at the time and we knew we were cutting it close. We went to a place near the train station and luckily they had 2 minibuses leaving at 5:00 (250 Baht) from the hotel. Sweet!

The drive up to Surat Thani was harrowing - flooded roads everywhere and no visibility for the driver. We had to cross over into the oncoming lanes to avoid impassable roads.

We eventually rolled into Surat Thani right next to the jetty for the night ferry at about 10:30mp. Despite having heard lots of bad stories about the night ferry to Koh Samui, we weighed our options and went for it. The overnight ferry was called the “slow boat” for just that reason – 60 km in 6 hours – you do the math! The good thing was that the first 30 km were up a river so we managed to fall asleep before we hit the open seas. After a restless sleep avoiding cockroaches, real and imagined, we finally docked at 7:00am having avoided seeing and experiencing any bouts of seasickness. The seas must have been calm overnight, but it was raining heavily when we got off the ferry.

A few bemo drivers, smiling sadistically greeted us. When we insisted on keeping our bags instead of strapping them on the roof (it was pouring!), our driver got all pissed off. He proceeded to drive around the island for an hour dropping everyone off but us, and then switching us to another taxi that did the same thing. “Welcome to Thailand” we kept thinking to ourselves. It was obvious no one wanted us staying at Wanna Samui Resort, where we were meeting friends – instead the bemo drivers would say “Why not you stay here? Nice place.” – Obviously some places paid a little commission to the drivers. We quickly found out that the emphasis in Wanna was on the NA, as no one could understand us. Some friends from Japan, Tomi, Brad and their two kids had been staying at Wanna for a month (it was their 3^rd time) and we were also meeting up with Chad, another friend from Japan.

Eventually the taxi driver dropped us off at the main road in a fishing village called Hua Tanong, south of Lamai beach road. We paid him half because there was no sign of WanNA anywhere. We ended up having to walk a kilometer with our packs. Finally, we found the resort, but we were NOT happy campers. We checked in and fell immediately to sleep.

There were two main beach areas on Koh Samui – Chaweng Beach and Lamai Beach. Chaweng was just a much bigger, noisier, more developed version of Lamai. Both had a main road lined with shops and restaurants, and access to the bungalows lining the beachfront. LamaiWanna but Chaweng would be the place to go (especially the Green Mango) if you really wanted to party. was a good place to go out at night for us because it was close to

The first day at Wanna we met up with Tomi and Brad and their two kids Luke and Max. At first, we didn’t really like the setup of the place – inconvenient, too quiet and a pain in the ass to get around. But we quickly changed our minds: it was a perfect base to do what we wanted, the place was beautiful, it had hot water and fan rooms practically on the beach for 200 Baht, and the comical owner, Mr. Moo (believe it or not) was really nice and a superb cook. We realized that we hadn't slowed down much on our trip, and we decided we would just relax a little more and spend time with our friends. We could rent scooters (150 Baht per day plus gas) there, and there was a driver who would periodically drive us to town. To top it off, we had free access to the neighboring resort “Maria’s” excellent swimming pool. One of the coolest things that reminded us we weren’t in the Caribbean was the twenty or so wild water buffalo that would wander up and down the beach in the early morning and evening.

Our friend Chad, who had been travelling for 3 or 4 weeks in Thailand and Burma, arrived the day after we did. I still remember when Chad was planning his trip when we were back in Tokyo – I kept suggesting he go to Cambodia, but he’d never heard of Angkor Wat at the time. No sooner had he said hello in Koh Samui, than he told us that he had been in Cambodia for the last ten days… A flashing light went off in my head – was it a danger light, or a ray of hope? It was only about five or six weeks after the bloody 2-day coup that had seen 41 Khmer “politicians” slain. Chad had decided to go on the spur of the moment after talking to an ex-pat living in Phnom Penh, and he raved about it the whole time we were at Wanna together. Beth never really wanted to go, but I had had a strong desire to go up until we read about the bloody coup way back in Bali, two months before we met Chad.

The combination of being with friends and being surrounded by cheap beer (20 Baht in the store, or 40 Baht at Bars) led to a few nights of drinking, including an all-nighter at Lamai Beach. One of the things I remembered from that night was that Chad, Brad and I had been playing pool on a patio – Brad was flirting all night with, what was obvious to Chad and I but not to Brad, a “lady boy” (transvestite/transsexual prostitute). Chad and I couldn’t help laughing as Brad kept saying “this chick really digs me man!”. We had a great time, and the almost total abstinence of drinking so far had lowered our tolerance a bit too much!

Chad and I rented scooters one day, planning to whip around the island doing all the cheesy tourist things like visiting the Snake Farm, seeing the Monkey show and lots of other crap – turns out we would have needed at least 3 days to see all the cheesy sights on Koh Samui – and every one of them was a blast!

We started out down at the South end of the island, where we passed the house of some enterprising individual with a sign in front that read:

“Old House, Perhaps 150 Years Old – 50 Baht”

The house was exactly like every other wooden shack along the road. Chad and I almost lost control of our bikes from laughing. The first stop was the snake farm show – an hour-long show featuring handlers of different kinds of snakes, scorpions and centipedes. Putting them down their pants seemed to be pretty popular. At the end, Mr. Cobra comes out – a tiny Thai guy with long hair, lots of scars and 2 very mangled hands to prove that he’d been bitten over 100 times by king Cobras. We were disappointed that he didn’t do the pants thing…..

Throughout the show, the MC – a tiny little guy far back from the stage almost completely hidden by a large podium giving him the appearance of a shady auctioneer – rambled on and on, saying some of the most hilarious things. At first we didn’t know he was speaking English, but when we concentrated, we caught about 1 word in 3. During one lull in the show, he said “you want see water buffalo fighting, tonight you see at…. I don’t know what stadium… we have 7 stadium you know”. When the handlers were on stage with their deadly reptiles he would hiss and ooooh and aaahhh and say “they bit you, and you die, die, DIE! Oooooohhhh” or “you take picture, go home, show your friend, they come back”. All the while, the MC would fade music in and out by turning the volume on his century old tape player. He even ejected a tape instead of pressing play, and proceeded to apologize to the audience and chuckle. To top it all off, when the show was over, the song that came on was …… you guessed it:

Nah nah nah nah,

Nah nah nah nah,

Heh – hey – hey,

Good – bye

We worked our way up the west coast, stopping for lunch near the port area. In the afternoon, the go-carts sign caught our eyes, and we headed for that. It turned out to be a good little game center, with pool, ping pong and darts. The carts were a little expensive to rent – about 300 Baht for 10 minutes. We did, however, watch one westerner try to break the sound barrier – in the process lapping all the timid Taiwanese drivers on the course. The guy was hilarious to watch, and as we could have predicted, when he got out of his car after the race, he was a little skinny guy with curly hair and coke bottle glasses – he drove slowly away on his scooter accompanied by his homely looking wife…

The next stop was at the northeast corner of the island, to see the twelve meter high Golden Buddha. It was as tacky as expected, and I even got a shower of “holy water” for 10 Baht. Working our way around, we ended up at Chaweng Beach, by far the most developed place on the island. Too bad CDs were not a popular item as tapes were going as cheap as 10 for $10USD. I found one of an Internet cafes and caught up on some correspondence.

By the time I was done, Chad had gone back to Wanna and it was dark. They said there was an average of one person killed per day riding scooters on Koh Samui during peak season – they must have been driving at night. The thirty-minute drive home along windy, up and down, unlit roads with trucks screaming by on both sides was frightening to say the least.

The five of us decided to do a day trip of diving at Sail Rock, just north of Koh Pha Ngan (135 Baht per person). Our Pro Divers divemaster’s name was Roland, a retired Swedish army officer who ran everything by the book. His pre-dive briefing was going along point by point, quite plain and dry, until he grinned wickedly and said “If we see a whale shark, fuck the dive plan!” – it seemed so out of character that we all erupted in a heap on the deck of the boat. It was a nice day of diving if you had to dive from Koh Samui. The boat was quite big, not too crowded and the lunch provided between dives was, as usual on these types of trips, excellent.

We frequented a bunch of restaurants for dinners at night – all of which were good. One place in Lamai that was owned by a Swedish guy named Eric was really good. Eric would come by after dinner and chat about anything and everything. The stall food in Lamai and Chaweng was also delicious – grilled chicken on a stick, barbecued corn on the cob, even hamburgers! For breakfast we usually had a heaping mound of fruit and muesli, and for lunches (sometimes twice a day!) we would have one of Mr. Moo’s curries – red, green, yellow or penaeng.

Markets of Kota Bharu

From Kuala Besut, we caught a share taxi RM 5 each (4 people) with a Canadian couple to Kota Bharu, a large city an hour away from the Thai border. We got dropped off at Zeck's Guesthouse, and we were happy we did. It was clean, had hot water, and attached bathroom doubles for RM 20 and Zeck was a really nice guy with loads of info. He drove people into town (a 10-minute walk) and showed pirated DVD movies on his personal system to anyone who wanted to watch.

Kota Bharu was really just a jumping off point for travelers (for this reason you could get great advice from people coming from Malaysia from the south, or Thailand from the north), but there were also a few things to do - particularly seeing the day and night markets.

The central market, opened during the day, was in a huge domed two-story building. In the middle of the building, the 2^nd floor opened up, and the domed roof allowed yellowish light to shine down on the first floor. This was by far the most picturesque market I saw in Asia - the rows upon rows of vegetables, meats, and fruit and yes, even turtle eggs were so colourful and nicely arranged. It was a must see for anyone who liked Asian markets - and who doesn't.

At night, the parking lot next to the bus station turned into the "night market", one of the best feasts of hawker and stall food we ever saw - and dirt-cheap. Unfortunately, our first night there, it started pouring, and all the stalls shut down because the high winds were destroying the tarp covers. Suddenly the power went out and we were plunged into absolute darkness. We ended up going into the nearby A&W to the ^nd floor, where we crashed a huge birthday party featuring forty screaming kids and the A&W bear - fortunately we scored some free birthday cake!

We managed to find two German guys to get a share taxi to the Thai border for RM 4 each, and our time in Malaysia had quickly come to an end. We were feeling a little down, knowing, based on our short experience in Thailand two years prior, how tough Thailand was compared to Malaysia, and expecting the worse in the next couple of days. After blowing all our Ringgit on snacks, we walked across the border….

Malaysian Totals (7/21-8/5, 8/12-8/24) 27 1/2 days - 2 people

RM 260 = $100

	Total	Daily Average
Travel	RM 466.20/$179.31	$6.52
Accommodation	RM 656/$252.31	$9.17
Meals/Snacks	RM 1,112.86/$428.02	$15.56
Miscellaneous	RM 494.05/$190.02	$6.91

Perhentian Islands

In the morning, we caught a bus to Kuala Terengganu on the main road, and before we knew it, we'd arrived at the bus station and been ushered into a share taxi with a French couple bound for Kuala Besut.

The share taxis in Malaysia were just one more reason why getting around could be such a joy compared to other Asian countries. You could get them just about anywhere, but it was easiest to go to the local bus terminal or train station to catch a share taxi. After telling the driver where you wanted to go and how many people you needed to share the taxi with you, they would do the rest. Depending on the destination, it usually didn’t take long before the requisite numbers of tourists were hustled into the cab. The prices were fixed and usually posted somewhere, so you didn’t have to worry about haggling or getting scammed.

We travelled from Kuala Terengganu to Kuala Besut carrying on broken conversations with the elderly couple from France - they with their limited, badly accented English vocabulary, and us with our even more limited, ugly French. It took just under an hour and a half for RM 5 each. That was under $2.00 each - Beth and I were almost sorry we had "discovered" share taxi's so late into our Malaysian leg of the trip

Kuala Besut was teeming with shops selling ferry tickets to the Perhenthian Islands, and it didn’t really matter where we bought the RM 30 return ticket - they all used the same boats. But when we went to the information center/travel shop near the jetty where the taxi dropped us off, we were stunned by the amount of information available. They had every guest house cross-referenced by price, room type and amenities. There were details on every dive center and just about anything else you needed to know.

For some reason there was a lot of hype about the lack of drinking water and food available on the islands - the owners of the small convenience stores near the jetty probably started this! Every single backpacker was loaded down with bottled water, crackers and bread - OK, maybe they saved a couple of ringgit but you could buy anything you wanted on the islands.

Our ferry left at 1:00pm and as most boat rides we took, it was a great ride. We were dropped off by request in a shallow area in Coral Bay (I could see sand patches everywhere and every boat predictably got stuck while leaving the harbour). The length of the trip depended on where you're staying. The ferry would drop you off wherever you wanted to stay - the quickest being Coral Bay on Kecil Island at about an hour and a half. When we were about a half hour away from the smaller island's west coast (Kecil Islan - Coral Bay), we realized how beautiful the island was. Without having stepped foot on land, we were already completely satisfied.

We'd heard that Rajawali, at the north end of Coral Bay, was a good place to stay, but it was full. Most of the places at the north end were little RM 15 A-frame bungalows with mosquito nets, mattresses on the floors and shared outdoor toilets and showers. To the south, where we stayed, (Sunse - RM 35 for a double with bath and fan) the places were a little more upscale, with beachside bungalows with attached bathroom & shower - but there actually wasn’t much running water. Kecil had water shortage problems in the fall, and we ended up drawing water from the well for a one-bucket sponge shower!

Coral beach wasn’t great for swimming - it simply lived up to its name too well - but the view was the best with some of the most spectacular sunsets I'd ever seen. It was also a little quieter than Long Beach (on the eastern side of Kecil) and had great snorkeling. One day we were snorkeling with two turtles that were cruising just fifteen meters off shore.

If you wanted a great beach for swimming, you took a 10-minute walk through the jungle over to Long Beach - a 3/4 kilometer long pure white sand beach with calm waters and views of the big island. One morning we were met by a two meter long monitor lizard relaxing on the path. The monitor lizards were all over the island and ran crashing into the jungle when they heard someone coming. At the restaurant by our bungalow, the woman chef fed a huge lizard every evening around 5:00pm, and that usually drew a bit of a crowd.

Long Beach was the place to organize snorkeling trips, kayak & boat rentals and snorkeling equipment rentals. It was also where we found the best dive shop we had ever been to - Turtle Bay Divers. We shopped around at most of the dive shops on Kecil Island and most of the prices were the same - RM 120 for 2 dives. The minute we walked into Turtle Bay and didn't get the "we're too cool for you" look, but instead were greeted by one of the friendly owners, we decided to go with them. The shop is owned by two Malay-Indian brothers who'd been educated in England, and they ran a tight ship. We ended up doing 4 dives there with an English guy named Peter who had done all 200 of his dives there, and was unbelievably still pumped every dive. He was a forty-year-old former bricklayer who decided to make a big change in his life, and clearly he'd been successful! The diving was all done by speedboat, so you could come back between dives and grab a good lunch - which beat 2-dive trips any day.

The food was predictably great. Most of the restaurants were attached to bungalows and had special set meals (RM 6 or 7) every night depending on the catch of the day. We had a lot of great seafood and vegetable curries - Rajawali was consistently better than other places. Our usual breakfast was muesli with fruit for about RM 2. The best lunches we had were at the restaurant beside and behind Turtle Bay Divers - they had huge chicken baguette sandwiches, which hit the spot between dives.

By chance, the day after getting there, we met up with Kylie and Andrew who we'd travelled with in Java. They chartered a boat to go fishing one day and managed to haul in a fair amount of small fish, which Rajawali barbequed for us at no charge.

One day we signed up for a snorkeling trip which everyone raved about. We signed up with "Rosie,", a jolly fat guy that operated a little shop on Long Beach (Kylie and Andrew had gone fishing with Rosie). He was s a great guy, and he took us to 4 or 5 places in his speedboat, as well as lunch for RM 15 each. We had bought an AS800 speed 5-meter underwater disposable Kodak camera and brought it along - it worked really well. It gave us a chance to have some pictures to remember the underwater portion of our journey. The final stop on the snorkeling trip was to a freshwater spring on the big island. After drinking bottled water for two months and showering from a well for a few days, the spring water was like our own little oasis in the middle of paradise.

After almost a week on Perhenthian Kecil, we had to leave in order to meet up with our friends in Thailand, but I vowed to come back. I’m hoping that the “non-development” policy on the islands will endure, and that some day I can come back to this hidden paradise with Beth and the girls.

Ranau Abang

Early the next day, we set off for Rantau Abang, the next stop on our turtle watching mission. This time we were after the rare leatherback turtles. We had to take three local buses to get there (Cherating – Kemaman – Dungun – Rantan Abang). On the last leg, we were packed in tight and fearful of missing our stop, but the driver came through for us once again. When the dust settled, we stood facing the turtle information center.

There were basically two places to stay in Rantau Abang – Awang’s and Ismail’s. We chose Awang’s, and there were a lot of different rooms available. We chose something middle of the road for RM 20, but found it pretty dirty (the cheesy, dirty bed cover they used at some of the lower quality places and the crappy square foam pillow – it was times like these that Beth and I were truly thankful for our sleeping sheets that we always carried with us, to allow for a good night’s sleep.. though why couldn’t I remember that later in Phnom Penh….) and the toilet/shower combo was such that you had to straddle the toilet in order to take a shower – don’t try this at home please.

I felt a little like Mulder waiting for news of a leatherback turtle sighting… “we wanted to believe….”. The whole area existed because of turtle watching, and the turtle information centre had a lot of info on the plight of the leatherback turtle, and an interesting video. In reality, the chances of seeing a turtle laying eggs on the beach were quite low – only about 60 turtles laid eggs in the 6-month long season, although they did it multiple times.

We wanted to believe…. The best chance was actually watching them release baby turtles from the hatcheries, which was much easier to predict. We had shown up at prime time – August, a full moon, and clear skies, but after strolling up and down the beach for a couple of hours, we gave up and returned to our bungalow in hopes that someone would wake us up if they spotted a turtle. It didn’t’ happen! The next morning, we made the decision to leave rather than stay and risk dieing of boredom – there just wasn't a whole lot to do in Rantau Abang.

Cherating

Cherating was a beautiful beach area with some decent places to stay and pretty good food – the only down side was that other than the beach, there was not much to do. We stayed at a place called Cherating Cottage (where did they come up with those amazing names!) which was a great little place to stay, but the owner was an absolute asshole. He had the biggest fake smile, and was so untrusting and unfriendly, that Beth and I virtually boycotted eating or drinking anything at the attached restaurant.

One of the attractions at Cherating was to watch the green turtles spawning. Since turtles spawned at night, you could pay a fee for a guy to come wake you up if the turtles were spawning, but unfortunately it didn’t happen while we were there.

Cherating had what seemed to me to be the most gently sloping beach in the world. The water was so shallow due to the many sand bars, and I measured water at a boiling 32.6 degrees celsius with my scuba watch. There was absolutely no shock when you went in the water, to the point of being completely unrefreshing.

One night, Beth and I sat on our second story balcony gazing out at the biggest lightning storm we had ever seen. It was eerily calm outside, yet rain was hammering straight down and lightning flashes went off over the sea for what seemed like two or three hours. It was absolutely beautiful and something we remember to this day whenever lightning strikes.

For food, we ended up gravitating to Mimi’s for meals, as they did a great curry and naan. We found ourselves getting quickly bored – Cherating seemed like a place where people ended up if they had nowhere to do in a real hurry. My feelings were confirmed when we saw a couple of forty-something males “backpackers” doing a giant Batik painting of a mushroom.

Brief stop in Kuantan

We didn’t really want to stay in Jerantut, so we inquired about getting share taxi from the jetty to the eastern coastal city of Kuantan. The driver who we were dealing with gave us some story about the late boat people being charged RM 30 more for a share taxi (he even had an “official” rate sheet), so we opted to try our luck in Jerantut. Fortunately, the Swedish couple we were in the taxi with was desperate to get to Kuantan and said they would pay 80 if we would pay 40 because they were going anyway – that was fine with us.

Although we could have caught a bus to Cherating, our next destination, when we arrived in Kuantan at 7pm, we thought we needed the rest and a good shower. On our way to finding the New Capital Hotel, we walked by the huge blue and white Sultan Ahmad Shah State Mosque which was lit up and beautiful under the full moon. The Chinese run hotel was clean and quite cool and ventilated, with an attached bathroom and shower. It was also very central to everything we needed.

The east coast of Malaysia was a lot different that the west coast. The east was far less developed: cities were smaller, the roads weren’t as developed (there didn’t seem to be a complimentary major highway project that they had on the west coast) and there didn’t appear to be too many Chinese or Indians like there was in the west. This had two effects: it was harder to get good Indian food (you can get Chinese in ANY city in the world!) and the Muslim influence was much stronger, evidenced by many more mosques and a general feeling of having to strictly adhere to the Muslim code. Beth could feel the stares one day in Kota Bharu when she had on a tank top and shorts – it wasn’t a comfortable feeling and we never repeated the mistake.

The next day was set out to work or way to Cherating. After some confusing moments regarding which bus station to go to (Lonely Planet strikes again: all destinations were serviced by the new bus terminal next to the stadium!) we got a local bus to Cherating. As happened when we rode buses, it was a bit stressful to see when we should get off. There were lots of Cherating signs for what seemed to go on for many miles, but we had to rely on the bus driver to let us know where to get off – he did, and we were grateful. Traveling by bus in a foreign country could be very intimidating – you basically had to put complete trust in strangers to let you know when to get off.

Taman Negara National Park

The train… we opted for a regular seat (S$ 27 each) instead of the sleeper (S$ 38), and we soon found out why they called the other section “sleeper”. At 11:00pm they turned on some strange cartoon (something with “dawgs” in it), and by midnight they had progressed to pre-WWII Olympic highlights in black and white. We got little, if any, sleep. Our destination was Jerantut, a small town near the entrance to Taman Negara – the largest National Park in peninsular Malaysia and, according to the literature, the oldest rainforest in the world. At 3:30am, someone figured out we had stopped at Jerantut, and we got off with that “where the hell are we” glazed look on our faces. There were a few other travelers there, half of them expats from Singapore. We purchased a ticket for transport to the jetty for RM 6 and the river trip to Taman Negara for RM 8 each, and settled into the uncomfortable, hard plastic seats at the train station for a couple of hours.

At 7:00am, we were taken by mini bus to the Kuala Tembling jetty, where they had a couple of restaurants and a small store. We had breakfast, but didn’t realize that the terrible food there was a sign of things to come – the park food ended up being the worst food we had anywhere on our trip up to that point, and combined with several other factors, shortened our stay in the park.

The two and half hour long boat ride up the swiftly flowing river to the park headquarters (at the time, the only way to get into the park was up the river) was almost enough to satisfy anyone’s expectations of Taman Negara – it was incredible and to this day I have very strong memories of the boat trip. The riverboats were similar in design to Thai longtai boats, and seated about 12-15 people, 2 abreast, sitting on the floor of the boat. Being so low to the river, we really felt as if we were explorers on the Amazon river. With towering trees and dense growth on both sides of the river, and the occasional sightings of monkeys, wild water buffalo and monitor lizards, we felt as if we were thousands of miles from civilization.

We arrived at the park headquarters, which was on the west bank of the river, and had over 100 chalets that were pretty nice looking, but very expensive. They also had dorm beds for RM 18 a piece and a couple of expensive restaurants. There was space for camping and you could rent everything you needed, which in hindsight may have been the way to go. On the eastern bank of the river, across from the park HQ (you got across by waving over a boat driver from the nearby floating restaurants – free if you get there in one piece!) were lots of hostels, mostly dorm beds, and some restaurants and shops. Again, it may have been better to go there – others did and had given fair reviews – but we decided to go further up the river to Nusa camp, a place run by the park HQ that was “more off the beaten track”. The best part of going to Nusa camp was taking the river boat up through some rapids to get there.

Here was a quick rundown of my opinion on Nusa camp – keep in mind we stayed in the dorm rooms (4 beds to a room RM 10 each) as the A-Frames were a little too pricey (RM 50) – terribly unfriendly, terrible food, disgusting showers and toilets, dirty, boiling rooms and the location was not very central to many of the treks.

As soon as we put out gear down, we set off to Abai Falls, an hour and a half jungle trek to a very small waterfall that had a nice, cool pool of water we swam in. It was a great opportunity for Beth and I to have some time alone in the form of a nice romantic hike in the middle of nowhere. The swim was great, but we were soaked with sweat on both legs of the journey, so we weren’t too comfortable when we got back to the camp.

That night, I slept on the top bunk, staring up at a huge spider, hoping he would catch all the malaria filled mosquitoes that had managed to squeeze through the cracks in the walls. Ok, I might have been exaggerating about the malaria, but it was pretty bad.

The next day, we were out of there. We decided to leave Nusa (the only thing keeping us there was the tiny, injured gibbon (nicknamed “Gibb”) that the park officials had swinging from a small hammock in a tree) and head down to the HQ area to try and find something better.

We stashed our stuff in lockers at the campsite and set off to the canopy walk. Just twenty minutes north of the HQ chalets, the canopy walk was a foot bridge suspended up to forty meters high in the huge rainforest. It was pretty impressive, and to some (Beth!), kind of frightening being up that high. We got half way through when we were told we had to wait due to high winds and possible lightning.

It was, I think at that point, when we broke and decided we’d had it with the park. With the prospects of it raining for the rest of the day and finding a new place for the night, we decided to leave. No sooner had we made the decision then we were on the 2:00pm riverboat and on our way.

Singapore Vacation

Singapore was expensive, and like every big Asian city, our time and enjoyment there would be directly related to how comfortable our accommodations were. We had heard a lot of semi-negative comments about traveling in Singapore, a lot of “yeah… .it’s o-k-“ etc, but we were to have none of that, as we were staying with a friend of Beth’s Dad, who happened to be an expatriot with a conveniently located place on Orchard Boulevard, right next to the information center, and a stone’s throwaway from Orchard Road.

The heat and humidity in Singapore, as in Melacca and Penang, was oppressive at this time of year (and from what we heard, it didn’t get much better in the “off” season). Sometimes I didn’t even feel that hot, but then I would look down at the beads of sweat on my arms and realize my shirt had turned a shade darker and weighed two kilos heavier due to a full layer of sweat. The humidity could sneak up on you.

The information center was excellent. They had tons of maps, pamphlets and two good walking tours (Chinatown and the Riverside area). The monthly Singapore official guide is great and had lots of info on the month’s events and special attractions, so we also used that as a guide.

If you could imagine building a city from scratch, ala Sim City, Singapore may be one of many imagined outcomes. It’s clean and sanitary, and nothing is too old, historical or sacred to be remodeled, altered or improved in some way or another. Perhaps for those same reasons, it lacks the pulse of other major cities. On our last day we did the “Chinatown Walk”, which was quite good, but it lacked the hustle and bustle of similar places in other cities. Everything was in its proper place, which wasn't disagreeable by any stretch of the imagination, just different and unexpected. Singapore is famous for shopping, which was most likely the reason that we practically saw more Japanese than native Singaporeans at every attraction and commercial shopping area.

Sentosa Island was Singapore’s version of Disneyland, and if you took it for what it was – a fun, relaxing place where you could have a good time while spending lots of money – it was great. There were a fair number of things to do after you arrived on the island by bus, boat or cable car (it was only a few hundred meters off the coast of Singapore) and many of the attractions are cheesy and avoidable – Volcanoland, the Merlion and a few others – but Beth and I went to Underwater World and Fantasy Island. Underwater World was an amazing aquarium featuring a huge, 40-meter long square tunnel beneath huge tanks of sharks, rays, groupers and lots more. At the time, the “tunnel under the tank” was pretty rare for aquariums, and I have since been to a few (Sydney, Sarasota, Atlanta) that have replicated this effect, but it was one of the nicest aquariums I had been to at the time. Other features included a petting pool where anyone could get a firsthand look (and feel!) at turtles, rays, starfish and sharks. They had feedings where a diver would go into the large tank and hand feed the ravenous sharks (See Team America - Hans Brix). We spent about two hours there and then indulged at Burger King for lunch – this was quite different from the “backpacker” experience we’d been accustomed to.

In the afternoon, it was off to Fantasy Island (now Equarius Water Park). I know what it sounds like… but unfortunately this wasn’t an offshore brothel! We didn’t have any huge water parks in Canada (like Six Flags in the States), so at that point in our trip, having this sudden “tourist” experience, Beth and I had the best time. We were like a couple of kids – zipping around to the dozen or so waterslides, including two that were pitch black tunnels that scared the shit out of us but kept us going back again and again. We spent almost five hours there! It was great for some stupid fun, but it had its price, in all the day cost us way more that we were used to spending in a week. Fuck it – it was worth it!

Our next day of money spending fun was at the renown Singapore Zoo and the Singapore Night Safari. The zoo was a large, open concept tract of land surrounded by a huge reservoir. We spent quite a lot of time there (6 ½ hours) due to the fact that they had two really good shows, lots of scheduled feedings, and a wide variety of animals, particularly primates. We unfortunately met up with this Brit that we had bumped into at the pool in Malacca, and he was constantly whinging (wow, what a great British word to describe a whining, complaining Brit) about one thing or another – especially when it came to the price of things. We managed to lose him after a while though.

The Night Safari , a new attraction at the time, right next to the zoo, was a very original idea and had promising room for improvements with more displays due to be added. Since, according to out tram tour operator, 90% of animals were nocturnal, you really got a different “zoo experience” at night. The sounds of the jungle at night were incredible. The main feature of the safari was the 40 minute long tram ride which covered 75% of the park. There were also several easy walks, our favourite being the fishing cat display, where if you stayed and watched long enough you could see the small cats diving for and catching fish in a shallow creek.

On one of our walks, we bumped into the whinger again and he led with “it really knacks me off that you have to pay extra for the Night Safari. That’s really annoying isn’t it”. Yes, capitalism is really annoying whinger.

We weren’t allowed to use flash photography, but someone on our tram kept taking pictures to the utter ire of our Malay guide. Finally, after numerous warnings, she said “Maybe I should speak in Japanese….” But that had no effect at all, doubtless due to her bad pronunciation (actually, it was quite good… I think someone wasn’t listening!!!). It made me ashamed for the Japanese. In Singapore, we saw first hand evidence of the Japanese behaviour that many others had complained about: there was no way anyone could have avoided the “no flash” signs – there was a video with obvious warnings, lots of pictorial signs and lots of people telling you to watch it, so it wasn’t completely a case of language barrier. I’ve since seen things like this many times from our Japanese friends, and I think it really comes down to this: when they’re out of their environment, they believe or feel that they are completely isolated from anything they know or understand, so they close themselves off to external things. I have tried helping Japanese tourists in Toronto, coming up to them and speaking Japanese and offering my help, but often they just look at me utterly confused. They are not expecting to be able to communicate, so they shut down their sensors. This is one of the reasons I believe the Japanese are famous for traveling in groups/tours. It’s not just a language barrier but a feeling of isolation that moulds their behavior abroad.

The next day, we decided to do the Riverside walk, which was pretty good, but it wasn’t quite the historical time capsule it purported to be, as everything was too clean, freshly painted or generally modern looking, but it got better when we god to Clarke Quay. The Clarke Quay area is a shoppers and food lover’s paradise, as there are tons of stores, and hundreds of every kind of restaurant imaginable, from low end hawker food to five star dining. There was even a “Hooters”, an American franchise I’d only heard of at the time – I wondered if recruiting had been an issue in Singapore…

Chinatown was also a pretty good walk, but again, it lacked character until you got to the detour area and saw how it may have been. It donned on me several weeks later that one of the things that separated Singapore from its Asian sisters (including Tokyo) was the complete lack of food stalls on the street. In Tokyo, you walk down the sidewalk and there are hawkers on one side and huge glass buildings on the other. You haven’t seen Seoul unless you’ve eaten dinner standing up at a small kiosk on the street, waiting for the owner to Kreskin the total bill. Bangkok, KL, even Jakarta had these stalls, which brought the people outside on the streets, and in turn added character to the city.

Singapore’s streets were quiet. I guess street stalls were difficult to control, and Singapore is all about control. No smoking, no drinking, no gum, no durian! All you see all over the entire city is the ubiquitous red circle with line through it signs. I guess the government saw this as the only way to clean up their city, though no doubt, they had gone a little overboard.

We ended up skipping Arab Street and Little India and instead spent all our spare moments either in our friend’s air conditioned condo, or lounging by his pool: it was our home away from home, but it had to come to end. We had plans to meet up with friends from Japan in Koh Samui, Thailand on the 25^th of August, and we had to get back into the swing of things before we succumbed to the life of leisure.

We were not impressed at all with the train station in Singapore. After trying a few times to get them on the phone, we had to go there ourselves, and it was so out of the way and lacking in to/from transport services that I had to arrive at the conclusion that, for whatever reason, Singapore was neglecting this link to it’s former countrymen.

We ended up catching the 8:20pm train to Jerantut, arriving at 3:00am, and after a quiet walk through Singapore and Malaysia customs, our time in Singapore had officially come to an end.

8/5 to 8/11 (6 nights)

Avg daily travel S$17.27 or $USD12.33

Food S$35.28 or $USD25.20

Misc S$34.30 or $USD24.50

Melting in Malacca

On Saturday, August 2^nd, we left the Highlands for Malacca. We had bought a bus ticket from Geneesh for RM 19 each which took us from Tapah to Malacca in five hours, so we had to take a local bus down the winding road from Tanah Rata.

We had heard the Town Holiday Lodge was a good place to stay, so we had made a reservation there – it was luck we had done so, because it was packed when we arrived. We were greeted by James, the Bengali who worked there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and who knew absolutely everything about Malacca.

After the cool weather in the Highlands, Melacca was absolutely oppressive. There was a huge, new air conditioned shopping mall (the Dataran Pahlawan Mega Mall) between the Town Holiday Lodge and most of the sights, so we found ourselves ducking in there after about an hour of walking around outside. We practically had every meal there: McDonald’s (of course), Hartz (an all-you-can-eat, RM 13 buffet of chicken, salad and pasta), but mainly we ate at the cheap food courts on the 2^nd floor (actually the 1^st floor – they used the British system “Ground, 1^st, 2^nd” system – confusing and annoying at best), which had cheap Malay and Chinese food. It’s also where Beth discovered “spring rolls” – no the fried ones but thick, onion filled and made in front of you. We even checked out a movie (Men in Black – RM 6), and weren’t surprised to see half the backpackers in town doing the same.

Between dashes to the mall, we walked the central area (Stadthuys, Christ Church, the Red Square and the hill at St. Paul’s Church) which was covered head to toe in dark red paint – quite unusual. The Maritime Museum was crap – consisting of hundreds of paintings of the port of Melacca (I never really was a painting guy), but the People’s Museum, in particular, the beauty exhibit was excellent. It covered different perceptions of beauty from around the world and explained the significance of body piercings, lip stretching, tattoos, mutilations, head enlargement, Chinese feet wrapping and the list goes on. Exhibits like these really caused you to think about Western “norms”. It reminds us that everything we look at is through a looking glass that has been carefully assembled and configured based on our specific beliefs and values. It was very hard to always have a truly open mind about the things we saw and experienced on our travels, but we were giving it our best. Still, I laugh at myself thinking, body piercings and tattoos – no problem, but if my daughters do it I’ll ground them for life!

We checked out the Sultan’s Palace which had a beautiful garden with a great view of the huge, wooden reconstructed palace, but the heat kept us from being too absorbed in the history of the pace, our minds constantly wavering back to…. The mall! Pathetic, I know.

One day, we had a great Indian breakfast (marsala dosai, but of course) at Restoran Veni on Jalan Temenggong and then headed across the bridge to nearby Chinatown. Chinatown, in particular Jalan Jang Jebat or “Junk Road” was filled with antique shops that would make anyone with the slightest interest in anything oriental break out in an anticipatory sweat. Even the buildings of the street were old and traditional yet well maintained. Interspersed throughout were Chinese temples, and the occasional mosque and museum. Maybe they should have held mid-east peace talks in a place like this? Again, we needed relief from the heat and headed this time for the public pool near the people’s museum. It was cheap and opened at odd hours, but a great way to cool off.

By Tuesday, August 5^th, we were well ready to be done with the heat of Malacca, so we caught a cab in the morning to the express bus station, and quickly caught one of the many buses bound for Singapore for RM12. In our minds, we felt like we were heading for a cooler situation in Singapore - I’m not sure what we were thinking, as were obviously in for a surprise. I later imagined us lined up at the complaint line in Singapore, berating the staff because it should really have been cooler than Melacca…

It took almost exactly 5 hours, including having our stuff off the bus twice, once on the Malaysian side for customs, and once on the Singapore side for immigration. The minor delays were a very small price to pay, as it was here that our life as backpackers ended and our life of luxury began.