Wholly crap.....

.....what have I let myself in for. Why the hell didn't I do this while I was still travelling??? It's now been about a month since the last update and I can't remember for the life of me what we did! Ummmm....

This may take a while!

I'll just summarise as this makes my life easier, and we are home already so seen most of you guys anyway.

Well... looks like we were heading to Nha Trang which was a very cool beach town. We met a bunch of cool guys here (EJ, Sannie, Vance, Lu, Al, Maurice etc etc) and pretty much just chilled with them. We did an island tour where we had a crazed Vietnamese guy who was hooked on karaoke, so we all had to sing and dance around this boat for hours. Huge buffet lunch etc etc - see photos.
Chilled on beach, ate, drunk, slept. Great place though.

Next was Hoi An which was a 12 hour bus journey away and was not a pleasant trip. We got stuck at the back over the engine compartment which was bloody hot, and the a/c didnt really work.
Hoi An however, was an amazing little town set alongside the river. Loads of cool restaurants, very cheap amazing hotels and the best place in the world to get tailor made clothes!
Jade and I both had a lot of stuff made, including a pimping pin stripe suit for me! :o)
We were staying in a hotel that would easily have cost 150 quid a night in the UK and we were paying around 9 quid between us!
Highly recommend going here for anyone who wants absolutley anything tailor made to very high standard!
Also met up with a few guys we met in Nha Trang here too.

Hue was next, and this place was crap to say the least. Absolutely nothing to do, so we booked the first bus straight back out. That's about it for here!

We then had our final bus journey of the entire trip! We had a 14 hour drive to Hanoi which was pretty comfortable and I managed to sleep most of the way.
Hanoi is one HECTIC place! Even more so than London I reckon. Absolutley loved it there though. We met up with EJ and Sannie here and ended all going on a 3 day, 2 night boat trip around Ha Long bay which was awesome.
Basically huge limestone cliffs jutting out of the water, great kayaking, lots of swimming and generally a cool trip.

From here we had to do the most backwards thing ever and fly from Hanoi to Singapore to get to Hong Kong. They are only a few hundred miles apart but Singapore airlines don't fly direct??? Crazy!
Anyway, flight was fine, although a little weird being on a plane after doing ALL our journeys on a bus.

Hong Kong is AMAZING! It's right up there at the top of the list of our most favourite places, just pipped by NZ. I could literally move over to HK to live. It really is such a cool place - probably more so as it was the most civilized place we'd been to in months.
The place is spotless, everything works, everything is on time and there is a shed load of stuff to do!
We were thankfully staying in this really plush 4* hotel that I had booked as an early birthday present for Jade, and we even got a free upgrade! :o)
We did soooo much in the 4 days we were there, including hooking up with Jonni from the B'ham ghettos! ;o)

A brief list of what we did, then you can compare to the photos.
Hong Kong Island and all the crazy building, the peak tram for the most amazing view of the HK skyline, especially at night, Causeway Bay for shopping, Nathan Road (where we were staying) for shopping, avenue of stars (although they were all chinese - but there was a very cool statue of Bruce Lee), basically lots of shopping centres, Kowloon park, ladies market, mens market, sports market, goldfish market, bird market, flower market, La Kwon Fai for a few beverages, Soho for food, the mid level esculators (basically esculators that take you from one district to another for lazy people), Victoria harbour for the skyline view across to HK Island etc etc.... the list goes.

To sum it up we had an amazing time and would love to go back!

So...this is the end of our trip and we are now home in England! :o( It's not great to be back, but guess the whole thing had to end at some point!
Back to the grind of daily life, job hunting, flat hunting and English weather - although that is going crazy at the moment - hottest summer in god knows how many years.

Well for all of you that we met while we were away, it was great to meet you guys and hopefully we'll see you all soon when you make your way over to England. For those of you who have been reading this from England, I hope that I haven't waffled too much - I know I get carried away, and if we haven't seen you already - we'll see you very soon!

Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

Angkor What?

Well Cambodia has now been and gone and we are well into our Vietnam leg. We're currently heading up the Ho Chi Minh Trail and have done, Saigon, Mui Ne and Da Lat (where we are now), and off to Nha Trang tomorrow.

Cambodia definitely had it's good bits and bad bits! The bus ride from the Thai/Cam border to Siem Reap is possibly the most uncomfortable ride ever! We were crammed into a mini bus for the 6 hour dirt road ride. I got lumbered with a broken chair and we were attacked by grasshoppers flying into the minibus from outside. One managed to fly right at me from outside and clock me one right in the eyeball! So I sucessfully smeared him on the van floor with my flip flop - there's one that will be hopping no longer! :o)
Jade and 2 blokes in the back were having a fit as one was hopping around all over them and they couldnt see it because it was dark - I found it pretty hilarious!

We visited the Angkor temples in Siem Reap on the first day, putting in a solid 8 hours, followed by the notorious "killing fields" which was really sad. I don't know if any of you know about this, but basically Cambodia was under rule by the Pol Pot as recently as 30 years ago and all citizens were made to work the rice fields. People who were too intelligent or were lazy were basically killed, and this wiped out somewhere in the region of half the population. This museum coupled with the one in Phnom Penh is a tribute to the killing and they have a monument that contains 5000 skulls which were uncovered in the fields. Not a nice thing to see, but it really makes you realise how terrible some people have had it, and so recently too.

Anyway, the temples were amazing, and if any of you have seen the first Tomb Raider film, this is where they filmed a lot of it. It's really hard to explain what it was like (just think Tomb Raider come Indiana Jones!), but hopefully the photos will help with that when I get around to uploading them. We went to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and a few others that I can't remember what they were called. We hired a tuk tuk driver who carted us around all day and pretty much for the whole time that we were in Siem Reap - he was like our personal chauffeur! :o)
We also met up with Tommy, Renee and Jan (from the Laos boat) here which made Siem Reap more fun. Our nights were filled with beers, good food, cards and football! What more could you ask for!?!

Next stop was Phnom Penh which was a nice enough city, but more of the same. Cambodia is full of people begging and latching on to tourists which is soooooo annoying! Fair enough there are some that genuinely can't work or whatever, but 99% just walk around and hold there hands out to you to give them money because you are white! Really started to p*ss us off in Cambodia. It wasn't like Laos where they are just as poor, but no one begs. People actually try to make the best of a bad situation and make things to sell etc, but the Cambodians just like to get something for nothing! Oh yeah - would you believe a lady on the street actually tried to sell her baby for $20!!!
We didn't really to do much here as we just wanted to get to Vietnam, so we just visited the Russian market where there is amazingly cheap knock off CD's and DVD's and I nearly came away with the Simpsons series 1-16 boxset for 30 quid. The will power was strong that day, so managed not to buy it, but they had sooo many to choose from. Lost series 2 was as fiver - sooo tempted!
Oh yeah, and because I didn't buy the Simpsons boxset the women in the stall started yelling "You are bad man" over and over, even after we had left her stall and were walking away! Oh the guilt - not!
We also went to Tuol Sleng (S21) which was a former prison for the people arrested during the Pol Pot regime. The prison was left exactly as it was when it was shut down with blood on the walls, all the rooms still with the beds that people were tortured on, all the cells etc. Again very disturbing. Apparantly 14000 people were killed here by the Pol Pot soldiers.

I had a rather annoying incident at our hostel, where the guy that did our laundry managed to dye 2 of my white tops a nice shade of patchy dark pink and then proceeded to blame us for it! One had to go in the bin and one I had to re-wash myself about 4 times to get the dye out. So my rucksack is now one top lighter! :o)

Enough of Cambodia, we are now in Vietnam and loving it! The place is really cool, but very hectic. When we were in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) there are 4 million mopeds and crossing the street is a literal nightmare! You basically just have to walk out slowly and they drive round you - scary the first few times but you just have to get used to it.
We did a Mekong Delta trip in HCM which was cool and got to go to a coconut candy mill, went on a row boat through coconut orchards, saw some vietnamese traditional singing etc. All in all a good day. We also went to the Cu Chi tunnels which are the tunnels that the Vietcong used in the war with America. Got to crawl through some very small tunnels and then I got to shoot and AK47!!! How cool is that!?!
We went to the War Remnants musuem too which showed all the atrocities that occurred during the war with America including all the deformities caused by the notorious Agent Orange. They even had 2 foetuses in jars showing just how bad the birth deformities were - really gruesome!

Next port of call was Mui Ne which is a really nice beach front town with loads of cool places to eat, drink and chill. This is a famous place for windsurfing competitions. We hired a moped here to check out the sites (sdand dunes, canyons) and basically just relaxed for a couple of days. We then got the bus to Da Lat, where we are now, which is 1500m above sea level and very cold - actually wearing trousers and jumpers! It's like being back in England, and it's raining! I suppose it'll be good to help ease us back into to it before we get home. Pretty cool place, but the rain is stopping us seeing it, so hopefully it'll stop soon.

That's as far as it goes. Off to Nha Trang tomorrow.

Hope everyone is well - that is if anyone actually still reads this anymore! :o)

Take care
K&J
xxx

PS It's stopped raining - woo!
PPS 22 days left..... :o(

Bad BeerLao!

Well guys, we've travelled far and wide since the last update with many a long journey!

After Bangkok we got the bus to Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) for a couple of days where we did a hilltribe trek, an elephant ride through the jungle and bamboo rafting. All were really good and the photos have been updated to show what we did.

It was pretty cool to get out in the jungle visiting hilltribes after spending so long lazing on the beach. We went to two tribes at seperate locations each having their own special trades.
After this we went for the elephant trek in the jungle which was great fun - and also a first for both of us. We had "the Daddy" of the pack who insisted on trying to climb up really steep hills to munch on the bamboo! Naughty Dumbo! It got a bit hairy when our guide decided to jump off our elephant leaving us to fend for ourselves!!!
We then went bamboo rafting down a river which we have no idea what it was called, but was an experience to remember! We thought it was going to be relaxing but ended up going through some rapids and getting drenched, as well as seeing quite a few people fall off the raft into the rocks! :o)
Jade also had a little visitor on the raft when we went through some bushes. We all know how Jade is petrified of bugs, well a big spider jumped off the bush onto her back then crawled into her hair! She nearly capsized the raft screaming and jumping around trying to get me to get it off! Girls eh!!! She sure does attract them!

We then booked ourselves transport into Laos to Luang Phabang, which took 3 days - the longest journey ever, but turned out to be good fun because of the people we met.
We had 1 day travelling in a minibus to the border, followed by a 2 day, 1 night trip down the Mekong River on a longboat.
We stopped off in a small town in the middle of nowhere, where we still managed to catch the opening games for the world cup! :o) They don't have electricity at night there but, a guy put on a generator just for us!
The two day journey was really good fun and we saw some amazing scenery. It also helped that two of our boat gang had guitars to help pass the time!

We finally arrived at Luang Phabang and rewarded ourselves with beer, shooters and the England game! We drank a considerable amount of BeerLao which leaves you with the worst hangover!!! Didn't stop us drinking it every night though!
We spent a fair amount of time chilling here (as the place was really cool) after the long journey but still managed to catch a few of the sights too. We went to Khong Si waterfall (which was amazing) where our Tuk Tuk broke down and filled with smoke, climbed up Sacred Hill for a panoramic view, shopped at the night market, walked around the penninsula etc etc...

The whole gang from the boat stuck together and we all travelled to Vang Vieng by bus.
There wasn't much to this town and Jade saw even less as she was ill here and spent the day in bed. I however, went tubing down the Nong Xai river with Tommy, Renee, Chris and Mike. The river is lined with bars and loads of bamboo structures to throw yourself off after having a few BeerLao's. Very cool and very relaxing and Jade was very jealous she missed it!
As this was pretty much the only thing to do here, we decided to move on to Vientiane. Instead of taking the incredibly uncomfortable and boring bus, we decided to kayak our way there down the Nam Lik river. This was sooo much better than the bus and we wish we could travel between more places like that instead.
We stopped off for a BBQ after negotiating some rapids, where only Mike fell in, followed by some cliff jumping (check out the photos).
On the whole it was a great day until we had to get a tuk tuk for the last part of the journey, where they crammed 18 people into this pick up truck plus all their luggage - and if you know how much just Jade and I bought travelling then you'll know just how crammed that would be!!! Tuk Tuk's don't seem to be loving us all that much lately as this one nearly conked out too. The driver then foolishly decided to take off the radiator cap with a very hot engine and also while the engine was still running, which resulted in the cap shattering and covering Mike with boiling hot water!

Vientiane was pretty drab compared to the rest of Laos and we were expecting more from the capital. We only stuck around here for 2 days as there really was nothing to do! The group finally split up here after hanging around wathcing the world cup and playing cards. We all headed in our seperate directions, although have planned to meet up with a few of them in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Which brings us back to Bangkok after another 11 hour bus journey! We are just stopping over night here before yet another 11 hour bus journey to Cambodia tomorrow morning! Oh the joys!

Hope all is well with everyone.

Speak soon - only 5 weeks until we are home! :o(
K&J
xxx

Anyone for Ping Pong?!?

We've now done all the islands (Samui, Phan Ngan and Tao) on the Gulf coast of Thailand which were amazing. They all had their good bits and would highly recommend them to anyone who's heading out this way.
We spent about 6 days on Samui staying at Chaweng Beach. We lived it up a bit here compared to the rest of Asia and treated ourselves quite a lot. We had a really nice room with a/c that had a daily cleaner (which is almost unheard of in most accomodation over here), en-suite bathroom, and situated in a really nice resort. We bought quite a lot of stuff too, but wont bore you with the details!

We mostly just relaxed in Samui, hitting the beach when the weather was good enough. We had a fair amount of overcast and rainy weather while we were here, so just had to sit it out in bars watching movies!

After Samui we caught the ferry to Ko Phan Ngan, which is the island famous for its full moon parties. There wasn't one on when we were there, which I reckon is a good thing judging from the pill popping ravers that were dotted about there anyway! Losers!
The beach here was a lot nicer than the one at Samui but the place on the whole was quite a lot smaller. We travelled around a bit here in the Songthaews to see a bit more of the island, but generally just lazed around on the beach again! :o) We even had a bit of a car chase as well, as some guy hit the side of the van we were in while we were driving, then our driver chased him! Bit scary as the roads are appalling! Another funny thing about it was the guy that hit the van looked like Claude the Scuba instructor from Along Came Polly (Ben Stiller/Jennifer Aniston film). We saw him get away, and then saw him walking down our road about 10 mins later, so he obviously ditched the moped and went to hide. Anyway we left the next day for Koh Tao and who should turn up when we got there - Claude - and guess what, he was a scuba instructor! Guess you really had to be there, but it was very funny!

There was also another funny incident here, which was more funny for Jade than me, which involved a pizza, a lizard and 2 poo's! We were watching a film and I was eating a pizza when I caught something out the corner of my eye and I felt a wet sensation on my leg. I looked at my food and saw something really smooth and brown on the top, which I assumed was a mushroom (No I didn't eat it before you start thinking that!), but was still puzzled about the small wet patch on my leg! I started poking around at the "mushroom" as it looked very suspicious and after closer inspection, and checking the ceiling, we realised that this pretty big lizard had just left me a present on my pizza and weed on my leg! So that was the end of the pizza. The fun didn't stop there though, as after I'd given up on the pizza and just carried on watching the film, another present was kindly given to me in the form of a splat just next to my plate on the table and another wee on my leg! Jade was finding all this very amusing, so I cut my losses and moved seats! Don't I just have all the luck! :o(

Next stop was Koh Tao which is the island more known for its Scuba Diving. I was planning on doing the advanced open water certificate here but money and time was running a little short so just opted for some fun dives. The diving here was pretty good, but it still doesn't live up to Raro standards! I definitely think we were too spoilt going there first!
Other than the diving, we just lazed.......yeah you get the idea!

We then had an 11 hour trip to Bangkok where we are now. The place isn't nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be. Yeah some areas are a bit annoying offering you ping pong (if you don't know, you don't want to know!) shows, live sex shows, sex movies, and all this was being offered to me while Jade was with me. Although this only happened in one part of Bangkok where we went to a night market at Pat Pong. Other than that, it's a lot cleaner than we expected and were told to expect, and it's not nearly as hectic as Kuala Lumpur.
We are staying on the road just behind Koh San Road which is pretty famous if any of you have heard of it.
Everything is dirt cheap here too and we wished we'd waited to buy some of the stuff we had already bought - oh well!

We've been to the Grand Palace which is amazing, Wat Po which is the reclining Bhudda (45m long), which is also pretty amazing, we saw some other big landmark just across the river from there too, but can't remember what it is called. We've been to Chatachak market which has over 8000 stalls and was a bloody nightmare to try and find anything or even how to get out of the damn thing, Pat Pong market, MBK center (I had to use some serious will power here as the 4th floor is dedicated to gadgets!!!), the whole Siam area, Koa San Road area and loads more. It really is a shoppers heaven here - maybe even more so than Singapore!

We're now just waiting until 6pm for our 11 hour/700km bus journey to Chiang Mai that cost 2.80 pounds, so thought we may as well update the blog!

Not much else to report. Hope everyone is well, and we'll see most of you soon! Only 7 weeks left! :o(

Take care
K&J
xxx

PS I must be browner than I thought I was as I've had 3 or 4 people ask me if I'm Israeli! :o(

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

The journey continues...

** Jade keeps telling me off because I have forgotten to mention that on our last night in Sydney, Kerry took her to see James Blunt in concert as an early birthday present! She says it was amazing and they were standing a couple of rows from the front so were in the centre of the action! **

Since our last update we have travelled pretty far and are now in Kuala Lumpur.
On our last couple of days in Singapore we went over to a small island called Sentosa for our 4 year anniversary and stayed in a really nice hotel (a huuuge difference from the likes of the Hawaii hostel we've been in). The whole place is like a theme park type island with loads of different activities and sights to see. We spent the day fitting in as much as we could, which included another Luge (tobogan/go-kart cross breed) taking our tally to 3 now, as well as the aquarium where we got to touch sharks/stingrays/puffa fish etc. We also went to a fullsize simulator type ride in a cinema where everyone sits in seperate boothes that move around to match up with the movie, and then to see a pink dolphin lagoon show! We didn't even know that pink dolphins existed - next they'll be showing us those flying pigs!
Our last day in Singapore was a bit of a naughty day for me, as we headed to the main shopping district, which also happens to have a huge selection of electronics shops. It wasn't as if we had even been looking around for ages and I got dragged into a sale, it was in our first shop! We spent well over an hour in there, and I ended up coming out with a digital video camera with built in 6 megapixel digital camera (that fits in the palm of your hand!), a 2Gb memory card, spare battery and tripod! Oops! Those damn tax free savings! Oh well, hopefully I've gotten it out of my system now (yeah right!!! I nearly walked out with a Canon 350D too!). I worked out it was over 150 quid cheaper than the UK price, so I definitely got a good deal.
I was all spent out after that, so we just did some window shopping before heading back over to Chinatown for Jade to get her hair "rebonded" which is some fancy Japanese process that chemically straightens your hair so that hair straighteners are obsolete! It took 4.5 hours and cost a small fortune, but Jade seems to think it was worth it, so it's all good! Plus it is a damn sight cheaper than my electronics addiction.

The next morning we caught a bus to Mersing in Malaysia (4 hour trip and cost 4 pounds!) and got straight on the speed boat over to Pulau Tioman, which is a tiny island where they filmed South Pacific! I had one small complication on the bus journey there when we had to change buses, and that was me getting stuck in the door with my rucksack on and two holdals of hand luggage. I think the bus driver must've thought I wasn't getting off quick enough as he just shut the door on me. I was literally stuck in the door and two guys had to shout for the driver as he had walked off the bus and on his way to the cafe! Jade was completely oblivious to the fact that I was still trapped in the door as she had half walked into the station herself! But when she finally saw, she decided to laugh instead of helping me get out! Typical women!

The island itself was amazing and the huts we were staying in were less than 10 quid a night which isn't half bad! The whole resort of Salang was no more than 300m in length and ran parallel to the beach. All the restaurants/bars were on the beach and our meals were costing less than a quid each! Can't complain at that.
We have finally started to top up our tans again as we were slowly heading back into pastyness. Jade decided to take it one step too far though and now looks like she is wearing a red body suit with white pants!
We did a 4 hour snorkelling trip around Coral Island and a couple of bays which was amazing and unlike our Barrier Reef snorkelling trip, 99% of this one was actually spent in the water rather than the boat! We swam with turtles (again) as well as thousands of different tropical fish, and Jade even saw a stingray too.
We also had another small blunder on Jades part while we were there as she locked our key in our chalet and the guy had to hammer the lock off as he couldn't find the spare key. He decided to ignore my advice of unscrewing 4 screws (it wasn't the most secure place) to get in, in favour of hammering it and breaking the door in the process! Each to their own I guess!

We stayed on the island for 3 nights before catching the ferry back to the mainland this morning and getting a coach (6 hours - less than 4 quid!) to Kuala Lumpur. On the ferry ride, our boat managed to get stuck in the sand as it went through water that was too shallow, so we all had to climb onto another boat to get back to shore. This one then proceeded to get stuck also, so we had to climb onto a 3rd boat to finally get back to shore! Don't we just get all the luck!

Anyway, we are now in KL and going in search of food. Will update again soon with more tales from our adventures.

Hope you are all well.
Take care
K&J
xxx