Wham Bam - Penang!

Our first Malaysian port of call was Georgetown (via Butterworth?!) on the island of Penang - a city where the British colonial era was still very much in evidence, as well as strong Indian and Chinese influences. We took a tour around what was once known as Prince of Wales Island to take in the sights, sounds and smells of this culturally mish mashed city!

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion - When it rains here, the water pours

down the walls of the house and even into an inside courtyard; effectively cooling the house

Chinese Clan House

Chinese Clan House

Matt and our impromptu Clan House tour guide

Onward and upward then, to Fort Cornwallis - loads of plastic people : )

This man isn't plastic though...

...But I'm pretty sure this one is

'Fertility cannon'

Looks like Matt's Vang Vieng antics have finally caught up with him.

In the nights we went out to sample some of the famous cuisine of Penang's 'Little India'. Kapitan's Rest served amazing, very cheap curry on a nearby street corner.

Kapitan's Rest in weird pre-storm lighting

Matt and Jenny

Fee Fie Ko Jum

Next on the agenda was the little known island of Ko Jum. After hopping of the ferry bound for more popular Ko Lanta, Mark, Matt and Jen were taken to Bo Daeng by longtail boats - a tiny set of beach huts run by two sea gypsies called Rosa and Deela.

As you can see Ko Jum was very pretty and very quiet - we pretty much had our own private beach there! We spent our time reading, swimming and exploring the island...and eating glorious banana cake of course!

During our stay there we made the acquaintance of a literary chappie called Dave, who had lived on Ko Jum for 8 years. He had his own bungalow there which was filled with hundreds of books! Jenny was very pleased. He also had in his possesion a wonderful game which occupied almost every evening. Spendy Game, which is essentially Scrabble only with a different colour board and a two pound price tag.

Dave and Jen at Dave's 'library'

Ko Jum turned out to be glorious and we didn't want to leave - so we ended up living there for about a week eating enormous meals and generally taking it easy in paradise! :)

Alas the time came for us to leave Deela and Rosa and their delectable food, to say farewell to Dave and his books and to move on...to Malaysia...

'I don't wanna gooooo....'

Feeling a bit Krabi

We bid farewell to the sunny island of Phi Phi and aimed our sights at Krabi - a stopover town on the way to our next destination. There were two unexpected bonuses (bonii?) here: 1) we ran into Mark again:

Sausage buying Mark - That is Mark purchasing a sausage 

NOT  the other way around, as might be misconstrued

And 2) we arrived just in time for the full moon and Loy Krathong celebrations, where the Thai people light candles and float them down the river on little flower shrines, or send fire lantens up into the sky.

Impressive flower shrines

Sending the candles down the river

Fire lanterns

Jenny trying her hand at the darts game at the funfair...

...and inadvertantly winning Eddie!! MOOOOOOOO.

Here endeth the Krabi entri.

Koh Phi Phi (it's TOO easy!)

Next on the agenda was Ko Phi Phi. We avoided the crowded main beach and took a boat over to Toh Ko beach bungalows on the East side of the island. We played poker with some friendly Dutch people, kayaked round to a neighbouring deserted beach and hiked up to a spectacular viewpoint over Phi Phi Island. There were monkeys, but we couldn't get any pictures of them : (

Phi Phi from on high

 

After a hard, late night of poker Jen refreshed herself with 

a coconut freshly plucked from a nearby tree

Khao Sok it to 'em

After (reluctantly) leaving Ko Tao, we galloped inland to visit Khao Sok national park, passing Ko Samui and Koh Phangan on the way. We ended up living in a tree house over a river just outside the park.

Our treehouse

Sunset near our house - noisy monkeys, frogs and cicadas not pictured

The area seemed to infect us with an unnatural wholesomeness and we were exceptionally active during our stay. First on the list was tubing down our river with Ah (?) our 12 year old guide, who was a very cheeky child who kept tipping us out of our tubes!

Rope swinging into the river

Next we wandered through the park to see the rainforest and the waterfall.

Matt facing his fear with a plastic hornbill...

how will he cope when faced with the real deal? Read on to find out...

We returned to the park that night with our guide Adam, who took us on a night safari to show us tarantulas, scorpions, bats, vipers and monsters.

Matt (LHS) and Adam (RHS) in the jungle after dark oooohhhhh

The next day we were up bright and early for our day trip to the man made lake in the park.

After a short boat trip over the lake we stopped for lunch and swimming at the raft houses.

Then after lunch, the adventure really began...

As we set off for our afternoon jungle trek the storm started. We sailed past monkeys and hornbills (Matt was very brave) to the starting point - which was underwater. The boat turned us around and we tried again; jumping out of the boat into waist deep water in the pouring rain...

After a brief swim across the waterlogged path we came across a sign warning us not to enter the jungle when it was raining!! We ploughed on bravely through the leech infested water dressed only in our sarongs...

Sarong crew + guide

We finally reached the trek's end destination; a water filled cave deep in the heart of the jungle. As we were about to head inside the guide stopped us and told us that we couldn't go in as the water level was dangerously high and rising - some travellers had been trapped and died in there the week before, so we were forced to retreat.

Exhausted and soaked through we went back to our treehouse - alive to trek another day.