Simon & Caroline's World Tour 07/08

The idea of renting a moped never really escaped my mind since yesterday, and despite the rental guy bringing out a peach moped with rather fetching basket on the front, I was raring to go. Thankfully an automatic, all I had to do was sit on, twist the throttle and go! Looking a little out of place as I was about the only person wearing a helmet, I whizzed up and down the roads, getting enough practice in until I felt safe enough to take Caroline as a pillion. Together we did an unintentional tour of the island, only managing to stop a couple of times, either because our map was bad, or we missed the signs that were all in Thai. Still, we had a stop at a Buddhist temple and a nonexistent waterfall before returning to the hotel. We had spotted an Italian restaurant with free WiFi (what else do you need?!), and were about to be so Italian by turning up for a pizza on a moped when the sky turned black and we were treated to a tropical downpour, good job the hotel restaurant is good!
Caroline’s update: After that stressful pillion ride (it was actually not too bad if I tried not to think of the number of accidents I had read about or the number of people I had seen with obvious moped style injuries!) what better way to unwind than another massage. I decided to try a Thai massage this time not realising that I was actually signing myself up for being poked, prodded, pulled, kneed, stood on, punched, slapped and having all my bones cracked! By the end I was left wondering if I’d been given a massage or been beaten up, especially since it ended with some vigorous blows to the back of my head! I think I’ll stick to the relaxing oil massages you get on beaches in the future.
P.S. Apologies for the influx of posts, there’s been a lack of internet!

A distinct lack of taxis had us walking the 6km to town, concerned we were going to miss our boat, and contemplating hiring a moped to get us to the pier on time, but fortunately a Songathew stopped for us and we made it in plenty of time.
Ang Thon is the setting for the novel “The Beach”, about that traveller’s nirvana of an off the beaten track place undiscovered and untouched by other tourists – although I doubt there is any beach in Ang Thon that hasn’t been invaded by tourists, given the number that we saw. Still, the beauty of the forty or so islands is undisputed. Whilst the water was a bit murky, snorkelling revealed spiky sea urchins and almost luminescent yellow fish. We didn’t actually need to snorkel to see those urchins as the next stop at a lagoon had plenty in it. After a beach lunch, and giggle at the attempts of some people to kayak and how frustrated they were getting, we took to kayaks ourselves and toured the cliffs and caves of a nearby island. That was our day done, just a ride back to shore with the sun shining and wind whistling past as the boat sped on.

We wanted to catch the local bus to the next town, and had made it to the bus stop in time, but it didn’t seem to come. Still, we managed to get a minibus for the same price. We also wanted to avoid the dodgy travel agents who charge too much commission, but before we knew it we’d bought tickets to the next island. Fortunately, we did get tickets, and were only fleeced out of a few pounds, but lesson learned that some Thais are just interested in getting cash out of tourists (there’s quite a lot of nice Thais too mind you…).
The sun beat down as the ferry idled it’s way over to Ko Pha Ngan, our next tropical island. Time to catch up on some music listening and blogging, although when they’ll get posted is another matter as phone reception is flaky at best. The touts were out in force as the ferry docked, shouts of “YOU! Taxi!”, and “where you go?!” were directed at us before we’d even disembarked. Fortunately, we could walk on by as we had found a helpful government tourist advisor who had booked us into the Cabanas.
The hotel backed on to the beach, and we had just enough time to have a swim and snack before watching the sunset whilst walking along the beach – it’s amazing how quickly scenes change and you can forget about the woes of a day. With our next days adventure booked we relaxed and moved onto Fiji Thai time.

Even though the lake in Khao Sok is man made, the views are very impressive, almost making up for the one and a half hour bone shaking ride in the pickup truck/Songathew. A longtail boat took us for an hour long trip to the other side of the lake, passing by huge limestone cliffs (tallest in the world) and dead trees oddly sticking up in the middle of the lake. We stopped at a floating village, a series of shacks precariously balanced on bamboo rafts, with big gaps at the bottom that made us glad we were day tripping and not staying over as we’d planned. There was enough time for a cooling dip in the lake, a kayak around and scrumptious Thai lunch before getting back in the longtail. A long walk and ride on a bamboo longtail float got us to the coral cave, only lit by the guide’s torch. The features were similar to the Australian and New Zealand caves, only they looked a lot older – shawls ran to the floor, stalagtites looked sturdier, and there was lots of crystals growing in all directions, making it look like coral. On the way back we had time for another dip, and my new found favourite drink: Milo (hot/cold chocolate to anyone else…).

Another day, another crazy form of transport, which today was a Songathew – a pickup truck with seats down the sides and fortunately a cover over the top, as it started to rain on the way to the bus stop.
We moved on to Khao Sok, a national park to the north, in a similar vein to Taman Negara (well something has to break up the beaches and islands…). Our tree top hut (concrete looking trees mind you) was devoid of aircon, but did have mozzie nets over somewhat tired beds, and views over the river. Taking a night safari, we walked through the jungle stopping to see sticky frogs, fireflies flashing their bright bums as they fly, spiders, centipedes, frogs that play dead, and elephant tracks (scary, until we were told it was a domestic elephant). Alas, the walk was long and humid, and we saw most of the interesting stuff near our hut, but at least we got some exercise.

The Thais certainly know how to make interesting modes of transport, zooming up and down the main street are mopeds with attached sidecars for carrying two or three passengers – it’s impressive they move at all. Longboats are another wonder, an old wooden boat with a car engine literally strapped to the back, the drive shaft extended and a propellor attached to the end. It looks like something out of Mad Max, but it works, and got us to Raileys Beach.
We landed at the west beach which was nicely framed by huge limestone cliffs indicative of Thailand, and the sea gently lapping at the shore. There were also a couple of other beaches a short walk away, the east beach, which seemed to have no sand and was closer to a mangrove swamp. The other beach was much nicer; monkeys playing in the trees, caves at one end, islands at the other. We even ventured up a hill/cliff (i.e. near vertical) to a view point, and a lagoon that was just a bit too slimy to get to with sandals on. Gibbons were hooting in the trees as we descended the few hundred metres back to the beach, making it feel like we were in a jungle in the middle of nowhere, not within sight of ten resorts.

I made a slight booboo a few days back and didn’t notice the onward flight to Thailand was actually two days away, in other words we had one more day to kill in KL. Fortunately, the hostel had loads of information about tours, so we signed up for a trip to the Elephant sanctuary, not realising we were getting the hostel owner to personally take us.
The first stop was Deerworld, where we hand fed ravenous deer tiny bits of carrot that had us fearing for our fingers. A couple of deer had learned if you chew t-shirt the annoying biped holding the basket of food gets distracted so you can jump up and get all the food. I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about being attacked by deer at some point. The zoo was very much of the interactive type, I had a kiss from a parrot, held a hedgehog (it was white, I thought it was some form of jungle hedgehog, but just the plain old UK type), had our hands pecked by quail, and had one very scared sugar glider (chipmunk-esque critter) use our hands as a toilet. The final animal was a rather large bear, fortunately vegetarian, who ate chocolate and Nestles milk from our hands, and was distracted long enough for a bear hug from us.
The government run Elephant sanctuary’s prime role is to move elephants from ever encroaching palm tree plantations to national parks, in the hope they stay there – the only rescue mentioned had elephants that wandered out of the park. The sanctuary is also home to elephants that can’t be returned to the wild, like the couple of baby orphans, and spend their days as part of the show. Firstly the encrusted mud is hosed off, the elephants laying down so their backs get cleaned, and enjoy every minute. We got to pass them their dinner of fruit, most of them taking it off our hands with huge slimy trunks, but a couple held their mouths open for fruit on what must be the biggest tongue I’ve ever seen. Finally, we got a quick ride on the stubbly back of an elephant, nicely cleaned only minutes earlier, so I’m pretty sure it was the keeper that smelled so bad.
We had time on the way back to drive up to the Genting Highlands, Las Vegas in the mists (sic) of KL – the air was cold and at 6118 ft our heads were in the clouds, that’s probably why half the theme park was inside. Poking out through the mist was the bizarrely multicoloured largest hotel in the world with 6118 rooms, and the inevitable airport style check-in desks. Altogether a packed day, maybe it wasn’t so bad I can’t read flight times properly..

Our stay at the Redang Holiday villas included snorkelling trips, so we joined the vast swathes of Japanese/Malaysian tourists and boarded the boat to the marine park. It was slightly concerning that everyone else had bright lifejackets on, but knowing that it’s hard to sink when swimming in the sea, it was just put down to a quirk. There were certainly more fish at the marine park’s small cordened off snorkelling area (to protect us from the boats…), alas that’s probably due to them being fed by the tourists. We had a couple of hours to float around, trying to avoid the flailing arms of people trying to swim with lifejackets on, and momentarily losing each other in the thick school of fish (see picture!) Leaving the park, there was the definite feeling that the “park” bit of marine park is as in theme park, not ecological park – half of the area has dead coral, and there was loads of plastic bread bags left floating on the surface, they could do with some Kiwis or Aussies to come and sort it out!
The boat back was on a not so converted fishing boat that couldn’t even get close enough to the beach, so we had to jump and swim for the shore. Already missing the beach, we skipped the afternoon trip and read our books on the beach before seeing what else we could find at the local beach, turns out there was a bigger shark, about a metre long, but it disappeared before I could photo it. (or frighten Caroline…)