life in the slow(ish!) lane...!

Hello all, hope you are all well!

So here's how our travels in Asia are going, so far...

Left Darwin in October, and met up with Marc in Singapore. Spent a lovely few days wandering around exploring city. Had the obligatory Singapore Sling in Raffles- strange tho, even though the hotel is super-plush, the bar is pure scum, with peanut shells all over the floor for some reason?! From there, we took the bus up into Malaysia and out to the island of Pulau Tioman. Gorgeous place, all jungle interior and lovely beaches. Did a dive there which was great- lovely coral and big barracuda!

After that we went up north to a crazy tlittle place called Cherating- was a bit dead but met lots of crazy, friendly, singing Malaysians. Interesting name for our accommodation... "The Shadow of the Moon at Half Past Four". Very fun place!

Then we headed inland to the real jungle at Taman Negara. To get in you have to take a 3 hr boat journey along the river which is amazing. Unfortunately Marc's tooth had been giving him massive trouble and he had a fever so we ended upi having to come back out the same way the next morning! Gotta go back there tho, it was really cool. The village was built on the river with lots of floating restaurants and lots of exciting jungle type things to do! From there we took the jungle train up through the centre of Malaysia which was fun at first but 10 hr was just a wee bit too long and too uncomfortable. Plus they had Ramadan there then, so it was quite hard to get anything to eat and we were half starved by the time we got there. Unfortunately that same night we discovered our guest house had bed bugs so we ended up sleeping on the floor. Marc finally manged to get his tooth sorted out and it was over the border to Thailand

Met up with Becky and Chris for my birthday on Ko Tao, which was really brilliant. The weather had been pretty rubbish up till then, but for the first time ever it was sunny on my birthday!!! Was I complaining about the sun in Darwin? I take it all back..how quickly you forget! We had a nice few days there, just catching up and er, drinking mainly! Then we headed over to Khao Sok national park in the middle- we went there before in March so we went back to the same place as it was so cool. Lovely little treehouses, right beside huge cliffs, with all the sounds of the jungle. Went for a walk and I ended up with a leech stuck to me which was absolutely horrible...so we all decided to come back and play scrabble (or the Thai knock-off version, spendy games) - hard jungle trekkers that we are! We also went on a trip to the lake there, which was just beautiful. Loads of limestone islands covered in forest- amazing. We did another trek through the jungle and through a 1 km long tunnel thrrrough the hill. Was pretty mad, we had to properly swim though really fast flowing water, and clambering down waterfalls and rocks. Pretty scary, and lots of massive jumping spiders- but really fun. Unfortunately managed to drop my camera into edge of water while trying to put it into the dry bag and appears to be broken- disastrous! And on the way back I got another leech on me! I'm not sure I'm cut out for the jungle!

So we headed to Krabi for a couple of days, and while we were there met an aging hippy called Dave who told about this island...it was paradise, and the sunsets there would save your soul...! So we thought we'd give it a go...It was actually Ko Jum, and seemed to have been pretty badly hit in the tsunami. Lits of broken trees, debris on the beach and deserted bungalows. Seems like they all doing OK and lots of building new places going. Was quiet there and nice, but didnt quite get those sunsets!

We did find them on Ko Lanta tho, which was a really beautiful island. We stayed in a lovely place, right by the sea, big rooms, with balconies where we could sit and look out at the view. We ended up spending a week there and even then we didn't really wanna leave! Lots of swimming- massive waves!- and enjoying the beach. We also hired a jeep one day which was really fun. We went the whole way down to the bottom of the island- pretty scary cliff roads and little secluded beaches. Had the really great idea of driving onto the beach only to get stuck and to discover 4WD wasn;t working at all. We would have been in trouble but luckily a couple of Germans came along and told us that no, it wasn't actually broken but you had to click something on the wheel, and after a lot of pushing and leverage we managed to get it off the sand! SO embarrassing, but very funny!

Another day we took a snorkelling trip out to the island- was gorgeous- turquoise seas, lovely coral, and amzing fishes. saw an octopus too! Ko Lanata's a beautiful island, don;t think any of us wanted to leave!

Anyway, I'll stop now as I'm going on and on again! Amzingly, we'd been in Thailand a month already had to do a visa run to Malaysia...more about that next time!

OK hope you ll all start posting lots of nice messages! Take care and bye for now

xxxx