Where we've been

We just got back from a liveaboard dive trip to the Similan Islands. We'll get some photos up soon. Uriah manned the camera underwater and she took some nice shots. In short, it was a great experience. The Similan Islands is a world class dive location and we saw lots of cool stuff like manta Rays, sting rays, turtles, eels etc... We also did night dives which is very cool, though on the second one I had to abort the dive as my tooth was killing me during our descent.

I have now discovered that I have an uncommon diver's ailment called "Barodontalgia" also known as "tooth squeeze". It occurs when you have a crack, cavity, or damaged filling in a tooth or anything that allows an air bubble to develop in the tooth. That air bubble expands and contracts during pressure changes underwater which in the worst of cases can case your tooth to EXPLODE! Yikes. Im okay and it didnt cause much drama except that I could only do the first 7 dives and missed the last four. It was very painful and I thought for a second I might loose a tooth as while I was at about 6 metres down I touched the tooth with my tongue and it felt like it was going to fall out. Ive done some googling around and I think its related to the fact I grind my teeth at night and that I may have damaged a filing. I got to find a good dentist now.

Uriah didnt go untouched either. She had some problems with one of her ears and the jellyfish really enjoyed Uriah's skin.

We'll get into the highlights of the Similan Islands soon. see ya
-Derek

Mum, Aunty Vivian, Thailand and us!

On the 17th late in the evening, we were waiting and waiting for the arrival of two filipino women at Bangkok's new airport. Finally, after 30mins later there with two big smiling faces standing before us my Mum and aunty Vivian. Whom were kept behind because they knew nothing about where they were going and where they where staying in Bangkok.

18th- We explored Bangkok. We first took them to the Grand Palace, then enjoyed the river ferry transport down the Chao Praya River and rested at Wat Prayun feeding turtles and cat fish. To recuperate we headed off to MBK shopping mall. Mum and Aunty Vivian enjoyed the shopping here, i told them to pace themselves considering it was there first day.

19th- Headed down to Pattaya. Two hours later our mini bus driver dropped us off at Loma Resort and Spa. Gorgeous. We later explored North Pattaya, walked around in a world that Derek and I found completely dumbfounding. First of all, the North Pattaya's bars and restaurants are mostly German or Dutch, literally. Forget eating Thai food... which is odd beacause we are in Thailand after all, and second, lots of girls and maybe guy-girls pole dancing and lovely white, fat, overly burnt, sleazy men enjoying the show. Gross! We didn't really want to go to Pattaya but it was the closest place to bangkok with a beach and elephants.

20th- Mum, aunty Vivian, Derek and I had THE best day at Pattaya's Elephant Village. Even though it rained, it actually made it feel more like a jungle experience. The Elephant Trek was about an hour, walking trek in the jungle (with Gibbons jumping from tree to tree) as we trek along for about 30 minutes, river crossing while feeding the cat fish and finally greeted by our 0x cart limousine, which took us back to the main cafeteria where we had a buffet lunch. Back at Loma Resort we all had a swim in the swimming pool. Derek had some alone time where he chilled in our air conditioned room ate cookies and watched man movies 300 and Flags of Fathers, while the women indulged in a full spa package of Body Mask, Body Scrub, Facial Massage and Treatment, Aormatheraphy Thai body massage for 3hours all for $79 per person. It was heavenly. Too bad for me as i had some gastro issues- massaging your stomach area while you have gastro is a scary thought.

It's been great seeing family again. Mum and Aunty Vivian are having a ball. Tomorrow we head our way back to Bangkok where we will sadly part. Mum and Aunty Vivian will be heading off to the Philippines. Derek and I will be sorting out Travelling administration stuff like Visas for Laos and a possible Similan Islands Liveaboard dive trip??!!

Stay tuned-
Uriah

Do's and Don'ts

I was thinking the other day about some of the differences between western countries and asian ones and how they've impacted us during the last 7 or so weeks.

Things that we don't do in asia.
- Wear a seatbelt when driving.
- Worry about the safety implications of not wearing a seatbelt when driving.
- Eat breakfast food like cereal and toast.
- Use toilet paper!

Things that we do in asia.
- Wash our bums after number 2's with water from a spray hose and not with toilet paper.
- Choose places to eat at based solely on the price and whether or not we think we are going to get sick.
- Find ourselves bargaining over amounts less than a dollar in value.

There are more but I cant think of them right now. - Derek

Phuket, Padi and Phi Phi

Here is the update, we have been staying in Phuket for 7 days now and in that time we did our Padi Open Water Course for 4 of those days. We survived the basic skills training like flooding your mask, sharing air sources and more. Part of the course is to read and learn the manual , reading all 5 chapters and doing the exams at the end of each chapter. In two nights! Torture! Staying up therefore was must. Thank god for energy drinks. Thailand loves them and so do we!
Yesterday, we rented a car and drove around Phuket island, stopping at all the beaches and little towns. We also visited Bang Pae Waterfall and the Gibbons Rehab Centre. Was informative and make sure all of you to NEVER take pictures with gibbons. Those gibbons used for photo taking with tourists are exploited..... Sad! We found some nice spots with very few people, here we chilled for a couple of hours. Below was our banana chairs and view. We enjoyed our lunch at our new friend Sumalee's restaurant, while drinking coconut and banana shakes we were greeted by a dolphin accidentally swimming to the shore. The wonderful Thai people rescued the dolphin and took it out back to sea.
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At night we went to Patong. Lots of bars, lots of tourist, lots of tailors and lots of "ladyboys" escorting really greasing looking large white men. Nothing special and somewhat disturbing!!

Today we chilled again, and took a tour to Phi Phi Island. Swam, snorkeled and had a buffet lunch at a sea view restaurant. Jealous???? well you should be.. - uriah and derek

Railay, James Bond & cheeks

From Krabi town we headed to Railay passing through Ao Nang. Railay has some undeniably stunning sites but we were kind of disappointed with the place. We landed probably the cheapest accomodation at in the place at Ya Ya resort (600 baht per night) and it had probably the nasty toilet we've ever seen too. The problem with Railay though is that everything else is so overpriced. Food, tours, even bottled water is upwards of three times more expensive then it is in larger areas like Ao Nang or Krabi town. Like a 6 baht bottle of water is like 20 baht and we had dinner at this average place and ended up forking out more money than our accomodation costs per night!! What a rip off. The place does have some nice scenery and we were lucky enough to visit Phranang Cave (the first picture, above left) before the hordes of day tripping noisy tourists arrived by speedboat... Thailand loses a lot of its atmosphere when tourists are flocking anything remotely interesting. Especially many of the Europeans who don't seem to have any other clothes but speedo's and G-strings.
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To the left is a picture from our trip to "James Bond Island." We did a day tour and saw some interesting stuff including a floating village, lots of limestone karsts and oh yeah, lots of 95.6% naked tourists. Just look at this girl walking around in her G-string shopping at the overpriced souvenir stalls. James Bond island would of been cool if there wasn't a thousand tourists running around and a ridiculous amount of souvenir stalls all hawking the same overpriced junk you could buy elsewhere for 1/10 the price.
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Overall, our trip to Railay was okay and the James Bond tour kept us entertained (the floating village was cool, see pictures, left) but yesterday we caught a boat to Kata Beach, Phuket and we are much happier. The food is cheaper, accomodation is awesome!!! We scored an excellent deal at Kata Inn as we have air condition, a TV, fridge, fresh sheets & towel and a very clean brand new bathroom. All this for 800 baht but we negotiated a longer stay and got the rate dropped to 700 baht per night. We didn't have reservations so we lucked out as we just stumbled across it.
Tomorrow we start our PADI Open Water Dive course. Wish us luck!

-Uriah & Derek

Ok food, cheap DVDs and 11 hours to Thailand

Lets recap the last few days. Last Saturday we headed from KL to Penang. Penang is touted as being one of the most visited places in Malaysia and with all the hotel build up we can see where all these people stay. What we don't really understand is why people come here. The main city, Georgetown has a few really old buildings, an average Chinatown, a little India but not much really going on and was a bore. The outskirts have a lot of hotels and restaurants around the beaches which in our opinion are NASTY!!! We stayed at a small no-name guesthouse in Batu Ferrenghi (the most popular beach on the island). The guesthouse was pretty decent for the money and Boon, the guy running it was friendly. The beach and water though was really bad. We are a bit spoilt coming from Australia and all but wow, what a crappy patch of sand and water... You can even see sewage and storm water run-off streaming its way right into the water (while people are sitting in beachchairs and swimming about 2 metres away!!). Overall a disappointing visit and we felt that those 3 days we spent there would have been better spent elsewhere.
Penang did redeem itself slightly as the food was inexpensive and pretty tasty. Lots of Chinese food due to the large population of Chinese on the island. Penang is also, HANDS DOWN, the cheapest and easiest place to buy bootleg DVDs. We're talking about $1.50 AUD (4RM) per DVD (or 11 DVDs for $15 if you know the going rate). The same stuff was on sale in KL for about $4.00 per disc. Whats even better is that the people running the stalls at the night markets aren't as pushy and "in your face" as they are in KL.
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Penang's lack of action, the low price of DVDs and the fact that our room at the guesthouse did not have a TV "motivated" us to buy a portable DVD player which we will happily carry about for the rest of our trip. It wasn't too expensive but was still a splurge on our account. Its nice though as it plays everything, DVDs, CDs, DivX and has an SD and USB slots. It can even play out to an ordinary TV. We likes... We also bought about 24 DVDs to go with it.
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Today we left Penang for Krabi, Thailand!!! We had to take two minibuses and the whole trip took 11 hours. We're glad to be in Thailand now... Its going to be beaches and sunshine for the next 10 days or so before we head to Bangkok. Tomorrow we're heading to Railay beach.

- Uriah and Derek

Batu Caves, one too many desserts, Ravi's Roti

It's our last day in KL and I'd say we had a pretty good day. This morning we arranged our bus tickets to Penang at Puduraya bus station. Travel in Malaysia is so easy and people are helpful as they all want your business.
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This afternoon we headed to Batu Caves which is just outside of Kuala Lumpur. We took the local bus and it cost 4 RM. A few taxi drivers were offering to take us there for 30-45 RM the other day so the bus was a good deal. It's a bit slow though as it does not follow anything that might resemble a timetable. Basically, you just wait there until its somewhat full and then off you go.. I think we waited at the bus stand for 20 minutes before we even moved an inch.

Anyway, Batu caves was worth the trip. In a nutshell, its a large cave that has various Hindu monuments inside and is used for the yearly Thaipusam festival were devotee's pierce there bodies with large hooks and skewers (which then hold all sorts of heavy items) as a form of sacrifice. There were quite a few wild monkeys roaming around the area eating garbage. Uriah was mildly disturbed going up the 272 steps as she has become somewhat "scared" of animals. Largely because she thinks they are unpredictable. After a hot stinking day outside we retreated to the air conditioned comforts of Mid Valley Megamall for some dessert. We ordered 3 which turned out to be too much but we figured we would make up for the fact that we had a 100% purely vegetarian lunch with mock chicken satay and curry. Didn't quite hit the spot as our bodies need meat!

Heading back to our headquarters in Chinatown, we did a bit of shopping before having our final KL Roti at our favorite eating spot run by Ravi, an awesome guy. He's the guy in the picture beside me and he's given us some helpful information over the last few days in KL. His food is excellent too and I'd recommend the Murtabak Ayam or Uriah's favourite: Roti Milo. The grilled Tandoori is also awesome. If you're ever in KL, please do visit his stall in Petaling Market opposite Hotel Chinatown(2).

We're heading to Penang tomorrow.. Things have been moving really fast,we're suprised at how much we've done in just over a month. What's also great is neither of us have had to see our own vomit and our poo poo is nice and healthy. Aside from a common cold that we are both getting over now, we are still going strong.

- Derek

Di mana Kuala Lumpur?

Just wanted to post this picture particularly... me lifting Malaysia's famous Merdeka Square flagpole. Man i am sooooooo strong, must be all the noodles and rice I have been eating.

Feel alot a better now, I know you were all so worried about me....

On the 28th, Derek and I basically did the Old Kuala Lumpur Station to Masjid Jamek walk. About 2.2 Km and about 2 hours to do the whole walk. It was amazing seeing national monuments like the National Mosque considering Malaysia's religion is primarily Islam. You know what's so touching about Malaysia... you see great hindu temples and you go to another street and you see colourful Taoist Temples too. The world can learn so much about how people having different physical appearances, different beliefs and values can all live together harmoniously. If we all just drink tea and eat rotis and noodles i think the world would be a better place.


Today, Derek and I went to the KLCC to see the world famous Petronas Towers- i think they said it was the world's tallest twin towers 451.9m. However, they only let the public to go to the skybrigde section, which is a little under half way the tower.

While waiting to go to the skybridge, i decided to meet some new malay school girls. I think i almost terrified them, having the biggest smile on my face as i was approaching them and saying "hi, lets take a picture everyone... ready smile and wave...."notice i'm the only one waving.


This is the Petronas Third Tower from the outside main area. The middle tower however, is still under construction. Derek thought it was sooooo cool him being in between the two towers.

The agenda for tomorrow is Batu Caves. Stay tuned everyone... over and out.
-Uriah

Love you all and traveling is so much fun.