Manila

We added AirAsia to the list of customer friendly airlines we use. As usual they leave at ungodly times and use airports that are not in the same post code as the destination. Ah well, we have time.... Felt very proud as well – managed to dodge payment for extra weight. Guys are still not on the RyanAir level – we just took extra weight on board. We are the pros after touring Europe with RyanAir after all.

And then Manila. Again – fourth time in eight years. You would think we like the city. DEFINITELY not the case. But diving on Philippines is just amazing. And Manila is a port of entry. This time visit is a bit different. We are staying with friends we met on our last dive trip in Philippines. They kindly offered us to stay at their place and we snatched at the offer – real flat with kitchen and satellite TV. Yes, baby!

They also took us to their usual diving spot 3 hrs outside of Manila – Anilao. And Philippines did it again. Clear waters, abundance of sea life. Just amazing. Only thing water is not that worm as in Thailand – it even dropped to 26 deg Celsius on one dive site! Officially, we have become wimps. It is going to be an interesting sailing season back in Ireland next year...

We also did a tour of Manila that our friends organized. Really, really good. The guide was hilarious!

Next stop, Cebu. And some awesome diving!

More pictures here.

Kuala Lumpur (again)

Back in KL. This time with the purpose. Well, several... To get visa for Philippines, see all the latest movies and gorge on western food and sushi while we can... Did it all. Got visa on Thursday afternoon (flight was Friday morning) – plenty of time. Saw 4 movies (more that in the last year in Ireland). Had enough good food to last us through Philippine cuisine (yum!). And did a bit of sightseeing as well. So we are proper tourists after all.

We stayed in China Town. Only place with cheap hotels this time. We were in the middle of bustle and hustle. It was, well... interesting. Best thing was a direct metro line to Suria shopping center and cinemas. Guess what, Christmas has also arrived to Muslim dominant Malaysia - at least in shopping centres!

Time just flew buy... Next stop, Philippines.

Langkawi

And we are back in Malaysia. This time in style – on a speed-boat from Ko Lipe to Langkawi. After 3 months travel we completely lost track of the fact which day of the week it is. So we landed on Langkawi on Saturday. And Malaysia not being your regular 3rd world country everything was packed with DOMESTIC tourists. Not something we counted on at all. After 3 hour zigzag through the town we finally landed a hotel room. Last one. And boy we upgraded. I’m not talking only concrete building here, but proper sheets (yes, baby!) and - yes, believe it or not – tiled bathroom, with warm water. And not only that, we had the best sea view from our balcony. Add fridge in the room and fact Langkawi is a duty free zone and you can guess how we spend all those warm nights...

As for the island, not the best place for water sports – no diving or snorkeling and swimming turned out to be this game of how to avoid jelly fish. In 5cm visibility. Not to add the sea lice (for ones who are not acquainted with these delightful creatures they are like mini jelly fish you can’t see but can definitely feel). Almost like an adrenalin sport... Beaches are nice, but we are not really beach people (saying that we managed to stay on the beach for two and a half hours one day; must be a record). So we did the other stuff, and there is lots of it on Langkawi. Island is big, so there is plenty to see on a rented scooter. Inland is still very traditional and Malaysian, really nice. Not to mention a cable car to one of the highest peaks, really good aquarium (spent almost a full day there) and go-kart. Yes, we tried it all...

More pictures here.

Ko Lipe

With only days left on our Thai visa (you always need that extra week somehow...) it was time to head south towards Malaysia. We found Ko Lipe while browsing the guide book and looked perfect: in a deep south-west of Thailand, only 45min boat ride away from Malaysia.

They call it "Maldives of Thailand" - no surprise with regards to island's "walk around in 30min" size, beautiful white sandy beaches and pristine coral reefs around it.

As always we just couldn't resist doing some diving here. This time we where well rewarded. 8 mile reef (unique name for this reef that is about 8 miles away from island) was a fantastic dive - devil rays (mobilas), sharks, huge school of jacks.

Lipe is not a place for extra luxury hotels - yet! On our part, think that we redefined the basic accommodation here (check out the pictures). Slept with one eye open as the island is packed with insects, frogs, snakes and scorpions - and yeah we had some in the room (not snakes thankfully or Nives would be back in Europe by now). Hot water is always the luxury, but bathroom sinks started to be one as well.

We felt sad leaving Thailand, but prospect of some good naan bread and duty free booze in Malaysia's Langkawi island kept our spirits high when we left on our last visa day.

Some more pictures here.

Similan islands liveaboard

We joined Khao Lak scuba adventure with some friends we met at Ko Tao expecting 4 days of usual: dive / eat / sleep liveaboard action. What we didn't expect was to meet (unplanned) six Slovenians from Maribor and even same scuba club we used to go to. These guys have been here before and just after couple of dives it was easy to see why.

Feeding turtles, chasing sharks and finding exotic fish became the daily routine. We had a dive guide for ourselves and enjoyed it a lot. The chef was also cooking lots of western food - still have an extra pound (or two) to testify that we missed food from back home big time.

4 days passed like 4 hours and we are on the road again...

Some more pictures here.

Bond, James Bond

Bond, James Bond. Well, we didn't have any caviar or bollinger champagne, hell the person on the picture is also not the Bond, but we did visit the island where they filmed one of 007 movies (island's Thai name sadly eludes us).

After many days just relaxing and diving on Lanta it was time to head north toward Phuket and Similan islands. On the way we stopped for a day trip to visit some of Thailand's postcard scenery. We took a day trip to Ao Phang-Nga national park - hundreds of little islands. We visited one where James Bond movie was filmed as well (a bit to touristy, but...). For extra measure we also traveled through some mangrove swamps on a longtail boat, did some kayaking and some cave explorations (and almost got lost in the process).


To round up this day of action we decided to stay overnight in Muslim Village built on stilts on the remote island. Very idyllic indeed. Being Muslim village there was of course no beer anywhere (even not allowed) and we settled for a dry night. But then we joined our neighbours next door for dinner. They where here before and came prepared. Out of the depths of the bags they produced a bottle of Thai whiskey (well, it was an emergency!), so we joined them in crime and had a few. We all felt like kids again, hiding the bottle under the table. All in all, a lovely way to spend a day...


Some more pictures here.


Now its time for some serious diving in Similans and we can' wait!!!

Ko Lanta

Sleeper seat on the night train really is the best way to travel. We arrived on west side of Thailand the next morning well rested and ready to hit the beach. Not even the 3 hour stop over on bus station and then another 2 hours on bus, ferry, bus, ferry and taxi could kill our spirit.

Ko Lanta is one of the bigger islands on the west coast - so we had hundreds of sleeping options. And as always when there is too much choice, we just couldn't decide which beach to go to. Finally we listened to our dive shop's advice and went to the long beach (seems that every island here has one).

What a good decision this was. We landed on the best beach we had so far on this trip. It had it all - nice sand, cocktail bar, fantastic BBQ. And to top it all, we had a fantastic room right on the beach at one of cheapest rates in Thailand (6,5 eur).

While we stayed here we celebrated two holidays. One Thai and one Slovenian. On 11.Nov we celebrated St. Martin - a day when grape juice becomes wine (just another excuse to buy some of the expensive vino). The next day, still a bit groggy we celebrated Loy Kraton. This is a Thai festival where People float little containers with a candle, joss sticks and a coin to thank the river goddess and get rid of their past year's sins. Our float kept coming back to the Beach, but committed to get rid of our sins we swam far our from the beach and pushed the flotilla into open sea and said bye, bye to our sins.

We even managed some diving between all this action. Our dive guide had an amazing eye to find obscure fish species. Add some Leopard sharks to the mix and we really didn't feel like laving. We loved it soooo much that we stayed for 11 days. Again (seems this is happening often in Thailand), it was hard to say good buy to Ko Lanta...

Some more pictures here.

Farewell Bangkok

We just had to stop for another couple of days in Bangkok on the way from Ko Chang (east) to Ko Lanta (west). With all the touristic bits and bobs already covered the last time the plan was to just relax and enjoy (and at Dejan's dismay even to do a bit of shopping).

And as luck would have it there was a big beer festival just outside our hotel. We tried to say no - we really, really did :). And that definitely didn't diminish our good feel about the city! Not even the next morning...

To top things off, after the beer (and dinner) we had some fresh water fish (from river running through Bangkok) at one of the street food stalls. Our expectations where very, very low, but it turned out to be one of the best fresh water fish dishes we have ever eaten (even Dejan agreed on this) - just covered with salt and then BBQ-ed.

After a night like this it was really hard to bid our farewell to Bangkok and head for the west coast. Never were we so sad on our way to the beach... Talking to other travelers we heard that Ko Lanta is the best place to visit (only divers are to follow our advice!) - and this time we even managed to book the overnight tickets on time (well almost too late).

Ko Chang

So, it happened... It is that time in life... We are sleeping in two separate rooms now... The thing is that cabins on the boat were not that big and we opted for luxury. Or not having heat stroke, guess depends how you look at it...

So, Ko Chang was sailing time. We hired a 32foot boat and headed towards the island archipelago on the north-east of Thailand. What we did not expect is that we will be so close to Cambodia. We could see it in the distance after the rain. And there was a lot of it (and we thought Ireland was bad!). We witnessed a proper tropical downpour - about 40 hours of straight rain!

But we had a lot of sunny and windy spells as well. The boat was really great. We sailed her along the white tropical beaches under the palm trees overlooking the blue seas. Really, really beautiful. Well, from the distance anyway. Beeches are usually full of sand-flies (checked with locals and the response was "...it is not too bad this time of the year"; yeah right!) and mosquitoes (we used about the bottle of anti-repellent on our on shore trip).

We did some great sailing (in the end we spend less that half fuel of wheat we were told to expect). If we were heading into the wind, we tacked and tacked and tacked (we left a good bit of our palms' skin on the the halyards and jib sheets). In the end, think we maybe overdid it a bit - were probably more in the racing that cruising mood, but it was a great fun!

In the week we mastered (well, sort of...) anchoring process as well. They do not have moorings, so you just pick a bay and it is your home for the night. Gentle waves (well, not so gentle all the time, we were almost kicked out of our beds as well) and stars on the sky, magic... Not to mention that the water had 30 degrees!

We spend all nights on the boat, sleeping on the deck for a few of them as well. Went on-shore only one day to do a bit diving (well, we just couldn't make it without it). Reefs of Ko Chang are not spectacular, but there is some nice coral. Not the place to plan your diving trip about, thou.

Click here for some more pictures.

Next stop, Bangkok again.

Bangkok

Absolutely positive surprise. Amazing mix of old and new. City with so many different vibes: new and modern, old Thai, Chinese, Indian... We did the tourist thing (obviously) - seen the temples and palaces, walked the China town and Indian quarter. Taken a ride with the boat on the Mae Nam Chao Phraya realising why Bangkok is known as "Venice of the East"... All of it just amazing. And then the new quarter - glass, glass and once again glass. We just loved it. We stayed just north of Siam square. As Lonely planet describes it: smack dab in the middle of the city's shopping orgy and perfect for those who have been away from civilization for awhile. Need I say more? Only thing we missed is a ride with tuk-tuk - they are not interested in ride, but to take you shopping. Too much hassle, so we passed. More pictures on Bangkok here.

For the first time since the start of the Pelican we also spent an evening apart. Dejan opted for a visit to Lumpini stadium (guys beating the cr.. out of each other) while Nives went to the cinema for Mamma Mia! (romantic musical). As long as we are not stereotypical...

Next stop Ko Chang. Sailing time!!!

Ko Samui

Blue seas, white sand below the palms... And new Tesco shop with western food! How could we miss this? Plan was changed at the last minute and we boarded ferry once again and set off to the tropical paradise of Ko Samui.


After consulting not one, but two guide books we decided to stay on the Chaweng beech - arguably the nicest beach on the island. The beach is really beautiful although a bit overcrowded with resorts. Swimming is not too great - you need to take your time to get deep and snorkeling is practically non-existent. This was a bit let down after Ko Tao and snorkeling with black-tip reef sharks. So, we settled for few days of doing beech life. Well, with rented scooter to break the monothony... Cammon, you know us!





But we will always remember Samui. Dejan was celebrating his birthday on October 16th in a really special way. We prepared a real spread on the beach that we practically had for ourselves. Wine and cheese and good bread! If you are wondering what is in the bag - it is ice. We DO come prepared. Followed by midnight swim in the warm waters of the sea... It will be the one to remember!

After 3 days it was time to leave Samui. It is a beautiful place to come to relax on the beech and be pampered in posh resorts, but lacks a bit on the diving/snorkeling side. Now, you may know this already, but quality of snorkeling has a big impact on the Jugs beech-o-meter.

Next stop - Bangkok. Glass and concrete, asphalt and smog, here we come! And, actually we have missed you a lot...


Click here for some more pictures

Ko Tao

We where so tired after the 3rd class train experience that we needed 5 days of doing absolutely nothing to recover (2 of them spent sleeping!). Next time we will book in advance!

Well, if it is not obvious from the picture, we LOVE Ko Tao. It is much more tourism oriented than east coast of Malaysia. To our relief beer is also not a problem (again if not obvious from beer belly on the picture). Apart from this we also missed shops (read ice cream) and concrete accommodation without bugs and rodents.

We got a fantastic room on the beach, just 3m of sand separating us from the sea - all this for 10EUR per night. Well, it had no air con and toilet flush was done using a bucket, but compared to our last accommodation, it was an improvement.

Doing nothing provides time to do mundane things like arguing whole day where to go for diner. And there was plenty to discuss. We where spoiled for choice on the island - from local to European cuisine. Best thing is we got lots of help from local dive guides. We had the best Thai curry ever in the middle of nowhere - again thanks to local advice (Tukta if you are in the area). Things are not expensive here - curry is about 1-2EUR, beer 1EUR, pizza 5 EUR. The only expensive thing in Thailand is wine - even more expensive than in Ireland (we will definitely stop bitching about it when we get back home)!

And after this 5 days of bliss full nothingness we decided it was time for some casual Internet. And how shocked we where - we forgot to take care of our finances. To make a long and embarrassing story short, we only managed to scrape enough for our mortgage payment. Good side of the story is that we are obviously relaxing... It will be couple of dry days - thank god we took the credit cards with us.

Last week (I know it has been a while since our last post) we got back in the action mode. We did some scooter and quad driving on muddy roads (for the feminine part of the family we did quads 3 times already - first time, last time and never again time. Compares to the experience of horse back riding in Cuba.). Done some diving with sharks and other lethal sea creatures. In short, we are back!!!!

We were really not set whether to dive Ko Tao or not. Comments ranged from "Excellent" to "Don't even bother". In the end we decided to give it a go (know that most of our friends are probably shocked, considering how we really don't like to dive). In the end we were really happy we did it. Diving is nice - not too much coral or fish life, but good viz and VERY, VERY warm. Something we REALLY learned to appreciate in Ireland.

Plan was to go dinghy sailing as well, but the weather wasn't on our side. The days that we could go were completely calm - zero wind! Well, will have to wait for some other beach destination...

We have met some great people here and some of them we will meet again - going to a live-aboard to Similans in November together! Can't wait for this.

Some more pictures here...

The train

Yes, we are in Thailand!!!

In the queue to get into Thailand we argued about taking 1st or 2nd class sleeping department on the train. We didn't think that all the Muslims returning home after Hari Raya where thinking the same thing. Well, they where thinking about the same thing when they bought their return tickets to Malaysia couple of weeks ago.

Bottom line: out of two trains per day from Thai border north first one was fully booked and second one had only couple of seats in 3rd class. When I say 3rd class you should read cargo class - no windows, no fans with bench style seating designed to get as many Thai size people in as possible. No need to say that our XL bodies didn't fit well.

Good thing was that we only had 14 hours on the train, the bad news was that (since first train was full) we will get to our destination (Chumphon) at 2am and will need to wait for 5 hours until first ferry to Ko Tao island.

We needed beer and lots of it !!!

Click here if you don't mind couple more disturbing images from the train.

Hari Raya

We finally decided its time to move to our next destination - Thailand. On the way north we wanted to stay in nice town Kota Bharu, which is famous for its night market with one of the best food stalls in Malaysia.

Well, how wrong we where. The day we chose to travel was national holiday in Malaysia -Hari Raya. This means end of fasting (Ramadan) and is like xMas in Europe - everything was closed, including food stalls we where so eager to sample. To make things worse we where is Muslim dominant part of Malaysia,which also meant no beer. We finished eating toast and butter in our room.

With nothing else to do we just waited for bus north to Thai border. We are hoping to catch a night train in Thailand that will take us to Champon and then ferry Ko Tao island. We heard for other people that the train is really nice with sleeping section with beds. Looking forward to it ...

Pulau Perhentian

What can I say, we haven't done much in last couple of days but read lots of books on the beach. We just love the feeling of the beach without sand flies. We have even done some diving in between the books. Diving here is not as good as it was on Tioman, but the beach is fantastic.

The island has a backpacking feel to it and as a result we have meet loads of fantastic people with many new traveling suggestions. We have been deciding for last couple of days what to do next - doing it in 30C sea (34C in the evening) doesn't call for a rush decision. Looks like we will stay here for another day or two then head north into Thailand.

We have even managed to come across a new shark species (for us) -the bamboo shark. Happy days.

The only down side is that the island doesn't have 24/7 electricity, so the rooms have no electric outlet, no fridge, no A/C. Well its not cold for sure, but it also means that the beer is not ice cold.

Click here for some more pictures about hard life in Perhentian islands.

The Hammock

We are finally back from Pulau Tioman and we got what we came for - good diving (not spectacular, but really, really nice) with lots of sea and sun time. Got sun burnt couple of times, but hey, we knew it was going to happen.

We also brought lots of good luck with us. On our first day diving here we had a nice encounter with manta ray - first one they saw in last 2 years. We even have the picture to prove it.

But most of all we are staring to slow down. And not plan. Well sort of. Nives almost flipped yesterday when ferry didn't show up - not being on schedule. To nowhere really, but still schedule. Few drinks resolved that problem. Being on the small island with nothing to do helps. We are flying through our book collection - already needed to exchange 3 books. We didn't even notice that there is no Internet on the island - well there is 30kbs connection for the whole island - absolutely not usable!

Food was really good - Malay, Indian, Chinese, European (there was a pizza!) and bbq! Rice is almost always on the menu (when not, it's noodles), and we are starting to miss bread and Irish butter.

All that duty free beer is starting to show on Dejan's belly so we decided that it is time to go north into more Muslim dominant areas where such over indulgence will not happen.

To have a look at some more of our Tioman pictures click here.

The only Tioman minus are the sand flies in all of the sandy beaches. This things itch for weeks after the bite (and we mean weeks, Nives is a living example). We changed the town on Tioman from nice one with sandy beach to one with rocky beach in hope of less sand flies. In the end it was back to long trousers in evenings :(

Today we spent whole day in Mersing in the port bar (Free WiFI) and are leaving on overnight bus (10 hours) north to catch the ferry to Perhenthian islands.

So it's back to radio silence for another week or so (see how we like it up there) until we are back on the main land.

On the road to Pulau Tioman

Well, what can we say, except - "We LOVE Malaysia". Right now we are sitting in the harbour in the little port village and we have a free WiFi! Just unbelievable!

We are back to backpacker roots now. Just finished a night bus drive from KL. Feel tired, but excited that we made it. Already contemplating that if we have to cover larger distances we will fly. Ryanair, we officially hate you for making us wimps. Obviously backpacking at 35 is a little bit different than at 20. Plan is to lower the standards as we go. Only, we haven't decided where the rock bottom is :)))

The Pelican has landed

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur in much better shape than expected. The long plane flights were not fully booked and swift action on the Jug family side assured 4 seats for each of us - we slept like rich babies in the first class (now, we are Guessing about first class here).

Spent 3 days (and nights) doing nothing special, just getting used to living without time constraints (Nives still has some issues here, but she is actively working on it). KL is just perfect for this. It has all the infrastructure we are used to from Europe (Free wireless Internet almost everywhere), but it also has all the Asian charm and vibe. Food is just amazing - you can choose from Malay, Indian (Dejan got his share of chapatis and rotis) to Chinese (we didn't overdo it this time). Shamefully, we had some bread today - lasted only 3 days on rice. But it was goood :)). Life is good and cheap over here. Everything is about 20% of Irish prices the only exception is beer which is about the same price. Not that it's stopping us...


We have been here before so there was no panic to do the tourist trail (Nives did try, but few beers solved the problem pretty fast). We even went to cinema, which we never do on Holidays. Come to it, we never do it at home either. It was really good. Only funny thing is that here you dress up to go to the movies - much colder then outside. Very proud of ourselves that we are still appreciating the heat and the sun (not very much of it, mostly cloudy due to the monsoon). We got some really pitiful looks from locals today when we looked for spot in the sun and stayed there. Thankfully we moved soon enough, before they called 911. We really are staring to relax and slow down...


We have decided (after 3 days) that we have enough of the city life (read eating, sleeping and shopping) and that it is time to hit the beach. We will take a night bus to east coast of Malaysia. Our first stop will be Palau Tioman, which is listed among the 10 most beautifully islands in the world. Diving there is not bad either - no pelagic expected, but a bit of nice and relaxed floating.

Jet-lag is still killing us. Couldn't leave the hotel before noon so far, but bright and cheery at midnight. Hopefully tonight's bus drive will resolve that problem.

Preperations

We thought it will be easy, walk in the park. Last 5 days at home were supposed to be total relaxation with nothing to do. Ugh, how wrong we where!

It took over 80 TODO items (we tracked everything on the PC with proper version control - how pathetic is that?), 20 washing machine cycles and a good measure of fantastic parties (thanks all again!) in between before we could say "Let’s GO". Well it was only 1 hour before leaving home that we finally managed to get all our stuff up to the attic. Yeah, yeah, the same old "I really didn't think I have so many clothes" didn't help, but we made it anyway. Well to be honest, it was all the sailing and technical equipment that took most of our time. Even the Irish summer took pity on us and it didn't rain for almost the whole day, so we could dry the sails.

We left our home (Greystones) at 3:30AM so tired that we were actually looking forward to spending a day and a half on the planes / airports.

The Pelican

Yes, it is official. Nives and I are going on a 9 months holiday - code name Pelican.

We will focus on Asia (Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines) and Cyprus. This is all the planning we have done so far and we are flying out on 4.Sept.2008 (in less than 4 weeks). Looks like very busy 4 weeks ahead :)

So its 29 days to go (and counting)