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.