Hey All

Due to recent fighting in the south of Thailand we've opted for the longer, safer route to Malaysia rather than the short, but possibly unsafe route.

Home number 19: Night boat from Ko Tao to Surat Thani, Tuesday 2100hrs. Awful. Firstly, the mattresses are tiny - this would be fine if we were on the same "double" mattress, though somehow we'd been allocated separate mattresses both of which were sharing with another man! Pete's new partner (!) spent much of his night wandering around the boat. (result) Hol's new partner spent most of the night wandering around the mattress. Hol had managed to avoid all insect bites to date, until the night boat where she became an "all you can eat buffet" to the local bed bugs. We arrived in Surat Thani at 5am on Wednesday after a very sleepless evening - we hopped on a coach to the local bus depot, swapped to a different coach then were driven across mainland to Krabi arriving at 9am. We got a minibus from Krabi to the airport with another girl from Solihull - small world eh?! We then flew from Krabi to Kuala Lumpar arriving at 3pm only to find the connecting flight was delayed an hour so. After hanging around in the airport we then flew from KL to Langkawi arriving at about 10pm. By this point we'd been travelling for 25 hours straight on no sleep and were starting to think that braving Southern Thailand was the better option! We jumped into a taxi which drove us to the other side of the Island where we were staying. This drive is a reasonably short drive, maybe 20 minutes, but the taxi driver managed to drag it out for about 45 minutes. We'd paid up front so it was no problem, just a major annoyance as we were both exhausted by this point. From his awful clutch control, driving at about 20mph and hunched over the steering wheel we drew the conclusion that he'd not long passed his test!

We literally flopped on the bed until morning Thursday. Hol had set an alarm for breakfast but forgotten the time zone difference so we'd completely missed breakie. Doh! We had a wander around to see if we could find some food but everywhere appeared shut. We decided that we'd definitely need a hire car so tried to book one through the hotel - we were given some rubbish excuse that they only hire cars to locals but there was a company they knew that would hire one to us although it'd be expensive. We had no choice but to hire one and it wasn't that expensive in comparison to UK prices but we only rented it for 1 day anyhow. It's a beautiful nippy little thing, in comparison to walking... actually, we retract that! The car is an automatic Proton - Saga, enough said.

We spent most of Thursday driving around the Island of Langkawi exploring. We saw a huge snake lying in the middle of the road, a scorpion and some monkeys crossing the road and a dog sleeping in the road. We drove through some of the Geopark which were beautiful and stopped at the beach-side town for a snack on the way back. Everywhere appears to be closed, possibly because it's Ramadan but there's seemed very little to do around here. We went in search of the infamous shopping centres (Lang Kawi is a tax free island) - we found a few but they were by no means exceptional. Everything worth buying was pricey despite it being duty free on all purchases here. We carried on driving the Saga around for a bit, Pete managed to do some of his best boy-racer impressions yet and we got overtaken by numerous mopeds. It appears that the accelerator takes about 40 seconds to work as it decides to change gear when pressing the accelerator even a little more, the brakes take about 20 seconds to work - oh and the car drives itself without needing a press on the accelerator sometimes as well. A reliable little motor... we think not.

We had a nap (still recovering from the monster-travel day) and went in search of the Thursday night market. It looks quite big on the map, we spent 38 minutes trying to find it, and 2 minutes walking around it. We decided food was a good idea and found a lovely little Mexican place where the staff were very friendly and the food was lovely.

On Friday morning we made it up in time for breakfast, then Pete drove to get the cable car up the mountain and Hol opted for staying at the hotel. The cable car was amazing, it rises high above the trees on its way up the mountain. The towers are few and far between, almost a kilometre at one point and the cable car pretty much climbs vertically up a cliff face. The views are spectacular though. There are views across waterfalls and lots of the little islands that make up Lang Kawi. From the top in between patches of cloud there were glimpses of Thailand across the Anderman Sea and the whole of the island is visible. The first stop was the middle station, from here the journey to the top continued across another large valley with views over the 'Skybridge' This is a large suspension bridge built out over another valley. It is built in a curve around one support. When reaching the top you head down through the jungle to the bridge. Although its quite sturdy there was a fair breeze blowing and you can feel the bridge sway a bit. The floor is not solid either, its slats with a good view hundreds of feet below. After walking across there is a viewpoint with stunning views. Back at the top station I visited the viewpoints and literally had my head in the clouds! The views were lovely in between the gaps in the weather. On the way back down, I shared the cable car with was a local who had been on a business meeting on the top of the mountain. Alright for some eh! He kindly pointed out some of the landmarks and Thailand which you can see and told me more about the island.

After returning to our hotel, and giving back our oh so lovely rental car we decided to make the most of the afternoon and we headed down to the ferry port. We wanted to book a ticket on the boat to Penang the following day. We got (vague) directions from reception and started walking. After the supposed 20 minute walk we were still nowhere near the ferry port but saw a sign towards it. In the end it ended up being nearly an hours walk to get there and it was quite late in the day. We arrived and the ticket office had closed. No matter, we explored around the harbour area where there is a big eagle statue and some pretty parkland. After that we walked around the largest shopping centre on the island. It was pretty similar to the ones we had already been to, very quiet and not very cheap so we just got some food and went back to our room to pack for moving to Penang.

Keep leaving the messages on the message board, its good to hear from back home. See you in Penang!

Hol and Pete

xXx