Day 55-57: Koh Tao, Thailand & Transit to Bangkok

Another few days just relaxing on a beach. We changed locations from our splurge hotel and went back to reality, at bungalow accommodation right on the beach.

By the way, Mom, thanks for all of the 'sounds like that go bump in the night' tent checks we did in Girl Scouts. When we were growing up, every year, twice a year, we'd go camping with the Girl Scouts. And, ever year, twice a year, one of us (who we all know, but shall remain nameless), spooked at every night time sound. As such, every year, twice a year, my Mom would walk around the perma tent, doing her best to imitate squirrels, wind, falling acorns, etc. That's how I felt when I started to hear all of the unfamiliar Thai forest creatures! I'm guessing we just were hearing toads and geckos, but how would I know? It only kept me up a little bit.......

This beach had great snorkeling, but not nearly as good as it was in Indonesia. Indo spoiled us too soon in our journey! I only wish the actual beach at this place was better! Coral makes for great snorkeling but for painful beaches.

Our island timing is unfortunate! We don't feel like we've really experienced Thai beaches because, as its monsoon season, all of the islands on the Andaman sea are closed! We also are racing monsoon across all of Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, so we can't even just chill on a beach on the mainland. Plus, this island is suppose to be one of the cheapest places in the world to learn how to scuba dive, which we were seriously considering; however, Pallavi's cold made the decision for us to not learn how to dive... next time diving school... next time......

Hopefully we'll be able to do a bit more beach life in Cambodia.

We decided to leave Koh Tao and head over to Bangkok. It's a mostly straightforward journey. Ferry to the train station and then take an overnight train to Bangkok. Except when, in order to get to your platform, you have to cross through the train standing in front of you!

All of the foreigners waiting for our train had the same look of shock when the answer to our question, how do we get to platform 2, was a pointed arm at the open door of the train standing in front of us. I have never seen people move their luggage so quickly as we did through that train. I did too! Man, those 15 kg bags moved up the stairs and down the stairs almost by themselves! I did NOT want to be the one stuck in some bad movie montage with one bag down on platform 2 and another bag to go when the train we were crossing through started to move. (Pallavi apparently thought, eh, this train goes to Bangkok too, worse case). I may be dramatic, but I am not made for drama!

Overnight train done, bring it on Bangkok. 

Day 53-54: Koh Tao - Island Paradise

It's been an entire country since we last took out our swim suits. We passed on several potentially beautiful and amazing beach experiences in Malaysia because we wanted to make sure we had a beach experience in Thailand. This island of Koh Tao is it.

In my head, a Thai beach experience looks much like Bridget Jones' experience in her 2nd adventure with Hugh Grant. The bungalow on the beach. Cocktails. Warm, perfect water. Some sort of flames (candles or beach performance).

We've decided to splurge for 2 days and get a nice place here before we go back to our normal backpacker life. So resort it is! Is it a bungalow? No. Are there cocktails? Yes. Is the water pretty much perfect temp? Yes. No flames yet - but I think we'll have a few more days.

I am practicing all of the things that my friend Kim taught me. Sit on the beach chair under the sun umbrella. Swim. Drink. Repeat. It helps cultivate the perfect non sunburn - of which I am still terrified. I am afraid I saw into my future when I saw all of the sunburned, mosquito bitten white tourists getting onto our boat while we were getting off of it. I know it cannot be helped. I will sunburn. It is my fate. The only goal is to make sure it's only a sun kiss that'll fade into the sunset within 24 hours.

So far - so great, so much fun, and so relaxing. We'll change to another resort tomorrow and see if we can see if Koh Tao is better for snorkeling than Indo.

Day 50-52: Krabi, Thailand

It it finally time for us to start racing the monsoon and get ourselves to Thailand. I am absolutely dreading monsoon, which starts in its full raining glory in July. I am failing my Girl Scout motto. I am not prepared. I do not have what I need to survive monsoon. Let's just review all of the stuff I do NOT have: 

• Umbrella. I lived in Ireland for crying out loud and I don't have an umbrella? Too much to carry. 
• Poncho. Nobody can make a poncho look cool. Then again, looking like a wet, bedraggled kitten when it pours also is a hard look to rock. 
• Floater Sandles. These are those rough and tumble kind of sandles. The kind that people in Portland or Seattle wear. Rugged. Unattractive. Provides good arch support in a hiking situation. Can support a hiking situation. We had wanted to buy these in Melbourne, but the price wasn't right. We tried getting them overseas from India, but my shoe size (ginormous) is apparently too big for the Indian stores to stock. We have looked for them everywhere here, but we have yet to find them. All in all - I'm stuck with flipflops - which are a recipe for disaster. Or my Toms, which also aren't the best for a flood situation. 
• Backpack Rain Covers. That's right - it pours, our stuff gets water logged. For some reason, Pallavi does not support my continued suggestion to just use garbage bags. Something about them not being attractive. In my opinion, garbage backs are a bit trashy, but functional. 

No sooner do we arrive in Thailand, waiting for our next bus to take us to Krabi then it starts to monsoon rain outside. Not actual monsoon season - but meaning when it rains so hard you think its a monsoon. What did that mean for us in our ill equipped state? No lunch! It was our only break in our trip to get food and it was raining too hard for me to face running across the street to go and get something. Good thing I've got cookies! Cookies are a completely reasonable lunch - if I was Cookie Monster. 

It's a tough time of year to be heading up to Thailand. We decided to head towards Krabi Town, in the province of Krabi. Unfortunately, all of the beautiful islands to our west on the Andaman, are closed because of the upcoming monsoon. That means some of the beaches are too. 

Tragically, Pallavi continues to feel a bit under the weather, so we haven't had a chance to explore much of Krabi Town. We've just been taking it easy so far. 

Tomorrow we do head over to Koh Tao, which is meant to have some amazing snorkeling. We are way overdue for some beach bumming time. 

Things we've noticed about Thailand so far: 

• cheaper than Malaysia
• feels a bit more congested than Malaysia
• more tourists! (we got spoiled in Indo & on Borneo with the lack of tourism)
• feels more tropical - more forests, hotter temp
• yummier more interesting food

We'll see how much we like Thailand vs. how much we want to risk being here in monsoon. Still up in the air. 

Day 45-49: George Town, Penang

Pallavi had told me a lot about George Town, having visited it before. She said, "the food is really good, and it has its own charm about it." It really does, but in a very different way from its Melacca counterpart. We stayed in the Chinatown area, which, for once, actually feels like Chinatown. Every lane is narrow, surrounded by "heritage pre-war shop-houses" and heritage hotels. There are shrines & temples tucked around corners and in lane ways. They even have their own colonial district and a proper Little India. We stayed in our first heritage hotel and decided, although it was nice, to see if we could find something a bit more in our backpacker budget.

We ended up finding a heritage hotel that met our criteria just a block down the road, run by 3 siblings, that just opened a few days ago. It's so fantastic to be a part of a new opening. You can feel their excitement as they stay up all hours of the night, hammering, moving, cleaning to prepare for their opening party on the Sunday when we are here. They also go out of their way to make us coffee, make sure we are comfortable, and even carry trays of our food upstairs for us. One day we came back from dinner, wanting to try some Nonya sweets (like in Malacca, a population of Chinese who emigrated to Malaysia in the 14th century). We asked one of the siblings, Jack, where we could go to get some sweets. We were saddened by the fact the place to purchase the Nonya sweets was too far to walk in the rain. Jack offered to go and get some sweets for us, which we politely declined. Low and behold, when we saw Jack again, he came baring a whole plate of Nonya sweets he had picked up for us! We just have to wait until we can write them up on Trip Advisor. 

In between meals, we have spent our days just exploring the city. In 2012, some Lithuanian artist decided to start some cultural street art program here. The street art mixes dimensions, coming 2D animation with 3D real artifacts. For example, he'll have a swing set against a wall, and then paint two children on it. Then there is metal artwork around different places, each with a cartoon and a historical description about the area. Between the mixed art & the metal art, there are roughly 40 pieces of art to try to spot around the city. It's such a brilliant way to get people walking around the streets and interacting with the city. Everybody poses with the art. I'll work on getting pics up someday so people can see it. 

Unfortunately, Pallavi's been a bit under the weather, so we haven't really explored the whole city. However, that's alright. This city is the kind that you can just take it easy in and explore as you want. Plus, we've been pushing pretty hard over the past week or so, so it's fine to just stay in and catch up on all of the free iTunes shows we can find and download (Last Alaskans is pretty good, btw). 

We also got an unexpected treat on Sunday when our guest house had its official launch party. The theme of the night was 'nonya.' Our hosts made a whole buffet of traditional nonya foods (I obviously tried to sample as many of them as I could). They also had nonya performers! Some local celebrity named Annie Lin, who is this 80 something year old 'pure blood nonya,' who has been in movies and on tv, etc was the guest of honor. Then, a whole troop of women dressed in nonya finest came in to dance! We learned from one of them that this is a group of older women who get together to practice, perform, and share nonya traditional dance. The younger folk aren't as interested, as each outfit can cost up to $1000. The outfits are all handmade from head to toe. Each shoe is embroidered with beads. Each sarong is patterned with beautiful designs. Each top has elegant brocade-work. Then, to top it off, diamond brochures and earrings, and a yellow flower behind the left ear. We also learned there is quite the nonya-off competition between Penang nonya and Malacca nonya. Also, nonyans do not appreciate false impersonators. As one whispered to us, "there are a lot of Chinese who wear these dresses, but they are NOT nonya.'

It was a blast. But now it's time to head off to Thailand.

Day 43-44: Last Day in Borneo

We purchased our airline tickets for last night because it was the only day in a span of the next 15 days when the tickets from Kuching to peninsular Malaysia were a reasonable cost (prices are high as everybody is returning home from Gawai Dayak). We both wish we had just a bit more time. We had hoped we'd able to go to Bako National Park so that we could have a more close up experience with the probiscis monkeys; however, when push came to shove, we decided it was just too tight in terms of time to get the bus to the park at the right tide, find 5 people to share a boat with, go for a hike, and then reverse the whole process.

It was a bit sad to say that we should have stayed on a bit longer in Sakau and gone to the Sepillok reserve, which has orangutans, sun bears, and probiscis monkeys near Sandakan instead doing the journey we did. We are just going to have to make a journey to see the probiscis monkeys sometime in the future.

Instead, we killed the afternoon by going to the Sarawak Ethnology Museum. It was set up just as badly as a turn of the century natural history museum normally is. It did have a great exhibit on longhouses though, which showcased local tribes' history of headhunting! Did you know that you have to keep a fire going under the right of heads that you have hanging in order to make sure their spirits don't go for a walk about the house? I don't know why we didn't see more skulls in the Sarawak Cultural Village! I feel slightly cheated now!

It was only after we got back to pick up our luggage that we realized something. A Czech couple who we had run into 1) in the cab in KK when we lost my ukulele, 2) on the bus leaving Brunei, 3) at the accommodation in Kuching hadn't bothered to come back to say hi to us when we had seen them in Kuching. Not that we cared. We had found them a bit cold the first time we had met them; however, the 2nd time, we'd have thought they'd strike up a conversation purely to respect the coincidence (which they hadn't). The 3rd time though without saying hello - come on! Fate must have brought you together for some purpose! Who doesn't say hello to somebody they've basically stalked throughout Borneo? Seems unnaturally cold to me.

We then headed off for a flight to Kuala Lumpur. We unfortunately arrived at 12:45 a.m. Everything, including all buses to any city, including KL, stops running from 1 a.m. until 5 a.m. By the time we got our luggage, we had only about 3.5 hours to skill before we could get on the first of two buses to get to our next destination, the city of Penang. Now, we know that once you leave departures, airports can get a bit uncomfortable to wait in. There aren't as nice of benches. It's harder to find electrical outlets to change things. Plus, once you leave, you can't come back. We chose not to leave until 4:00 a.m.

It was quiet. We had a plug point. We didn't have to keep a hand on our stuff. When we left to get a coffee and get our bus ticket, we saw an entire arrivals waiting area filled with sleeping waiting passengers. Row after row of benches had a person lying on them. Every space that wasn't in the main walking area was filled with people. The airport had become a shelter for these people stuck in the no man's transportation land! Good thing we'd stayed inside!

A few buses later, we made it safe to Penang, found a hotel and crashed.

Not sure how long we'll stay yet, but we are pretty sure we are going to wrap up Malaysia when we finish with Penang.

Day 42: Semenggoh Orangutans

Is it just me or is before 9:00 a.m. too early to have already had an adventure?

We saw orangutans in the wild in Sakau, but we wanted to get a better feel for what they actually looked like. We decided to step it down a bit and go to an orangutan rehabilitation center, Semenggoh, in order to have a closer encounter.

To help protect the orangutans and rehabilitate them while enabling people to see them, visiting hours are only during two daily feeding times: 9:00 a.m. and 3 p.m.

There are two buses to get to Semenggoh, both of which depart from the bus station that is 2 kms from our place at 7:15 a.m.. The next bus isn't until 9:50, so it's the 7:15 bus or bust! We got up with plenty of time and had an extra 10 minutes buffer (just in case). However, 6:45 happened. 6:50 happened. 6:55 happened. Now it takes at least 20 minutes to walk to the bus station from where we are staying (as we tragically found out the day of the morning thunderstorm at the bus shelter when we arrived in Kuching). We barely have enough time to make this bus!

6:56 and we are huffing and puffing as fast as we can towards the station. 7:13 and we are crossing the final turn towards the bus station. Suddenly, Pallavi sees a bus. Is that our bus????? I'm blind as a bat even with corrected vision, so how do I know? All I know is that we're almost out of time and if that's one bus, the other might not be far behind. I then hear Pallavi exclaim, run Sarah run! (Alright, maybe not in a Forest Gump style, but lets just pretend it was). Just like many bus chasers before me, backpack on my back, purse held in one hand, and a map in the other, I take off. I don't care that I look like a slightly insane person. I don't care that cars are going to have to get around me. My eyes are set on only one goal - the bus!

Which we had missed! We looked everywhere. Around all corners, asking people (who weren't so thrilled to speak to me, probably given that I still looked a bit like a slightly insane person and it was only 7:15 a.m.). We asked at the ticket counter, who confirmed that yes, we had missed the bus. "Wasn't it early?" we asked. They looked at their clock, clearly 10 minutes faster than our satellite controlled phone clocks, and said nope, we left on time. Pallavi, thinking outside of the box asked, "is there another way we can get there?" "Sure," said the ticket taker, "just take this bus here and get off at [insert station name] and you can get a mini bus from there." "Are you sure? Are the mini buses regular enough?" "Sure!"

Onto the second bus we went. We traveled along, got off at said [insert stop], and waited. No mini bus. We tried to find a local who spoke English. All of them seemed to say that there wasn't a bus. The bus had passed. What to do? It was 8:30. The feeding is at 9! We looked at a map. It didn't look like we were too far away, but how far, who knows?? Desperate, I asked our 3rd Pay It Forward ride person, who spoke English and, when I asked if she could drive us, she said just get in.

We got to the gate at 8:45 - but nobody told us it was another 1.3 kms walk, uphill, to get to the feeding. We again set off really quickly. Huffing, puffing, desperate to make it there. We've come so far. We're not even on our second cup of coffee. Suddenly a car comes towards us, from the center, and a window is rolled down. It's a woman who had seen us huffing and puffing when driving to the center, dropped off her family, and had turned back to come and get us! That's Pay it Forward ride person #4.

It was worth it. The orangutans were so cool to see up close. It does feel a bit like a cheat, but at the same time, it isn't a zoo either. Plus, the center is doing great work to rehabilitate the orangutans. The objective is for them to not have to come to be fed at all. Out of the 27-30 orangutans they have in Semenggoh, we probably saw 8 or 9 of them, including the alpha male Richie. Two of them even came down from the tree directly above our head, to stand less than 2 meters away (remembering the chimp who tore that woman's face and hands off, I kept my distance).

By 12, we were on our way home to just chill and relax. I'd say we'd earned it! 

Day 41: Sarawak Cultural Village

After travelling all of this way, it's time to go tribal. Alright, so maybe tribal light. I mean, we are #badbackpackers.

Borneo is made up of several different types of tribes. Most of these tribes still live in their traditional housing structure - the longhouse. Although each tribe builds their longhouse in a different way, all longhouses have a central area, which is a bit like a main street where everybody goes to congregate, celebrate, and chat. The main area has several individual family's "apartments" attached to it. Everything is under one singular roof.

However, other than that, most of the people who belong to those tribes live in a modern way. They only whip out the traditional clothes, food, and music for festivals and when tourists come to visit the longhouse or to stay overnight.

We had a choice for our tribal experience. Do we go to the actual longhouse and experience the 'show' the villages puts on for us or do we go to a place near Kuching called Sarawak Cultural Village, which displays all of the different tribes' long houses and is having an open house event for Gawai Dayak?

We decided to go to Sarawak Cultural Village. We figured we'd rather see more variations of the different tribes' customs, longhouses, costumes, and food, which we could only get from Sarawak Cultural Village. We also figured that the longhouse visit was a bit of a show rather than an authentic experience, so if we are going for a show, then let's go large or go home!

It was really cool. It's a bit like Iowa's Living History Farms, obviously in a much cooler, Malaysian, Borneo tribal way. They set up some odd 8 different tribes longhouses, all of which had been transferred from each actual tribal village. Each tribes' longhouse was set up in a traditional way, including traditional artifacts, clothing, decorations, and games. Inside each one was a cultural interpreter, dressed in the clothing of that particular longhouse tribe (although not necessarily of that people - although all were from one tribe or another) who walked you through the stories, set up, and any unique things particular about the tribe.

We got to see how sago is made. We learned all about the weird delicacy of preparing swallows' egg nests for consumption. We saw the blowpipe stand (although we are both still irritated that after circling that stand multiple times, the guy wasn't there to let us try blowing the blowpipe).

Plus, as it's Gawai Dayak, 3 of the longhouses were having an open house. The open house included people dressed in the unique costumes of that tribe, playing musical instruments and doing traditional welcome dances, and there was lots of jungle food! We had bamboo chicken and jungle leaf (which was a bit like kale meets spinach).

Each longhouse was really quite different. One was even a tall house, which was built on stilts at least 3 stories off of the ground. Another was more cylindrical in shape.

To top it all off, they had a dance show in a theatre area to showcase various tribes' dances. One tribe has a funeral dance that involves the men banging 2 meter-tall wooden poles on the ground and ultimately having one of them men climb on the top of an even larger pole, balance on his belly, and be spun around by the others. Another tribe has a whole dance around hunting, ending in him actually shooting a blowpipe and then inviting an audience member up to give it a try (I was not selected despite secretly hoping and dreading that I would be selected).

Was it authentic? It was authentic enough for us.  We don't think we'd have gotten much more out of going to a real longhouse. We really enjoyed it!

Was it something worth coming to Kuching for? Maybe not. Let's see how the orangutans work out tomorrow.