Dec 2006

The next day we visited yet another budhist temple called Kek Lok Si, just a bit outside from Penang. It seems to be one of the largest budhist temples in Asia and was very impressive.

We did go to the Chinese opera, lion and dragon dance and drums show. It was just brilliant as you can see on the photos below!

We were even allowed to go backstage - well, let's not dramatize it, it was only a mobile stage and the setting was pretty basic. But still, it was a great experience to see traditional Chinese opera, dance and drum performences from so nearby!

Our Chinese guide was able to tell us basically everything we wanted to know about the chinese culture. However we didn't stay the entire night as we were still a bit weak from our illnesses and especially the noise of the happening (for some time it seemed like opera and lion dance sound systems were fighting each other!) but were able to enjoy most of it.

In the end we decided to go directly to Malaysia. Krabi would have been just another nice beach probably a bit more crowded than Ko Tao ('same same but different' - as Thais would say).
So we spent a few more days on this beautiful island, had a swim every morning in our hotel pool, relaxed on the beached and hung out in cafes.

Frank went diving once but unfortunately got ill after that. Basically we were hanging around on the island for the last two days suffering from headaches and sore throats (Julia) and flue and bunged up sinuses (Frank).

Still we did enjoy our stay on the island, as less tourists were on Ko Tao the heavier the storms got at sea. After about 4 days on Ko Tao we moved on to Malaysia with quite a spectacular boat/train trip. We started off by ferry from Ko Tao to Chumphorn on 2-3 meter waves (1/3 of the passengers onboard got sick while Julia was only dreaming of surfing). After that we hopped on a bus that brought us to Chumphorn train station (nothing much exciting about neither Chumphorn nor the trainstation apart from a little night market we visited).

The nighttrain took us to Butterworth in Malaysia in just 15 hours. Luckily we booked beds - at least until 6 am when the single beds all off a sudden converted to 2 persons seats. We think the nighttrain was a good option to get from Thailand to Malaysia. The beds were comfortable and if we had felt better (headache wise) we certainly would have slept for the entire journey.

Anyway, Malaysia is great so far. At the moment we are in Penang where we already did part of the standard tourist duties (taking photos and visiting 4 of the 3124 temples, churches and mosques). The best things we experienced were a chat with an administrator of a chinese clan temple. He invited us to their family opera, dragon dance, drums and kung fu show which will take place tomorrow night, as long as we don't tell his furious grand mother! And Julia who, we are happy to announce, turned to islam - congratulations! (well, at least for our visit in Captain Keling Mosque)

More on Malaysia and then Sumatra (where we will scare the shit out of orang utans by showing them Frank) soon in a blog near your computer.

After arriving in Phuket we actually planned to stay there for at least 2-3 days. However we soon decided to move on to Kao Sok national park to do a one day jungle tour which turned out to be quite an experience! The night we arrived we first met some monkeys who were drinking from a river not too far from our bungalow.

The next day our jungle trip kicked off.

After a 1.5 hour boat trip we arrived at our starting point for the 2 hour jungle treck.

We felt a bit like Mogli from The Jungle Book without talking animals but including the original motion picture soundtrack sung by Stefan - father of a German family we met - who entertained his 3 year old daughter Milena. It was a nice group anyway - 2 girls from Canada joined as well as a couple from Liverpool and a slightly irritating guy from Equador. Anyway, the final part of the jungle trip was a 1 mile long cave packed with spiders (diameter about 5 inches (15cm) - no shit!),

all kinds of bats (you don't want to know their size), frogs and fishes swimming in a river which runs through the cave. After about 1 hour in the cave we had to climb through the narrow sections and even swim through the river which was pretty shallow so far. Oh and yes, did I mention that the spiders can swim as well? They can and they did! I think the happiest one of us was Milena who didn't notice that and who found spiders pretty cool anyway!
In the end we survived but this trip was not made for wimps really!

On our 4th day in Thailand we went on to Ko Samui but for a stay over only. The next day (today) we hopped on the ferry to Ko Tao, an awesome island for snorkelling and scuba diving and just for chilling out as well. And that's what we need!

A couple of days rest and we'll move on to either Krabi or straight on to Malaysia, we don't know yet, but you'll find out afterwards. We are more than happy for any fresh informations about Krabi area or hidden spots - imagine that, you tell us where to go and we will go there for you - it's like you're virtually on holidays! Kicks ass!