July 5, 2001

Kota Bharu

We arrived via a combo overnight ferry from Koh Tao to Surathani to Had Yai, Thailand. In some of the most stormiest seas we've experienced yet. I guess winds around 45-50,mph and large 6-8' swells, that made the thai boat that we took for the overnight trip, to go pitching and heaving all over the place, with everyone rolling into each other, and the spray was breaking the bow (kinda of like "The Perfect Storm" except there were no fish on board), good thing we popped a couple of valiums to get through the night...made the life preservers better pillows too!

The next morning we took a mini-van from Surathani to Hat Yai and on to the Border with Malaysia. during this trip we picked up two Scottish guys who sat up front with the driver. It turns out that these guys were already quite drunk, having brought along a 1/5 of thai mekong whiskey. They started to become quite abusive to the thai driver who spoke no english. It started to turn quite ugly at this point (they were putting their feet on the dashboard which had his budda figures on it...a definite no no in this part of the world.) When they got out to change seats at a stop, he started to take off with one of them holding on to the van's open side door. the driver started to floor it, we were all yelling at him to stop and several blocks later after the guy fell off the door at high speed and went tumbling on the road, the driver threw their luggage out and then took off again!... basically most "farangos" don't get it but don't ever piss off a Thai!

From Kota Bharu, which is a very interesting city with a mix of Malay and some Chinese and Indian people but defiently a strong Malay Muslim presence (we had to clear out of the night market during evening call to prays) we ventured over to the Perenthian Islands for a dry break from the bad weather in Thailand and to do some more diving and snorkling. These are real beautiful islands, with lots and lots of coral and fish, dense jungle and great seafood. We stayed in a pretty rustic jungle bungalow which was surrounded by fearless squirrels and a very large 3' monitor lizard I saw walking down the trail one day! We met some great people there, probably some of the most friendliest yet, cheers to Amir who taught us Malaysian batik style and made great 'local' coffee as well. It was another of those 'hard to leave places', which I suspect is a good thing to remember.

KL

July 13, 2001

we just arrrived in Kuala Lumpur today after camping in the rainforest jungle in Taman Negara National park in the central Pahang state region. rented a crappy tent and it rained on us a bit for two nights with leaks down the center, but it was worth the real jungle sounds at night and on hikes (watch out for the leaches!).

the main part of the park has a resort with rooms starting from $50 so it is mostly package groups that go up for a "nature getaway". we stayed at a "camp" up river a bit from the main part. they had A-frame type wooden bungalows and the sort but we decided to take a break from the boxy standard rooms. it wasn't a full camping deal because we didn't have cooking gear, but there was a restaurant on the grounds. we wish we had a stove because the food was not good. the weekend was busy with big groups that do a package tours, but on the trails we rarely saw people. it was so humid there. you stand up and start sweating. we did some hikes, some quite challenging to our surprise and sweated up a storm! didn't see any exotic wild animals because most of them have moved further into the park since the expanding development/tourism. we didn't expect to see any anyway. but saw some really interesting insects and heard lots of animals/birds. there were ants two inches long! there are monkeys that come onto the grounds at dusk and are quite aggressive in taking things off people's porches and rummaging through garbage cans. heard they have even runaway with peoples cameras. actually my new bathing suit that i bought in bangkok was missing off the clothes line. can't actually say it was a monkey because jon's was still there and our stinky towels hadn't been touched. but nonetheless, i was out a suit and had to swim in my shorts, as the locals do. they just jump in with all their clothes on and drip dry.

we met a couple from Montana and did a boat trip up a different river to a swimming hole. this river was more narrow and more beautiful with old growth vines hanging down from the trees into the water and clear fresh water with a tea color from the decaying tree runnoff. later we hiked to a cave but didn't go in. it had a very acidic vinegary smell that may have been from extensive bat guano inside. this cave was known to have lots of bats and snakes and you had to do alot of crawling around (as we saw in a cheasy tourist video). so we opted to pass on entering. by this point, 3rd day here, we had done two other challening hikes that were wearing us out, so we starting to slow down. we had done a hike up to a hill that had views of the forest and it was dense jungle as far as you could see. this jungle is over 130 million years old with virgin rainforests and it shows. it had been very hazy so visibility wasn't that great. but up there you hear all the jungle sounds. you hear the wings of birds flapping overhead and distant whatever insect having a conversation with others across the valley. it was vast, to say the least.

all within today, we went from jungle to big city, but the transport connections in malaysia have been easy and fast. KL has a monorail/train system so it seems like it will be easy to get arround compared to bangkok. we are staying in the chinatown district and it is lively! there is a street night market that sells pirated software galore! as well as DVD movies - even ones that are not out yet. just saw Tomb Raider - big indian jones type action film - not your type, but had a strong, action female character for once. but they filmed some of it at Angor Wat in cambodia which was fun to see.

malaysia has been very interesting so far. it is such a mix of muslim, indian, chinese and malay. and now in KL, so many more indians and indian food with a malaysian twist! most people speak english pretty well, so language has not been a big problem. malay isn't a tonal language and has latin letters so we can read signs and try and speak it from the phrase book. we will be here for a few days and i will visit some video companies just to say hi. the accommodations have been shabbier in malaysia under the budget category (around $5+) but we are not in them for long. afterwards, we go to Melaka on the west coast, then singapore.

off to a dry bed above the lingering, noisey, smokey grills of chinatown...

Kuching, Sarawak

July 29, 2001

We ended up staying in Singapore a lot longer than either of us had planned, since Davi had a friend who lives there from her school daze. This was nice change since we had dinner over and hung out for several lunch get-togethers. Singapore is on first impressions a very clean (except for the bedbug infestation in our room!), expensive and somewhat sterile city, but hey, after some of the places we've trudged through it was almost like any other western city, complete with all the modern comferts, good efficient subway, AC malls and modern highways. Everyone also seems to be in a hurry and maybe it was our 'sloow traveller mode' but it seemed to us that everyone was in a much higher gear. people here even talk in a somewhat english-stylee clipped accent...rather fast! lots of cellphones and expensive cars to put it even mildly. We even met up with a few post-production motion graphics companies to see what the work scene was like out here.

Kuching, on the island of Borneo is our first stop in Sarawak (East Malaysia) and it has a much more provincial, friendly feel to it. We are enjoying hanging out here for a few days, exploring the old chinese shophouses, riverboat tambangs and temples before we head up to Bako National Park, a jungle and probiscus monkey sanctuary (they're the ones with very long droopy noses, from what i saw at the museum) . BTW a great funky old-school museum here with lots of stuffed birds, monkeys and even a cow! they also display some poor guys watch, who had apparently gotten eaten by one of the crocodiles around here.