Round the world in a Year!

Hi everyone!

We are currently relaxing in Phuket after a pretty hectic few weeks. We have spent a bit of time relaxing and travelling around. We had a nice few days in Singapore though it was very hot and humid. The shopping is an amazing experience, if you want something, anything, then it is probably available on Orchard Road! it really is department store central, we stopped counting after spotting 30 big department stores!

We took a train from Singapore into Malaysia to Kuala Lumpur arriving in the early evening. The following day we headed out to get a better view of this bustling metropolis and headed for the KL telecom tower, Menara. At the top we could look out over the city 360 degrees all round. Later in the day we headed off to the Petronas Twin Towers, which, since 9/11 are the tallest twin towers in the world… but unfortunately we were unable to go up to the adjoining bridge on the 44th floor as all the alotted tickets for that day had been taken.

From KL we took the midnight train to Georga…. not really though, we went to Hat Yai in Thailand! We had sleeping berths on the train, which meant that for the first time, out of all our long train journeys, we were able to get a fair bit of kip. Arrival in Thailand though wasn’t all good, at some point during the border crossing Nik had his mobile phone stolen and from the train we were herded off into tuk-tuk’s (taxis) and taken to a travel agency where we booked a mini-bus to take us to Phuket. It’s during the mini-bus ride that Nik’s bag went missing from the roof of the bus… we found out later that the driver had made no attempt to tie down the baggage. We arrived in Krabi, the halfway point of the route and decided to get off as we were losing patience with the driver and nightime was drawing in (7 hours on a cramped mini-bus, like sardines in a tin). Nik made a complaint about the company to the tourist police, who negociated some compensation for his luggage… and then spent the next few days buying more clothes, toiletries and a new bag as he’d been left with only the clothes he was standing up in and his hand-luggage. We decided to have a rest in Krabi for a few days before moving on.

 We took the ferry over to Ko Phi Phi island, which was where the filming of the Leonardo Di Caprio film “The Beach” was shot. It was also heavily hit by the Tsunami and from the minute we arrived we could see the damage it had done and the efforts the islanders were taking to put it right, 14 months later, there is still alot of work to do.

Another ferry ride and we were on the island of Phuket, another Tsunami victim, but the damage was more easily fixed here, with them being connected to the mainland via a bridge, the area we are staying in now, Karon beach, looks pretty much restored after the waves have gone.

From here, we plan to head off to Bangkok (land of the lady-chick-boys… ooh er missus) and then off into northern Thailand to Chaing Mai. We’ll write some more when we get there!

Bye for now

Chez and Nik

P.S feel free to add comments, just click the comments link at the bottom of the entries to add your thoughts! Hope to hear from you soon.