Asia done and dusted!

Ok, so it's been a while, but basically there isn't really that much to report on the last few weeks.

Once we arrived in Phuket we went to the immigration office as they recently changed the visa rules from being allowed to stay 30 days visa-free to just 15 days. We were told we had two options, the first was to pay 1800 Baht (36 quid) to extend our stay for a week until the 3rd of January when we had a place booked until the 6th, then paying 500 Baht a day (10 quid) for each day we overstayed. The second option was to go on a border run (what the Thai government was hoping to reduce with the new rules, despite it forcing us into doing one in the end!) paying 1650 Baht (33 quid) each to get on a bus at ridiculous o'clock in the morning drive to the Thai/Myanmar (Burma) border, then get a boat across the river, sit in Myanmar for ten minutes, get the boat then the bus back to Phuket and get a new 15 day visa in the process. This ended up taking a lot of organization, as we realized after spending a day in Phuket we didn't want to spend Christmas here so booked somewhere on Koh Samui, hopefully a little more relaxed and fewer German men showing off their newly bought ladyboy brides (we pick on the German's but most western nations are guilty).

We spent 3 nights hardcore relaxing and snorkeling on Karon beach (what was supposed to be one of the quieter beaches whilst being completely covered in deck chairs and umbrellas, the whole 4km of it!) and on the final day I celebrated my birthday, Nikki surprised me with an awesome birthday cake from 7-Eleven (like Spar) covered in Nutella, YUM! That evening we headed back to Phuket town and stayed in a creepy run-down business hotel and did our border run the day after. On Christmas eve we got a bus across to Koh Samui where we had booked into a nice place for the festivities.

Unfortunately once we got to the hotel we realised after opening our bags that someone had been through them, unlocking our padlocks, rooting through everything including our wash bags and first aid kits, and then resealing them. When we first got on the bus we heard one American guy exclaim that he had told the guys packing our bags into the bottom of the bus not to throw his bag "because it had a laptop in it". Genius. Luckily there was nothing to be found in our bags other than dirty laundry, but it did leave us feeling a bit violated. We deduced that it happened on a large bus we had been transferred to in a town called Surat Thani, as they had a huge room underneath the bus for luggage storage (and search apparently) and took all our receipts stating we needed to "reconfirm our tickets" so we had no way of knowing the name of the bus company.

We had unwittingly agreed to attend a "compulsory gala dinner" at the hotel on Christmas Eve. Not knowing what to expect we were greeted at the entrance to the restaurant with garlands and an invitation to do karaoke (a defiant "No way!" was the typical response from everyone). There was a rather strange buffet on offer for Christmas dinner, including barbeque, jacket potatoes, chicken and cashew nuts, seafood rice and salad. We were then cajoled into playing a few games one of which I won, earning a 4 pack of ice coffee and two cartons of orange juice, score! We then spent the next few days mostly lazing around our pool and watching HBO as it was raining just as much as a normal Christmas in the UK, (we had come over to the east of Thailand unaware that it was monsoon season). Out of curiosity (and boredom) we visited the local Tesco's a couple of times (mostly to buy supplies to avoid having to eat in the resort restaurant) but its quite different to the ones we're used to, with raw chicken sat uncovered in big metal vats and HUGE sacks of rice.

Before even leaving the UK we had decided to book our place to stay for the New Year's Eve celebrations as we expected it to be quite busy once we arrived. We had to take a short boat ride from Koh Samui over to the nearby island of Koh Pha-ngan (pronounced Ko Pan-yang). The island has been set up since the late 80s as a bit of a party place, with 'Full Moon' parties once a month on the beach with about 9,000 people attending, and Christmas and New Year's parties attracting about 30,000 people. At the time of booking the bungalow I had managed to convince Nikki that it would be lovely warm weather so we'd have no need for a hot shower, again not realising it was monsoon season. The place we stayed was at the quieter northern end of the island, and required a minimum 7 night stay. We found out the reason for this is that other than the parties on the beaches in the south of the island, there really isn't a lot else to do apart from lie on a beach, which we couldn't really do due to the weather! We spent a lot of the time on our hired scooter riding around the island, visiting the food market in Thong Sala (the main town) and various beaches dotted about. One thing we did enjoy was walking across a submerged sandbar, from the main island, with waves crashing around us up to our chests to a tiny island called Koh Ma, realising there wasn't much to do there, and walking back!

The actual New Year's party was a little surreal, we had taken a taxi down to the beach (40mins in the back of a pick up for me! Nikki having scored a seat inside) and after being filed through a small entrance, and collecting our coveted rubber 'Full Moon 2008' wristband, we were thrust into the middle of crowds of people dancing about on the beach drinking toxic mixtures from sandcastle buckets (the drink of choice which basically involves a quarter bottle of some kind of spirit mixed with a can of coke/sprite, a tiny bottle of red bull and as many straws as you can fit in your mouth). There were huge sound systems set up along the beach pumping out various music along with other random things such as jump rope using a burning rope. We headed down to a quieter end of the beach and sat in front of a huge camp fire. At one point we had to get a guy into the recovery position to stop him choking on his own vomit, he'd obviously had one two many buckets... At midnight there were lots of fire works and complete strangers wishing everyone Happy New Year and before we knew it, it was 5am and we were hailing a taxi back to our bungalow.

A few days after the New Year we were back on the ferry to the mainland to catch a bus down to the south west of Thailand to cross over into Malaysia. Once again we had to stop in Surat Thani to change buses to get to a town called Satun, then cross to the Malaysian island, Langkawi. Whilst in Surat Thani we were told by the bus company that there were no ferries from Satun to Langkawi until the seventh (three days later and a day after our visas ran out) due to a Muslim holiday, but luckily we could purchase a bus ticket from her to a different town (in Malaysia) for just 950 Baht (19 quid) and get a ferry to Langkawi from there. We weighed up the options and decided to risk going to Satun and if necessary paying the one day overstay fee of 500 Baht as it was still cheaper than the bus she was offering. Of course it turned out to be another scam, and once we arrived in Satun we were informed that the woman was talking nonsense. We had however missed the last ferry, so stayed a night there and got a ferry across to Langkawi about lunch time the next day.

If it sounds like a lot of complaining about Thailand, it's because it has probably been our least favourite place we've visited so far, which is a shame as we both had such high expectations. It seems to have felt the effects of mass tourism and open sexual conduct, and is now a seedy place that seemed to be full of sexual perverts and the locals seemingly wanting to scam/rob you at any, and every, opportunity. If it hadn't been for the booking on Koh Pha-ngan we probably would have left sooner, especially once we found out how nice Malaysia is.

The day we arrived on Langkawi we took a walk along Cenang beach, whilst supposedly being the busiest on the island, it was a lot calmer and nicer than anything we had encountered thus far, perfect white sand and sparkling turquoise water. We spent a week on the island, and 4 days of this was spent doing our SSI Open Water Scuba Diving course. We had looked around the island at doing a course and were getting a little worried as all we seemed to be encountering were people giving us vague details about what we could expect, and excuses as to the whereabouts of the dive instructor. Eventually we found East Marine Divers where we were welcomed in by Jenny who was extremely patient with us while we bombarded her with questions and she even convinced us to go for the SSI course rather than the more well known PADI course because it is more time in the water doing practical lessons and less time in the classroom (as with PADI) it's also meant to be more detailed and gives you a better understanding of scuba diving.

On the day off in between booking and starting the course we set out on a moped to explore the island and once again found ourselves at a waterfall. There were loads of rock pools with naturally formed water slides between them at the top. On the ride we were admiring the cute monkeys at the side of the road until we encountered a rather nasty bunch guarding the path up to the top of the waterfall who bared teeth and snarled, eek! That evening we went to an actual cinema that served actual popcorn and showed films in a language we could actually understand! (we've been a little deprived...) We also visited the local aquarium, but the less said about that the better, lets just say they didn't get a glowing report on their feedback form!

Before moving onto the diving I'd like to pause for a moment to reflect on our accommodation situation whilst on Langkawi. For the first couple of nights we stayed at Sweet Inn, a rather boring but functional hotel, run by a guy who seemed to be completely unpredictable and out of it 24/7. It was a bit expensive so we moved round the corner to Shirin's Guesthouse. The room situation worked out quite well, a room in a three bedroomed house with shared living room (with cable TV), bathroom and kitchen facilities. The owner's were once again a little unusual... It was run by a crazy Japanese woman who never slept, was so tiny in all proportions it was hard to tell if she was there and brought us some odd wedding cake from a wedding reception of a Burmese couple that had just married. Her husband an Iranian ex-royal air force commander who constantly asked whether everyone was OK, forgot who we were after an hour and came into the Internet cafe, grabbed a glass vase and exclaimed "I need to make a pipe! Are you OK?". Whilst it was a little unnerving at times, it was also quite entertaining.

The diving course was amazing; it was spread over 4 days including theory and practical segments. The first day was all the theory with the dive shop owner Danny, he talked us through everything, made us watch SSI sponsored videos (advertising!) then put us through a test. I scored an impressive 90% but was still outdone by Nikki who came in top of the class with 96%! We were also introduced to a young guy who'd been snorkeling the day before and been spiked through his cheek by a garfish (scary beast, look it up!), requiring 40 stitches on the outside and inside of his mouth. Danny then took us through the test going over the questions we got wrong (apparently the best treatment for minor stings is not on site surgery - OK, so I might of accidentally ticked the wrong box!). The second day we were handed over to our practical instructor called Zul, a small crazy little guy who had endless energy and an agressive manner with chewing gum. We spent about 4/5 hours in a swimming pool getting familiar with the equipment and practising techniques and emergency procedures. The third day we were taken out on a dive boat to Pulau Payar, a set of islands surrounded by coral reef. We did a total of three dives on this day, all on the house reef, redoing the things we'd learnt in the pool but at depths of up to 10m, including removing and replacing your weight belt, mask and BCD (buoyancy control device, a sort of jacket that also holds the oxygen tank). The final day consisted of two further dives, the first of which was back on the house reef where we went over our final manoeuvre emergency swimming ascent. The second dive we were allowed to relax and were taken to a different dive site called the coral garden, filled with lots of soft coral. We also saw an abundance of marine life (despite the poor visibility of about 5m) which includes clown fish, barracudas, box fish (my favourite), lion fish (Nikki's favourite), huge shoals of fish and many other species I can't remember right now!

After leaving Langkawi we had a couple days in Kuala Lumpur, which pretty much involved going round various shopping malls! We visited the Petronas Twin Towers, but missed out on tickets for the sky bridge. This morning we got up mega-early and rode the train to Singapore where we just have one night before we fly to Brisbane tomorrow evening.