Hello from Koh Lanta,

We need to catch up a bit because we are a whole island behind but the internet hasn't been strong enough and our patience not long enough. So Koh Lipe...

As expected, we basically spent our days on the beach reading our books and our nights walking the main/only street, choosing which bamboo restaurant to eat our Phad Thai in.
 

 

 

 

One of the 3 main beaches. This was the quietest and smallest and called Porn Resort Beach!!

Lu was super sensible and stayed covered up and in the shade due to us both getting fairly sun burnt on the first day here.

 

Kate was not.

 

 

 

Sun set at one of the beach bars.

 

 

 

One evening we walked to a point on one of the beaches, where you could watch the sunset. A crowd gathered on the beach so it was obviously the "thing" to do. As we were all sitting there heavy clouds came over the island really quickly and we managed to catch it on camera and we experienced our first tropical rain, which was actually really refreshing to walk home in!

 

 

 

 

Walking to one of the beaches one morning we came across this delightful dumping ground. We were pretty amused to see a little van piled dangerously high with rubbish and humans trying to negotiate its way in. It appears the Thai's have little or no worries about any sort of health and safety!! 

 

 

As you walk past all the restaurants at night, they have their fresh fish and BBQ stuff laid out at the front of the restaurant so you can see whats on offer. Most of them have a huge 5ft Marlin laid out for you to choose a fillet from. The pic below shows one of the fishermen bringing one in from his boat and you can see how big it is!! This inspired Lu to try it out on the grill and the verdict was "strong flavoured and yummyyyyyy!"

 

 

 

We went to the same place for breakfast a couple of times (below) because we discovered their amazing iced lattes! Sorry to be a "westerner" but we needed a little hit of something starbucks-like in our lives and they were amazeballs!

 

 

One of the days on the beach we decided to swim to a little island we could see (below). We're maybe not the best at guessing distances but it seemed do-able. Actually, it was more than do-able as the sea never went deeper than our chests so we could actually walk through the ocean to another island, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, Lu decided she was going to be adventurous and do some rock climbing, which resulted in a cut foot and an "I told you so" look from Kate, who stayed on the beach!!

 

 

Unlike before, where we could almost tell a story of our stay somewhere, there's not so much to write about Koh Lipe, as may be the case with the Thai islands from now on. We don't do particular activities, just appreciate our surroundings.

 

We have been in Koh Lanta, which is further north for 3 nights now with 2 more to go. Lanta has a beautiful beach, best we've seen so far, but we have had mainly overcast weather so we're hoping to soak it up on our last day tomorrow. It's fairly quiet here with not masses to see without hiring a motorbike (which we just cannot persuade ourselves to do as we're being ridiculously sensible) so we've spent lots of time lulling around and reading our books. We're heading to Krabi next, possibly via Koh Jum and then onto Koh Phi Phi, which is more of a party place so its probably good to get some chilled nights in now!

 

Will post about Lanta soon! :)

 

Lots of love, Lu & Kate

xxx

 

 



 

Hello!!! Greetings from Koh Lipe, Thailand!

 

We have been super busy and rushed off our feet. What with having to get the beach to shot gun the most beautiful spots and strolling around the markets picking at the amazing thai cuisine.. you know the drill.

 

Following from our last blog where we were in Langkawi, Malaysia....

 

On our last day we decided to rent a car and explore the island a little more, which was fun with Kate attempting to mind-read the mo-peds and manouvre a car with no power steering and Lu reading from a very very incorrect map.

 

  

 

In the end we came across a market which appeared to specialise in huge bags of dried/rotting and revolting sardines and various other small fish... :-/ 

 

 

 

And made our own choclate coconut drink, genious.

 

 

 

Chilli Sauce or Chillies S.O.S ????

 

Lu's attempt at enjoying Malaysian street food.

 

Fun with statues...

 

Our next stop on the road trip was to a little Oriental Village at the bottom of a huge mountain where you can go up in a cable car to 700m above sea level! This is the view from the bottom of the mountain. Maybe you can see the tiny white dot of the station to the right.



 And this was the view nearing the top! You could see a 360 of the whole island and also see Thailand in the distance, which was pretty cool. Was a bit scary when the cable car stopped for a little break about this point during strong winds and juddered around for a little while!!

 



At the top look out area.

 

 

Such a shame that the Sky Bridge was closed for maintenance. Or not, since its selling point was that it's "vertigo inspiring". May have been "panic-attack causing" too. Lu didn't feel she missed out.

 

It was pretty amusing to get back to the car park afterwards knowing only that we had rented out a small, white car...

 

 

 

After the cable cars we drove up another mountain which had a winding road all around but pretty steep so the rental car was in 1st gear most of the way! There were packs and packs of wild monkeys just sitting on the side of the road, we slowed down for some pics but when they took an interest in our car with open windows, we panicked and swiftly sped up! At the top was a huge luxury spa hotel that had closed down and was re-opening but there was a look out tower that they were letting people go up. You could go to the highest point on the island, 900m above sea level and walk around this tower balcony for a 360 view of the island. You could also see where we had just been in the cable car, which looked preeeetty high!!

 

 

We spent the rest of the time chilling around at the hostel (pic of the outdoor area) and we met a few of the other travellers in our dorm room, an english girl, german girl and 4 canadian guys, who we went to the beach with for a few (too many) drinks a few nights!

 

 

So we left Malaysia really pleased we had decided to go to Langkawi, which turned out to be a really pretty island, with a fair amount of exploring to be done!

Next we headed to Koh Lipe by speedboat, which ended up taking about 5 hours total even thought it's only about 30km away. Its the most southern of the Thai Islands and its very tiny and beautiful. We've had 3 nights here and 1 more to go so will post a blog soon with our pics from here. The beaches are amazing and the food is delicious, enjoying the Thai flavours a lot more!

 

Lots of love, Lu & Kate

xxx

 

 

Hello from Langkawi,

 

Been a bit of a hectic start, hence no posts for a while.


So, our 2nd day in KL, we spent the afternoon picking up our Thai visa (nice and easy to obtain and means we don't have to do any visa runs as without picking up one here, we would only get a 14 day visa for free on arrival). We walked about 8km in 30 degree heat and decided it was definitly time for our first nice cold beer. After 2 half pints we were tipsy enough to set off on the long walk home to the hostel!



 

View from the bar.

 

We decided to leave KL a day early as we had covered the city and its main features on our walks about town and we were ready for something different. We had to get up and out at 7am to get to the bus station, where we got a 5 and a half hour coach to Penang, further north of KL. This was our first attempt at carrying our HUGE bags in the heat and the below picture is the results of completing the task!!

 

When we arrived in Penang we got a bus through the town to Love Lane (previosuly the red light district), where all the hostels can be found. We stayed at Reggae Hostel, which is super westernised. We have now figured that all the places with Reggae in the title (and there are lots of them) are full of western backpackers meaning not so much culture and not so much allowance for our tiny budget!! Lesson Learned! The dorms (below) had little squares that you crawled into and thats where you slept! The top bunk was about 7 feet off the ground. It was cool but we realised we're not yet ready to be seperated (thank god!)

 



 

Chinese New Year insence sticks on the street.

 

We spent the day walking pretty much every inch of the town looking for some food and soon realised that we had seen everything there was to see! There was a beach but it was far away and didnt exactly have fabulous reviews other than 5 star resorts. We had booked 4 nights in this hostel but we weren't exactly in love with it and our expectations of Penang didn't exactly live up. Lessons learned - only book one night somewhere, if at all and have no expectations of anywhere!! 

We had also read that Penang was a very popular/good place to celebrate Chinese New Year but the only evidence of this that we saw was decorated houses with lanterns and insence sticks like the above!

 

 

 

Street stalls where we ate Pork noodles ( a Malay staple) and fresh fruit juice for 1.50pounds. Again, Penang is supposed to be the foodie haven of Malaysia but we must have missed the secret!

 

So after one night on Penang Island, we decided to leave early again and head to Langkawi which is just what we were after, finally! We got a 3 hour ferry over, which was so easy, the put a film on inside, downstairs which is where everyone sat and Kate managed not to get seasick (score) and we both slept most of the way after 3 hours sleep the night before due to our impromtu departure from Penang. We hadn't booked any accommodation and ended up at this cute new guesthouse on the outskirts of the touristy bit of Langkawi which is surrounded but locals houses and countryside- cows, chickens, lots of cats and kittens and geese (it chased us with our backpacks on, not cool considering we defo cannot run with them on!)

 

 

Kate's breakfast, onion roti (pancake) with Indian dips and a mango lassi. Malaysian food has a lot of Indian influence.

 



 

The beeeeaaach :)

 

Nice big jellyfish!

 

This beach cafeteria do THE best drink ever. Crushed fresh coconut with ice and a few choc sprinkles for good measure. Lu's dream and 1pound!

 

The beach runs the complete stretch of the busy part of town so as it gets to dusk lots of people start to gather on there. Theres lots of cool beach bars (mostly reggae!!) along the beach front but lots of people buy beers from the supermarket and drink them on the sand (our cheaper option).

 

 

 We're staying here for another couple of nights and then we will hopefully be heading to Koh Lipe, Thailand, by ferry, which is a small island about 30km from here. Its supposed to be beautiful and less touristy than some of the other islands so we're hoping to find some cheap enough accomodation.

 

Lots of love, Lu & Kate

xxx