We're Baaaaack

Hello all. I know it has been a while a since my last entry. The past month has been a whirl wind of activity, adventure and extreme laziness and now, more adventure. It all began when we left Kuala Lumpur on an over-night train to southern Thailand. Let me begin...

We had to return to Kuala Lumpur to sort out our Thailand visas.

There's Ami picking the nose of the prime ministers mug.

And of course, we couldn't resist some more shots of the Petronas Towers.

We then took a night train from Kuala Lumpur to southern Thailand. Here is Ami's video tour of our train.



Here are some stills from the restaurant compartment.

A nice guy we met from Denmark on our way to Thailand.

Now, once we got to Thailand, all the great luck that followed us around in Sabah had suddenly turned on us. As soon as we got out of the train station, the friendly guy from Denmark walked away from us without a goodbye and we were lost with a horde of aggressive tuk-tuk (taxi) drivers hassling us on the street. The city we arrived in was dirty and congested, no one spoke English and no one wanted to give us an honest price or answer to any of our questions. Coming from Sabah, the way we were being treated in Thailand was a huge culture shock. It was pretty unpleasant. With all the hassles and confusion, I wasn't able to take many pictures.

We headed to one of the famously picturesque islands of southern Thailand only to be heaped in with the massive tourist crowds the populate the islands. Here are some shots of our time on the island once we got our bearings.

The bungalow we rented on an island. It was nice except for no electricity 16 hours a day.

Here's Ami as we were climbing a nature trail.

There's me as we were half-way up.

Once we reached the top, the view was quite lovely.

Now, as things were becoming manageable, everything turned upside down. As we were making our way down the very well-trodden nature trail, we heard a growling about 30 meters into the trees around us. The growling quickly became closer and we saw a large, gray furry animal darting through the jungle. For a split second, our minds thought we were about to witness one animal hunting another and it would be quite a show but we soon realized the reality we were in. This furry gray monster was a raving, rabid macaque monkey bee-lining through the jungle straight for Ami and I. We begin to run for our lives. I was behind Ami so at any moment, I was expecting a monkey to pounce my back and sink its teeth into my flesh. We ran fast. I was yelling until I tumbled down some steep, sharp rocks and badly cut and bruised my ankle. At that moment, I knew the monkey could have me if it wanted me but, to my relief, the monkey was gone. I had to rest on the rock but Ami thought I had broken my leg so she ran on to get help. Nobody working on the island seemed to want to lend a hand. Even when Ami went running for help saying that I broke my leg, everyone just laughed and told her to tell the park ranger. Luckily, nothing was broken but, due to all the bad luck that followed us in Thailand, the cut on my ankle got infected and painfully swelled for about 5 weeks after the incident.

I managed to take some more photos of our island living before it got lost in the ocean.

Another friend we met on our travels.

It's true what they say about the pristine beaches of southern Thailand.

The taxi boat ride before my camera got lost.

Here is a video documenting some of the ups and downs of the first leg of our Thailand trip.



Unfortunately, there are no more stills from the Thailand trip. However, the next entry will have some more video footage documenting our travels and, inevitable escape from the country.