Heaven and Hell

It was a bit of a sad goodbye from Rayavadee this morning, all 40 of us being hauled off in speedboats back to our cars on shore. Since we spent two days in Rayavadee, we got to know the place and the people there a bit and we really enjoyed being there. As we drove off, I felt a little heavy, knowing that I will probably never get to this place again or see any of the people who treated us with so much kindness. You wonder if there is a reason for why we meet certain people at different times in our lives. It is amazing how small the world really is. People here in Thailand in the middle of the ocean are just like us.

It's 3950 miles to the center of the Earth.

From the haven of Rayavadee we were dumped into budget tourism hell...we went on a boat ride from Phuket to the infamous "James Bond Island", a little rock in the sea on which there was apparently a scene filmed for the movie "The man with the golden gun".  The boats they drive out there are traditional Thai long tail boats that are powered by huge diesel truck engines on sticks out of which come 15 ft long shafts with propellers on them. Obnoxiously loud and inefficient.

Lacking any other notable sights, the insignificant James Bond Island has become a tourist attraction. Lots of overweight, sweaty and pale Europeans plus Thais selling plastic buddhas. We were so glad to be out of there. Our visit was followed by a pretty nice lunch in a seafood place close to the island. 

After that, it was a short 40 km drive to our resort for the night, the huge JW Marriott in Phuket. It's a good thing that we are just spending one night here. Tomorrow and the day after are days of long driving...we need to make our way up through Bangkok and then into Cambodia. Things will hopefully get a little off-road and rustic then. Yeah!

Beach Bumming

Hi! We did absolutely nothing today other than hanging out at the beach, having the occasional beer and relaxing. There are monkeys in the trees everywhere! Anyway, tomorrow we are off to another short drive up to Phuket, but then the next few days will be very long hard driving days towards Bangkok. We will be taking a 4-hr ride on a traditional Thai fishing boat tomorrow. Keep posted! Here are some nice beach scenes for you.

Rayavadee

What a long day! We took off at 6 am at the hotel on Penang island in Malaysia and started our 400 mile drive north to the resort of Rayavadee in Thailand where we just arrived at 5 pm. The first few hours of our trip were the usual panic; urban Asian traffic: people with dogs on mopeds, people with umbrellas on mopeds, people towing cages full of pigs on mopeds, people hauling construction materials on mopeds, people holding newborns on mopeds…and they are all going really fast and seem to completely rely on your alertness for their own survival. Needless to say that we were very relieved when we had passed the border post from Malaysia to Thailand. We exchanged some money (you can’t buy anything in the towns here without local currency) and entered Thailand.

The roads and areas we passed are a lot more rural and less refined here than in most of Malaysia. Malaysia benefits greatly from their oil resources in the East and they have invested their oil money mostly into building out their traffic infrastructure. On our way through Thailand we saw a lot more farming activity.

One very interesting thing we stumbled upon was a gathering of about 100 men and at least as many cages full of birds in the middle of a field. The birdcages were all hanging from wires over the grass. The chirping and birdsong was intense and apparently this whole ceremony was some kind of game whose purpose it is to have your bird jump from one ring in its cage to the next the most times within a certain period. I felt funny at first because we were entering this very indigenous local event as complete foreigners, but people waved us over, told us to get closer to the action to get a better view.

We continued our journey and stopped at a place called the Tiger Caves on our way. The caves are a holy place for Buddhist monks and we were lucky enough to see the initiation ceremony for two young aspiring monks who got all their hair shaved off (including eyebrows) right in front of us. Bloody scalps.

We continued towards the Thai coastline. The beaches here are very beautiful…traditional old fishing boats everywhere, the coastline lined with high cliffs and large rocks…we took a speedboat to our hotel, which sits on its own little island in the middle of the sea. It’s a truly amazing place. More tomorrow! Need to sleep now.

Monkeys and traffic jams

Selamat Datang! Today wasn't really a day to write home about...but I'll do it anyway ;-). We took off from Cameron Highlands around 9 am and made our way up towards the island of Penang, off the Malaysian coast. Most of our ride was on a very nice highway; it continues to amaze us how modern this place is once you get out of the little villages in the mountains. The roads are new, there are people landscaping on the side of the highway, lots of new western cars. As a result, we covered a lot of miles in a few hours until we had to get off the main road to catch the ferry to Orang Utan Island. 

Orang Utan Island is a nature reserve that takes in injured, abandoned or displaced Orang Utan babies, nurses them back to health and then releases them back into the Malaysian rain forest. It's a great cause, but we weren't very impressed with our visit, other than seeing the little Orang Utan babies in their diapers...sort of cute in a weird way.

From there we continued to the island of Penang, to the town of Ferringhi. The last hour of driving was pretty hellish...thousands of cars and people on mopeds everywhere driving circles around us. We were glad to arrive at our resort. Went to the gym...chilled by the pool...to bed early. We have to drive for 10 hours tomorrow, over the border into Thailand. But then we have a free day with no driving. 

Hope you all are well! I miss home.

Driving back in time

We left the metropolis of Kuala Lumpur and drove 150 miles north and at 150 years back in time to the tea growing Cameron Highlands. This beautiful hillside was "discovered" in the 1880's by the British surveyor William Cameron and is only accessible by a windy mountain road that leads you up to 4000 feet in elevation. I am amazed that my cellphone still works here and I can wirelessly transmit this blog entry. The highlands up here are a total departure from what's going on in the cities further to the South. Instead of the latest model Maserati people ride rusty bicycles with a bundle of firewood strapped to them for this evening's dinner cooking. Malaysians here live in wooden shacks on stilts that have no windows but only wooden screens to allow the breeze to blow through. 

As we were driving by, my father and I pondered the concept of living this way: according to some UN world survey the people in this area would probably be considered to be living in "poverty" and the inclination would probably be that something has to be done to "help" and improve their quality of life. But to us it seems like everyone is very happy and content and you wonder how many of the things that make us westerners appear to be not living in poverty are really necessary. The hand-to-mouth subsistence economy of everyone here is working pretty well. Kids leave school in their uniforms, smiling. Everything is clean and well taken care of. Foreigners are received with kindness and no envy. Maybe it's the religion here that facilitates.

OM!

Kuala Lumpur at night

Muddy Confluence

Hi there! Today, we took off in Malacca at around 9 in the morning and drove for a short 140 km up the highway to Kuala Lumpur. I navigated again and was focused like a laser beam on the roadbook so I don't get us lost again and it worked. I have the hang of it now. 

This city, deriving its name for two apparently muddy rivers that join here, is the ueber-modern capital of Malaysia. It is a very young city having been founded in 1850, but has come a long way from its origins as a small tin mining village. 7 million people live in this metropolitan area now and much like in Singapore (maybe even more so) there is high-end development going on everywhere. The cityscape looks like a result of a competition of who can slap the most glass and stainless steel onto a building. The difference between here and Singapore is that Kuala Lumpur sits at the edge of the Malaysian mountains. It is visually very interesting to see tall buildings nestled into this hilly topography. And it is hotter here than at the shore...95 degrees today. 

Since we got here at 11 am this morning already, we had a lot of time checking out the Petronas towers and relaxing at the hotel pool. I was floating around in the pool here in-between the skyscrapers, listening to the Athan, the prayer call, coming from the city mosque, which reminded me that I am not in just another metropolis, but in a far away place. 

Our stop here will be the last luxurious one for a few days. Tomorrow we are off to the Cameron Highlands, an apparently very beautiful tea-growing highland north of here. I'm looking forward to being in nature.

Hope you are all well!