The Sights and Sounds of Kuala Lumpur.

So here we are in Kuala Lumpur, we expected it to be quite simular to Hong Kong with the hustle and bustle of the city but they have their strong differences. First of all its sooo much hotter and humid here! Secondly the people are much more friendly. The place is'nt as chlostrophobic (i think thats how you spell it). Yesterday we decided to head off into the KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Centre) to see the Petranos Towers (the tallest twin towers in the world)and then we had to figure a way to get to Singapore so we dropped in on the Malaysian Tourism Office who gave us a choice of Bus and Train. We decided to get the train as it would cost us about 4pounds and we would get a bed to stay in for the 11 hour journey. So a nights accomodation and travel to singapore is not bad for 4pounds, we head off about 9pm tonight. Today Chris and I awoke about 8am to get our free tea and toast and to head to the Petranos Towers to get early tickets to get up to the bridge in the middle of the two towers. We got tickets for 11.30 and went for a walk around the park. At 11.30 we were taken into a 3D theatre to watch information about the history about the towers. It was quite interesting. Petranos turned out to be an oil company, I did not know this before. After this had finished we were taken as a group up to the 41st floor to visit the viewing bridge where we could see some stunning views of KLCC. After our 10minute visit we headed back down and went to the KL Tower (about 10minutes away) We were meant to visit Stu and Mike but we were an hour late so we completely missed them, they had already head off to the aquarium. So Chris and I headed up to the top of the tower 250m above the ground. You could see a full 360degrees around the tower. We could see for miles around, their were skyscrapers as far as our eyes could see. It was really good fun and cost a small price of about 3pounds.

It has been really good to stop off here in Kuala Lumpur but i dont really think we needed more than 2 day i dont think there is much to do here, but i definately think it was worth the visit. So next stop singapore.\

Oh and by the way last night we went to TGI Fridays to treat ourselves and we made out it was stuarts birthday he got a song and some cake. Theres a video on you tube so check it out there http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ4j61yK40E

The Story So Far......

Ok so I havn't really had a chance to write on this since we arrived in the south of Koh Phanghan so I will outline the main events of the past week. (If you would l;ike the better, more detailed version please visit chris' blog at gapyear08chris.blogspot.com).

So we checked into our hostel called Thong Yang just 3km from Haad Rin (Haad Rin is the beach where everything happens) on Tuesday the 19th. Thong Yang was a great place to stay up in the hills just 5 minutes from the wonderful BaanTai beach. The rooms wernt too bad as we were paying about 3pounds per night and the owners were very relaxed which made it very enjoyable. We didnt check out til about 7pm on the last day! So when we arrived on the 19th we spent most of the day checking out the beach and settling in to our temporary home. We were once again met by jane and polly by accident again, not on koh san road this time, it was down on the Beach. They managed to find accomodation just up the road from us which was useful as most nights we all shared taxis into haad rin and back home. So that evening we went to another party, this one named 'the Jugle Experience' which was good fun, not as good as the half moon party but it was good to get out with everyone, we played a few drinking games and chilled out for most opf the night as there wasnt as many people as we expected there.

So the next 3 days followed a very simular pattern.. we would be out till about say 5/6am and then most of us would sleep till about 2pm get up and head down to the beack for a swim and lunch at the Blue Lotus. Spend a couple more hours on the beach playing guitar and chilling out then we would all head back for an overdue shower and an attempt tp find some clean clothes for the evening.

The evenings are very mixed up for me as they were quite simular but different. 'same, same... but different' A saying that they use alot out here that I dont really understand.
So here are a few things we will definately never forget that happened in Haad Rin:

- Drinking Games - Stuart Straw, My Peter Griffin Impression 'milkshake' and Mikes random noises to strangers.

- Tom's eyebrow piercing

- Whisky buckets, Large and Small

- The Fire Skipping Rope / Fire Poi

- Dancing the night away.

- RAVE paint on the faces.

On the 23rd of february we were kindly invited by Paul (a family friend of chris' who we earlier met in Hong Kong) to attend a Wedding Reception on Koh Samui (a neighbouring island) and to join him in staying in a 2million pound beachside villa for the night for the grand cost of nothing... We really couldnt refuse. We arrived at the Wedding Reception (the nicest hotel I have ever seen) around 10pm where we walked into a room full of people doing 'line dancing'. It was very awkward as we knew no-one and we didnt attend the ceromony. We had to simply explain we were invited by our friend paul howard, which was very awkward at first but we were soon introduced to the bride and groom and from there on it was fine. We had access to the free bar which was a luxury, on of the reletives dragged us into a new drinking game for us which was good fun, stu and I came out worse on that 1 I think, but it was good fun. Later on after the reception we took a taxi to Pauls Girlfriends boss' villa which was brand new, no one had ever stayed there before and we were asked to check it out for them to see if everything worked etc. It was stunning, I cant really describe how nice it was (iu guess youll have to see the pictures), put it this way, we had a bath, a hot shower, a pool, maids and our own chef. We spent the night by the pool drinking the beer from the poolside fridge with paul and his friends, listening to music at 3am having a beer fight was soo funi. Something I will never forget.

The following day, the day of the full moon party, I woke up early to make the most of this luxury beachside villa. I got up and had a bath OUTSIDE as I still stunk of beer from the night before. A tropical storm hit us at that time which was good fun, Ive never really had a bath outside before let alone being in heavy hot rain at the same time. About 4hours later the rest of the guys woke up and we headed down to the pool for some breakfast. Bacon and Eggs, Cereal with mint tea! This was all too gooid to be true, all cooked by our own chef. A great hangover cure. Shortly after we all headed to go and visit one of the waterfalls on the island followed by sie elephant trekking which was really good fun, that is something ive wanted to do since we got out here but hadnt had a chance until then. It was strange being so high up but feeling soo safe from the sturdy amimal beneath us. I bought a few benanas to feed him with which didnt last very long. Shortly after we found a Monkey which we named Leonard who became friendly with us all, you will have to see the pictures when i get them up. Afterward we decided to head up to the waterfall, it was stunning, a good 45minute walk into the hills in our flip flops, was followed by the biggest down pour,we were soaked head to toe and stuck at the top of this waterfall, attempting to get back was a slippery attempt but really good fun. At 5pm we dried off and the chef back at the hostel had spent the day preparing the best bbq ever! There was everything, King Prawns, Kebabs, Fresh Fish, Local Satay sticks and Steaks shipped from aboard that were earlier picked up from the airport. It was soo good a bit different to what we had been eating recently, we made the most of it.
At 7pm a speed boat picked us up from the beach of the villa and took us all the way to Haad Rin for the long awaited Full Moon Party. I had never seen the beach soo busy, There were about 8 or 9 different bars along the beach all playing their different styles of music. I managed to somehow loose everyone which resulted in me spending half of my night trying to find everyone again. It was good fun. I must do for anyone who visits thailand on the right time of month.

It took us a good few days to recover and we all decided to leave on the 26th, Jane, Polly and Tom got a taxi to ThongSala for their boat to Koh Tao (an island north of Phanghan) to do some scuba diving. They left around 2pm which was quite sad as we had all had soo much fun as a group over the past week, something that was a shamne to leave behind. It was quite hard leaving fordie again for the second time as we wont see him again for another 4 months. :( Later on that evening we were meant to be picked up from the accomodation for our journey to Kaula Lumpur at 8pm.... This never showed...

I am now writing to you from Trekkers Lodge in Kuala Lumpur we had a pretty strange 26hr journey down here from koh phanghan it's taken soo long, first of all our taxi never showed up... so we ended up waiting until 9pm. The really kind guy who owned our accomodation from Thong Yang drove us all the way to the night boat. We got to the nightboat and were late of corse because of the lack of taxi so we had no beds allocated which meant we had six hours sleeping on the hard wooden floor wasnt a great way to start the journey. So we arrived in surrithani (6hrs later) only to find we had to get a bus to a travel agent to get another bus 1 and a half hours later which took us to another travel agent 4 hours down the country closer to the border. Here we were told we apparently needed 300ringgit to cross the border where we were marched to a cashpoint. NO WAY we thought, it was a big con. They were trying to get us to exchange money with them for silly exchange rates theres something like 7.9 baht to the ringit and they were selling at about 18.9. We were going to get caught out big time so we decided to sort it out at the boirder if and when we needed to. It turns we only needed 5 baht to cross the border so all was lies and a big money making scheme. Once we crossed the border we had another 4ish hour bus journey mpw taking us to butterworth, the time was 4.30pm now and we were taken to another travel agent to be told that WE MISSED our bus by 20minutes (It wasnt even our fault!) and had to wait til 10pm. Long story short we were taken in by a lovely malaysian family who own the resturant we ate at who kindly let us use their showers and beds in one of their rooms. At around 8.30pm we were greeted by the resturant owners son who was 19, he took us to the beach to show us the coastline of Penang and introduced us to some authentic malysian food which he refused to let us pay for. Such a nice guy, he goes to college in Kuala Lumpur so he also helped us out on suggesting places to go during our visit! He kindly dropped us off on at the bus park aroun 9.45 where we actually got onto a real coach to KL. We got here around 3am. It was a crazy journey, soo long. I think in total we had to take 2 Taxis, 1 Boat, 4 Bus' and 1 Coach.

We are now staying in a hostel in Kuala Lumpur called Trekkers Lodge we checked in about 4.30 this morning and its costing us about 3.50per night with included breakfast and internet.

Today we plan to go sight seeing in KL and book our travels to Johor Bahru as we will leave KL tomorrow. I hope to update this much more now i mislaid my diary on one of the many bus'.

Photos will be uploaded as soon as we can.

much love
Alex.

xxxxxx

Welcome to Paridise.

Hello all from the sunny, beachy koh phanghan.

Last wednesday we took a 12hr bus journey all the way from Bankok and then toook a 2hr boat journey to Koh Phanghan via Ko Tao (Thailand). It was a well deserved journey as this place is beautiful. Nothing we'd thing we'd see until fiji. Since we arived we have been staying in a place called 'haad son' north west of the island (one of the quietest places). It feels soo good to get away from the cities (Bankok and Hong Kong) and to somewhere a bit more remote. We have been staying in beach bungalows, all 5 of us squeezing into 1. This island has endless things to do, for the past couple of days we have been swimming off shore in 'haad salad' to do quite a bit of snorkelling around the reefs. It's great iv'e never seen so many fish in one place. Chris (the expert diver) has managed to spot a couple of clown fish and a few puffa fish which is pretty gd.

The day we arrived (the 14th i think) we managed to catch the 'Half Moon Party' which you cant really explain it was soo good. Let me put it this way.. take the best night club you have ever been to, tenth the price of drinks and take that into the middle of the jungle (oh and throw in some rave paint and glow sticks). It was a pretty crazy night. I lukily stuck to the beer unlike some people (not naming names) who went directly onto the whisky buckets who found themselves sleeping behind the dancefloor.

Last night there was a big thai boxing fight in 'thong sala' close to the international port. We decided to go because its something that is very important to people over here in thailand. It was really good, 8 fights from different age ranges. It was an outdoor ring with sets of seats running around the outside, it was great to watch, a good experience and a great atmosphere. For many people over here thai boxing is their life, we were introduced to a previous champion who has now retired at the age 33 who kindly offered to teach us thai boxing for 350baht this afternoon. We may take him up on that..

One of the most memorable moments for me so far on this island would probably be an evening we went down to 'haad salad' and took the guitar. Watching the sunset with my friends with a bit of acoustic guitar is wonderful. This attracted the locals who invited us into their resturant on the beach where they played us their instruments, some drums and some pipe instument that they had made themselves, we all sat there playing and singing together.

So where from here... today we check out of 'haad son' and head further down towards 'haad rin' (where the full moon party happens) so were going to be stayin near 'baan kai' in the hills, a fantastic view. We're paying about 3pound per night theres which is amasing for what it is. Tonight we will probably go to the 'jungle experience' (the warm up party for the full moon) quite simular to the half moon apparently. I look forward to it. In a couple of days we plan to go elephant trekking which should be something different. Can't wait. On the 24th we plan to leave the island for malaysia.

I hope to upload the photos as soon as I can.

speak to you all soon.

AJ.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thailand...

From Hong Kong 02-...

We flew into the airport around 11am on the 10th not really knowing what to expect and not really sure how to get to 'koh san road' (the suggested place to be in bangkok for people like ourselves). As we stepped out of Bankok International we were hassled by taxi drivers (many were fake and overpriced). It was very overwhelming especially after the small amount of sleep we had the night before. Out of nowhere we all bump into someone... something we didnt really expect.. Thomas Ford. It was great relief to see him as we were clueless of what to do next. (we planned to meet him a few days after but he took a 24hr bus down from laos to meet us).

So 4 best friends has now evolved into 5 and we are really enjoying our time here in bangkok. The weather is humid and hot but no sun as of yet because of the thick smog overlaying the city. This place is great tho you can walk less than 100m from the doorstep and find anything for the smallest prices. A full meal out here costs around 60baht which is just under a pound, i went out yesterday and bought myself some sandals for about the same price. We're living pretty cheaply and going out most nights here which we can afford to do (we went to a rooftop bar last night called gazebo, great live cover music, was really good).

So whats the plan now... well we were planning on going down to Koh Phanghan tomorrow (by 12hr night bus) to get away from the city and to get to some beaches. We are planning on going to stay in the north of the island for a week. On the 21st we plan to head down the island for the full moon party where thousands flock from all around. We have been told by soo many people that it is a must.

I will keep you all updated once i head down to southern thailand. I have finally finished uploading the hong kong photos so visit the gap year photo site for the updates if you would like to see them.

Love to all.

Alex.

xxx

Last Day in Hong Kong

Ok so today was our last day in Hong Kong. We all made the most of it, Mike and I went to Lantau Island to visit the monastry and the huge Buddha which is a major tourist attraction over here, we also had to get a cable car high above the mountains to get back to the station, the views were spectacular! (i will upload photos soon but this place wont let me). A couple of days ago we visited the peak, this is basically the best place to see hong kong from the sky, we went up on the apparent steepest tram in the world, it was good fun. We could see all throughout hong kong. Later that day we made our way to the avenue of stars to watch the FANTASTIC Chinese New Year Fireworks display (Brockham had nothing on this it was that good) (again more photos to come) It ended with a huge bang rattling the surrounding building and hills (chris got a great video). We've thoroughly enjoyed our stay here in hong kong but we really need a change of scenery. We are flying out to Bankok tomorrow morning which should be a good move.

Tonight we plan to head up to stuees favourite bar in hong kong 'Dublin Jacks' take a guess why.. They could be selling guinness there for a reasoinable price and they could be showing the ireland game.

I will update the phtotos asap and speak to you in Bankok.
Goodbye for now.

Happy Chinese New Year (from Hong Kong)

So here I am thousands of miles from home in the middle of Mong Kok in a 24hr internet cafe and its 00.13 in the morning. This evening was very entertaining we went into kowloon to see the new years eve parade. The past few days have been good fun, It took a little while to settle in but before long we were on our feet exploring the local area. I still dont think its hit us how long we are going to be away from home. We are having good fun, its great going away with the guys we watch each others backs and make each other laugh. We've sussed the transport here from trams to underground. We've visited a couple of markets with the freshed fish weve every seen (they were still jumping). I will give you all more of an update with pictures hopefuli when i get more time. Ok must go. Musch more to say. Hope to find an internet cafe at the airport before our departure to Thailand.