Another month has passed since my last instalment, but this time I have the excuse of having spent a lot of that month cycling, and usually sleeping in some place without internet access. Whenever there has been internet access, I've been in a tourist ghetto where they charge 6 times the going rate for internet, and my fundamentally cheapskate nature won't allow me to spend hours online at those prices.
Anyway, the good news is that the reason I'm here in the package tourist mecca of Phuket is to meet Joanne. She's coming back after 5 weeks in Canada following the death of her father. I'm very glad to have her back since I was going slightly batty talking to myself while cycling for a month. My friend Greg is joining us from Japan for our first adventure, which won't involve cycling at all. We're going diving again, this time to the Surin and Similan islands northwest of Phuket, supposedly the best diving spots in Thailand. We're going for 4 days and 4 nights on a live-aboard boat, and I'm quite excited to go diving again. I had read that Richelieu Rock, one of the dive locations that we're going to, is one of the best places in the world to see whale sharks, but I learned recently that they haven't been seen there in the last year or two, presumably because the whale sharks got sick of having divers around and took themselves elsewhere.
Let me recap the last month of the trip. After I left Marang, where I posted my last update, I rode north along the east coast of Malaysia, through small fishing villages and through flat, pretty marshland and coconut-growing villages. There were few cars on the back road I was following, and lots of time to look at birds and take pictures along the way. After a night as the only guest in a seaside hotel (it was mid-week, so no weekenders were around), I continued along to Kuala Besut, the ferry terminal for the Perhentian Islands, where I left my bike and most of my luggage and headed for the islands.
I had heard a lot about the Perhentians. My friend Caroline said that they were the most beautiful tropical islands she had ever seen. It's always hard to live up to expectations. The main beach on Perhentian Kecil (Little Perhentian) is long, wide, backed by coconut palms and composed of powdery white sand, but its very loveliness has been its downfall, as dozens of ramshackle cottage complexes crowd along it. There is the noise of construction as new cottages go up, and the tropical night is torn by the din of a dozen diesel-powered generators. The quality to price ratio of accommodation is lower than in the rest of Malaysia; my 20 ringgit (about US$5.25) a night cottage progressively fell apart day by day, as the front steps broke, the verandah collapsed and the floor sank alarmingly. It was at least quiet; the owner put his generator next to another hotel to keep his cottages quiet.
The beach was beautiful, but it was full, as were most of the cottages. Swedes made up a large proportion of the tourists, with a generous helping of Brits and Germans. It's the sort of place that people come to spend a few weeks, swimming, snorkelling, diving and sipping banana shakes. The snorkelling right off the beach was excellent, and I saw a green sea turtle and a blue-spotted ray on my first afternoon. The coral was in good shape, although with yahoo tourists standing on it to catch their breath, this may not last. As on Kapas, there was the comical sight of Malaysian tourists, most of whom can't swim, snorkelling in optic orange lifejackets, making the bay look like an art installation by Christo.
I went diving a couple of days while I was there. The water wasn't at its clearest, as the rainy season had just ended and the water had yet to reach its usual dry season clarity. There were lots of fish to see, however, and I really enjoyed myself on the first day. The second day of diving was a day trip to Redang Island, a couple of hours south by boat, supposedly the best diving area on the east coast of Malaysia. Our divemasters were taken by surprise at the strength of the current that day, and, because the mooring buoy was missing, had difficulty finding the correct drop-off point for the dive. We had to swim so hard to beat the current and reach the coral outcrop that most of us sucked our air dry in about 15 minutes, which was frustrating. To add to the misery, I was violently seasick just before the dive, and came out of the water sick again. I thought I was going to die as I lay there on the boat. Bringing the boat into sheltered waters and feeding me lunch revived me, however, and I joined the others in snorkelling before our next dive. The snorkelling was excellent, and we saw several hawksbill and green turtles and black-tipped reef sharks. The second dive was a repeat of the first, minus the seasickness, as we battled tremendous currents and drained our tanks quickly again. It was a nice boat trip with good snorkelling marred by diving.
Aside from underwater pleasures, I spent some time lying on the beach, reading and playing guitar and generally relaxing. Suppertimes were a highlight as restaurants set up tables on the sand and we dined on seafood under the stars. Since the Perhentians are in a very Muslim state, it's difficult for restaurants to obtain liquor licenses, so to have a beer with dinner involves sneaking out of the restaurant to the local bootlegger whose cooler is located just down the beach. At 8 ringgit (US$2.10) a bottle, it was hardly worth the effort or the cost, given how cheap everything else was.
Tearing myself away from the sand and the sea, I set off for Kota Bharu, the centre of Malay culture. I spent a night in a very convivial family-run guesthouse that, unfortunately, apparently didn't believe in clean sheets, as I came away from it with a persistent case of fleas or lice or something small and loathsome that I have yet to get rid of. The town was interesting, with a fantastic selection of food in the night market, and a pleasant hinterland. It's one of the few places on the east coast of Malaysia with much history to it, having been an administrative centre of the Srivajaya empire a thousand years ago, and it does have a lot of old palaces and traditional cultural activities such as kite-flying, bird-singing contests, batik and puppet shows. I didn't see any of these in action, but I'm assured they do occur.
I was excited to leave Malaysia the next day. I had been in Malaysia for more than 2 months, and it's always exciting to go somewhere new. Crossing the border in a river ferry, I started looking at my Thai phrasebook, trying to learn the essentials like "sawadee" (hello) and "khawp khun khap" (thank you). I had had the advantage in Malaysia of already knowing the basics from spending a few months in Indonesia (where they speak the same easy-to-learn language) in 1996. In Thailand, I was back to sign language and grunting to get my meaning across.
Southern Thailand was a bit of a surprise to me, not least because it's very much like the area around Kota Bharu: a countryside of rice production and fishing villages, populated by Muslim Malays, and towns where most of the shopkeepers are Chinese. There are actually very few ethnic Thais (or, at least, Theraveda Buddhists) in the south, and mosques and Chinese temples outnumber Thai wats (monasteries) heavily. The traditional cultural stuff that I had missed in Kota Bharu was there in the villages in Thailand: kite-flying, bird-singing, batik. Everything somehow seemed a bit more colourful and alive than in Malaysia, although that may simply have been my hyperactive imagination. Whatever the case, I suddenly stepped up my rate of picture-taking, as I went on a local colour kick.
I also got excited about the food. Thai cooking is fantastic, and much more varied than most Malaysian food (at least outside the main cities). I have developed a great taste for Thai salads, full of chillies and lime juice and green mango. The street food here is excellent, and I am taking an idea from a Paul Theroux travel book and trying to eat at least one new, memorable thing every day. It's quite funny watching the reaction from Thai foodstall operators; they think that no Westerner could possibly tolerate hot, spicy Thai food, and they always ask anxiously, several times, whether I want chillies in my food. In fact in Ao Nang, the most touristy spot I've stayed in Thailand, the tourist restaurant food is terrible, made as bland as possible to suit what they imagine all Western palates must like; I took to eating in the foodstalls just to get some decent food.
The first few days in Thailand I spent riding along the east coast, staying in beach bungalows or tenting on the beach. Near Hat Yai I passed the 2000 kilometre mark as I finally headed inland to cross to the west coast. The scenery deteriorated as I headed inland; aside from a few national parks and forest reserves, all the natural forest is gone, replaced by endless rubber plantations. As palm oil is to Malaysia, so rubber is to southern Thailand. It was hot and hilly and there was even more construction on the roads than in Japan (something I had not imagined to be possible), and the national park I went to (Thaleh Ban) was full of voracious leeches, so I was glad to get to the west coast and head out to an island, Ko Tarutao.
Tarutao was a bit disappointing, as I fled the crowds at the park headquarters (it's supposedly a national park) to hike 2 hours to another, supposedly nicer bay. The hiking path was under construction! For an hour I edged past dumptrucks, steamrollers and paving crews. The bay, when I reached it, was hardly scenic and didn't have any offshore coral as my faithful Lonely Planet had promised, so I lay on the beach, read, watched birds and sulked. I was disappointed that I had chosen Tarutao rather than any of the other islands in the area.
I dashed up the coast for a couple of days after that to Krabi. Construction, with its attendant clouds of dust, dogged my path, and rubber trees were a never-ending backdrop. The second day was Songkran, the New Year/water-throwing festival, and I spent the day as the constant target of kids and adults armed with buckets and Super Soakers. I just put on the rain covers over my panniers and enjoyed myself; it was a welcome antidote to the tremendous heat and humidity.
I didn't actually stay in Krabi Town; I made my way 20 km west to Ao Nang, the end of the road before Rai Lay Beach. Rai Lay was another place I had heard about for years, and it did live up to expectations, even if it was pretty crowded as well. The scenery is dramatic: sheer limestone cliffs plunge vertically into the ocean, separating golden sand beaches, and offshore there are more vertical or overhanging islands dotting the ocean. It's a mecca for rock climbing, diving and yachting. I did a day of rock-climbing lessons, and, for the first time in several attempts over the years, I enjoyed myself. I had good shoes and that made all the difference: I felt confident that I could depend on my grip to get to the next hold. I climbed a number of pitches, and the view from the top was always dramatic. By the end of the day, my forearms were exhausted and I just couldn't hang on long enough to make it to the top of the routes, but I was happy with my experience.
The diving was superb, too, as I did a 3-dive trip out to a shipwreck and a couple of coral reefs. There were leopard sharks, an octopus, barracuda, dozens of lionfish (Joanne's favourites; she was disappointed not to have been there for them) and vast clouds of colourful reef fish drifting over the carpet of anemones, while schools of deep-sea fish like mackerel and jacks charged in occasionally for a bite to eat. Between dives I played chess and chatted with Pascal, a Swiss diver who has climbed Mustagh Ata, a mountain in Central Asia that I would very much like to climb. We returned late, watching a perfect sunset from the top deck of the boat. I am thinking of getting my divemaster license and working as a divemaster somewhere pretty and tropical. The more I think about it, the more appealing a lifestyle it seems. I think that, like skiing, diving is so expensive that if you want to do a lot of it and you're not Bill Gates, you need to find a way of doing it for free or being paid for it.
From Krabi, I made my way up the west coast, looking briefly at the overhyped karst topography (limestone caves and cliffs) north of Krabi before hitting the beaches of Thai Muang and Khao Lak, just north of Phuket. They're very pretty and not overly developed yet, although new hotels are going up all the time. Khao Lak is where Greg and Joanne and I will be headed in a couple of days to head to the Similans.
I cut back across the peninsula after that, headed for the east coast again. On the way I stopped at Khao Sok national park, a lovely spot, full of limestone cliffs, waterfalls and tons of new birds to add to the "seen" list. Joanne and I may head back there after the Similans to do one of the touristy but fun elephant rides through the jungle to a waterfall. The ride to Khao Sok featured the first real uphill of the trip, 10 km of steep (8% grade, I would guess) climbing at 5 km/h, grimly pushing the pedals round and watching the sun sink in the sky. The view from the top was worth it though, and the screaming downhill into the park was the most fun I've had on a bike this whole trip so far.
The trip from Khao Sok to Chumphon was three days of extreme heat, hills and rubber plantations, with one nice exception in the middle where I got off the main road and took an old back road through rice-growing villages full of old wooden houses that looked a bit like rural Japan used to look. I like the human landscape of rice fields and houses so much better than the cold, artificial, inhuman symmetry of rubber or oil palm plantations.
In Chumphon I left my bike and caught a bus back here to Phuket in the wee small hours of the morning. It took 7 hours by bus to cover what I did in 4 long, hard days on the bike, but my knees are actually sorer today than they are after riding from squishing myself into Houdini-like positions in the seats designed for tiny Thai people.
I hope that after this I'll do better at keeping this updated more frequently. Now that Joanne is back, we'll also have photos to put on the page as well. Until next time, "laa kawn" (goodbye) from Thailand.