Author: matt

Having got a few opinions from people, I decided to move from Trawangan to Gili Air instead of Meno. Air is closest to the Lombok mainland, and the middle of the three islands in terms of size. It was VERY quiet compared to Trawangan, but I thoroughly enjoyed it for a night.

I had probably the best snorkelling session I’ve ever had. I don’t know much about fish, beyond the fact that cod is usually more expensive than haddock, but there were heaps and heaps of fish to look at, all sorts of brightly coloured ones too. I hooked up with a giant turtle, more commonly seen off Trawangan I gather, and swam with him for a good 15 minutes at least. They really are such elegant creatures to watch swim, and I think he enjoyed the company actually, I suppose he must get bored of these stupid little fish as well.

A local boat builder starts a new project. My splendid bungalow was in the jungle just behind this.

Continuing what appears to be turning into an obsession with bathroom pictures, this one had a true outside shower. One time when I was showering, it was chucking it down so hard with rain that I really didn’t need to actually turn the shower on.

I’ve left the island today, passing the taxi rank at the port

to get to the fast boat back to Bali

Back in Kuta for tonight, out of necessity really to make the connections, and fly to Pontianak on Indonesian Borneo tomorrow morning, via Jakarta.

The speed boat couriered us in relative safety across the 30 Km or so stretch of water from Bali to the islands off the west coast of Lombok next door. The seas had died down considerably from the 6 metre waves of a few days ago, the same day my lunch blew away. It was still rough enough mind you and it always amuses me on this kind of trip to see the cool sun worshippers going up on deck to catch a few rays soon after the boat leaves port, then later when the waves start crashing over the deck, to watch them coming back down below one by one in various degrees of soakedness.

It’s a pretty island

and just further down the beach from where this was taken I had lunch in a cabana and couldn’t resist one cute cat photo. These guys are eagerly awaiting the spoils of my curry, there’s three more of them on the other side of my legs too

Even though Trawangan is the biggest of the three islands, it’s still tiny and there’s not a single motor vehicle of any kind. Bicycles are the order of the day for most people, tourists and locals alike, or for the big stuff, goods vehicles like this one.

I’ve seen a few instances of the closest thing to road rage I’ve seen down this way yet, when two of these meet head-to-head on a narrow lane. There always seems to be quite a lot of dialogue and arm-waving going on before someone concedes and backs their horse up.

I wouldn’t normally advocate a particular place to stay, but the place I found here is so good that I will. Called “Wood Stock”, it’s a home stay down a back lane a way north of the village. Lovely and quiet apart from the usual   surrounding farmyard noises and the inevitable droning of the mosque (how the hell does anyone put up with that, day and night?). The people couldn’t be more friendly and the cabins are beautiful, named after rock legends, I’m in “The Who” with my outdoor shower made from bamboo.

They’re proud of the fact they run the place solely on solar power for hot water and electricity, drinking water is available via home made reverse osmosis, and they have the best coffee with the excellent included breakfast, which is brought to your patio whenever you choose to awaken.

The wet season weather here has so far been well behaved, with sunny days and the rain coming very heavily after dark. Last night I was treated to a spectacular sight whilst sitting in a cabana on a beach having dinner. The rain was absolutely lashing down around me, with a huge electrical storm going on. There was no moonlight, and Lombok, just across the water from the beach, was in total darkness apart from a few lights in Sengiggi down on the coast. But the flashes of sheet lightening behind it would silhouette the mountainous peaks just for an instant in the pouring rain, just like something from a horror film really. I’ve never quite seen anything like that before.

Later I got chatting to one of the guys playing in a band in another bar. They were playing excellent covers of Johnny Cash and Dire Straits and that kind of thing. As with almost everyone here, his English was excellent and I was asking him when and where did they get interested in Western music and whether it was just for tourists or not. He said he grew up in Sumatra and from a young age they were taught this kind of stuff in music lessons in school, starting off with “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and that kind of thing and moving onto cover music as they got older.

Having just said the weather was fine, since about 1pm today it’s been lashing down to one heavy degree or another and has finally stopped as I write this at 11pm. Even though it’s a sand island, it’s so heavy that many of the streets are ankle deep in water that you have to wade through to move around, it grinds on you after a while.

If the weather holds in the morning I plan to take my British Airways gold card backpack to Gili Meno, the smallest of the three islands, to spend one night there before heading back to Bali to sort out some sort of flight to Borneo

It’s true what they say about Kuta being on a different planet from any other part of Bali. This was my first escape from the zoo down there, to Ubud, not far away in distance, maybe 20 Km or so, but a world away in terms of culture and finesse. All you arty types hangout up here, in the foothills of the mountains that run east-west across the centre of most of the island, and noticeably cooler than Kuta, albeit still very humid. Art is all around you, even up in the hills out of town you come across many places like this – a garage doubling as a gallery. You can just wander in there and start buying stuff

Got myself a lovely villa in town. Breakfast is brought to me on my balcony whenever I choose to surface in the morning

Nights aren’t too shabby either

The town is very nice, lots of shops and restaurants and all that, and the only hassle you get, walking along the street, is from taxi drivers and offers of (non-special) massages. In the town itself is Monkey Forest, which is indeed full of monkeys, all up to no good. This one has a cigarette

These two are definitely enjoying themselves

And as for these two…..

I’ve been doing a fair bit of trekking, you don’t have to go far before you are right out in amongst the paddy fields, along with the ducks in some cases

and you’ll just come across a restaurant like this one, in amongst the paddies, a beautiful quiet spot to sit with your feet dipped into the pond which is full of huge fish which nibble away at the dead skin on your feet

Just down the road from here I had a reminder of the poverty that still reigns here. Rather than get a tipper truck, these two people have just shovelled all of that gravel out the back of that truck. They both women, I think

Today I took the piece-of-shit motorbike I hired up for a long drive up into the mountains, past some crater lakes in volcanoes, the road actually goes up and over the crest and down into the crater itself, ending up at Munduk which is riddled with waterfalls like this one

Tomorrow morning I’m off by speedboat to the Gili Islands just off Lombok. Supposedly the sea has died down enough for these things to run, they have 8 x 300 horsepower outboards stuck on the back and does about 50 knots or something, let’s hope I don’t do a Donald Campbell in it!

I was right to be concerned about the weather in Bali. Even though it’s only 3 hours flying time from KL, in most of Indonesia this is wet season, whereas back on the SE Asian peninsula it’s dry at the moment. The flight came in through some terrible weather as we came into land, the plane was being bashed about like a toy and it was a struggle to stay in your seat, even with the belt on. The pilot did his best to avoid the lightening that was striking all around us and managed to put us down in one piece. In some countries it’s common for people to clap when you’ve landed, especially if you’ve been flying Aeroflot or whatever. I would never normally join in of course, being the prudish Brit that I am, but on this occasion I was clapping, cheering and calling for an encore.

The rain lasted just long enough to soak the luggage right through as they got it off the plane, then it stopped completely for 3 days until this lunchtime. This is the scene at one of the southern beaches where I stopped to have lunch. 10 minutes after this photo was taken a sudden squawl blew in, with a horizontal wind that came in so quickly that it literally blew the food off my plate and across the restaurant – the fried egg actually hit another traveller about 15 feet away, the half full glass bottle of Coke I had blew over, and that roof you can see that is actually on the restaurant next door, or rather I should say it used to be on the restaurant next door, blew off and large slabs of it hit our restaurant and ended up far down the beach. I couldn’t get any pics sadly as it was far too wet to get the camera out.

I’m in a so-called “home stay” in Kuta Beach at the moment, a lovely room with private balcony and a great pool just below. I’ve not been up to much apart from chilling. Although Kuta has a lot of issues, you can’t get around the corner without being offered a massage with happy ending about 10 times, and this is at 2pm and so forth, but still as long as you have found a quiet place to stay then it is a good place to hang out really, there is lots of good food around and things to do.

It’s difficult to say if this is petrol or Absolut vodka in these bottles, but probably either would run the bike. If all else fails you could try the magic mushrooms that are for sale across the road.

I’m staying just around the corner from the site of the 2002 bombings. The land will never be built on again as there is some law here about building on the site of such an atrocity. This photo is taken from within the site of the Sari Club, looking out across the road to the site of Paddy’s Bar. A suicide bomber detonated a backpack in Paddys initially which killed a number of people, anyone who survived naturally came out onto the street where a massive car bomb exploded just afterwards, killing many people as well as destroying both venues.

The site of Paddy’s has been converted into a memorial garden for the 202 people that died and is quite haunting to visit

I had a near miss with a dodgy “authorised money changer” yesterday. I’m still running down the pile of US dollars that I needed for Myanmar so decided to change one of the $100 bills I had. The exchange rate they were offering would’ve returned me 1,029,900 rupiah and the guy counted 10 x 50,000 notes into a pile of half a million, then another 10 into another pile. This aroused my suspicions straight away and rightly so, as he then picked up one pile and dropped it onto the other and then pushed it towards me whilst another guy was distracting me, trying to get 20,000 in change from me so that they could give me one more 50K note. I almost saw the sleight of hand as he did this, and when I tried to count the pile he would constantly try and grab all the money back so he could “check” it. I forced him off, and sure enough there was only about 750,000 in the pile. I threw the money in his face and grabbed my $100 back and walked off, then had a minor meltdown as I went back and compared the $100 note with the other two I still had, the serial numbers on those two were consecutive and this one was not, so I was now in dread that they had also switched the $100 note as well. It looked real though and I took it straight to a proper money changer who accepted it, so I don’t think they changed it. I learnt a valuable tip though – photograph the note you give them openly in front of them before they have the chance to touch it. There is no need to feel embarrassed that they will be offended that you mistrust them, if they are genuine, that is…

Having planned an early night last night, I met a young English lad in a bar who was waiting for a local girl he’d met yesterday in a nearby town who was supposed to be coming to Kuta to see him. Whilst we had a beer, he received a message from her blowing him out, “love you long time” and all that. So he dragged me into one of the bawdy big venues on Legian Street so he could get a replacement. These places are amazing, absolutely huge with about 10 bars on different levels, mostly playing loud, crap music. The prostitutes mix openly with the tourists whilst the overpriced beer and other substances take effect. Of course I was a good boy and went home early, around 3am or so…

Off to Ubud tomorrow to get a little culture.

My third visit to KL and a very pleasant one, I must say. The previous two times I really didn’t think much of the city at all, the first time I stayed in the Golden Triangle somewhere and the next time down at Sentral, near the station, but this time I’ve stayed in Chinatown which is far more vibrant and welcoming, I must say.

This is a scene from one of the Chinatown streets, a web of stalls selling basically anything and everything from fake T-shirts to Rolex. Last night I was sitting in this street having dinner at about 11pm when the stalls were closing up. They go through this clearly well practised ritual of packing all the goods away into various lockable cabinets and trolleys that are later wheeled away to lock-ups somewhere. The parasols, plastic chairs, light bulbs and cabling are carefully removed and locked away until about 12 hours later when it all comes out again. 7 days a week? Probably, I’m not sure, quite an arduous lifestyle anyway, surely.

Both times I came here before, I had tried to go up the Petronas Twin Towers

but they eluded me so far, as you had to queue from 8.30 in the morning for a ticket for that day, and me and 8.30am, dressed and in a queue are not good bed fellows. These days though you can book in advance, so I went up last evening to do that only to find that today was already booked until mid-afternoon which would be too late for me to get to the airport, but a little bit of pleading with the ever-helpful Malay staff and I bagged a ticket for this morning. It’s an impressive visit alright, if memory serves me correctly these were the tallest buildings in the world for a brief time*, if a little expensive in Asian terms at 80 ringgit, but then how often do you get to go?

The view of the other tower from the one I was in, with the telecoms tower behind which I have previously climbed

Now I’m back in Chinatown having some, well, Chinese food for lunch before heading to the airport and Bali. My eyes rested briefly on the MacDonalds just down the road, but that would be sacrilege really (besides, I already went there for breakfast)

* This statement might be bollocks – take with a large pinch of salt

My last morning on Koh Tao started with me doing a good deed by scraping a tourist’s motorbike off the road that crashed just in front of me. Someone else scraped the tourist up. She looked alright really, but some local women were rubbing her belly in concern, thinking she was pregnant I suppose, when actually I think she was just a bit fat. I hope so anyway… The bike was not in such good shape and will cost her a few baht I should think.

A fairly slow ferry took me to Chumphon where I had 3 hours or so to kill whilst waiting for the train. I sumggly found a nice cool bar to whilst away the time whereas most of the tourists went like sheep to a karaoke restaurant nearby. These places are painful – the singers are all locals who sing local pop music at ear-splitting volumes. This often happens on long distance buses, too.

The night train was lovely and comfy, nice and cool and a big bed. Everyone seemed to be sleeping peacefully for most of the journey too. When I eventually woke up they put the beds away and I got chatting to the old Malay guy that had been sleeping below me. He said Malaysia was lucky to have been colonised by the British, an interesting point of view that it’d never really occurred to me that a local might hold!

From Butterworth a short ferry ride takes you to Georgetown on Penang. As I slightly expected, the place is a bit underwhelming for me. It is quite interesting to see all the old colonial buildings around the place, but beyond all that, it is pretty much high-rise. The food is certainly excellent, very varied and cheap, something Penang is known for. The same cannot be said of the beer.

This did give me a little amusement, a new definition for irony. Starting from the left, 1) bring your UK phone charger with you. 2) Forget to bring the universal adaptor for it, so purchase one. Use the aforementioned combination to charge your phone in Myanmar, and fry the charger as the supply is so screwed up there. 3) Buy a replacement charger, which of course has a local 2-prong connector. 4) Go to Malaysia where they use the UK style plug and have to purchase an adaptor to connect your new charger to a UK socket. I suppose in this respect it was not good that we colonised this place…

The boat service I was thinking of using to get to Medan has ceased 2 years ago, so having looked at flights and weighing up several options, I’ve decided to take a bus to Kuala Lumpur today and fly from there to Bali as the next main step. I’ll play it by ear when I’ve arrived, and see how the weather is, but all being well I’ll explore Bali and Lombok and may well need to backtrack over to Java to then get to Borneo.

I spent a couple of nights back on the safe haven of Tao. I stayed in a different set of bungalows for a change, just on the other side of the head where I normally stay, in another fine cabin with a view over Shark Bay

The resort sits isolated just above the bay

There’s some steps just below the bungalows which help you get into the water, so I went in twice looking for sharks, but they were being shy on this occasion. In an effort to avoid eggs for breakfast, I’ve gone for the old faithful tomato soup, 3in1 coffee and fresh coconut combination breakfast today

Aside from that it’s been a quiet couple of days. I dragged myself up to the High Bar last night for a late drink and got talking to a few people, including one Swedish guy trying, and failing, to find a place to stay by phoning around everywhere. He gave up and went to sleep on the beach in the end. The bar is High by name and high by nature, it’s up the steepest and twistiest track ever, a hell of a challenge to keep the front wheel of the bike on the floor on the way up, and as for going back down…. Earlier I took a spin up to Sairee, the small town towards the north of the island, this is the main backpacker hangout and I don’t go up there very often really. When I first came here in 2004, there was no electricity and a night out consisted of drinking in candlelight on the beach whilst a man played guitar. Now, Sairee has bars pumping out music, a couple of girlie bars, lots of international restaurants and there was even a ladyboy show.

Today then is the marathon journey to Penang in Malaysia. I’ll take a boat at 14.30 and spend 2 or 3 hours in the town of Chumphon before getting a train at about 22.30. It reaches the border around 8am I think, and then takes a further 6 hours to Butterworth, which seems way too long as it’s not that far from the border really. I expect we all have to get off the train for a couple of hours or something to clear immigration.

I love simple beach hut living. 300 baht a night gets you one of these

The walls are made of reeds with an entire ecosystem living in them, and the toilet cistern is made from a converted flowerpot

The mattress is lovely and comfy, and the door has a lock, but really I don’t know why, as if you don’t want to push your fist through the wall, you can simply reach in through a window – there is no glass in them

Koh Phangan is much bigger than Ko Tao so I decided to stay somewhat centrally in Ao Baan Tai, a little to the south of the main port and town, Thongsala. Haad Rin, the sight of the infamous “full moon” parties, is easily reached in 15 minutes or so by motorbike. It’s a nice beach alright, a little later this evening I might have a spin down there to see what happens in the evenings, despite the fact it’s not full moon for another week or so yet.

Today I’ve been up the west of the island to the north, also easily reached by bike, to do some snorkeling off Koh Ma, a small island reached by sandbar, followed by some more at Haad Khom

It’s a nice island actually and fun to spend some time, certainly a hell of a lot better than Koh Samui which is just over the water from here. Samui has an airport so tends to attract the suitcase brigade somewhat, bringing with it inflated prices and cheese. That said, there is some here too. Just along from where I am staying are a string of girlie bars, and there’s this “English” pub which is hilarious, it’s obviously been custom built to look as much as possible like a typical country pub you’d find in the south east of England, complete with a turfed beer garden

Tomorrow I’ll be off back to Tao for a couple more nights, so all that’s left to do here really is try and find some dinner that will top last night’s rather fine potato gratin from a French restaurant. It’s amazing how you crave things such as potato when you’re out here. Sometimes I wake up in a cold sweat, dreaming about Frosties…

I had a minor miracle that helped me get to Thailand in one piece. I’d foolishly booked a flight out of Bangkok to Surat Thani that left 55 minutes after the one from Mandalay was due in. I’d temporarily forgotten that I needed to land, immigrate, collect my baggage, clear customs, make my way from international arrivals and find domestic departures and check-in again before the desks close, 45 minutes before departure. 10 minutes for all this would seem tight.

I have to commend Air Asia, who ran both flights, they are a Malaysian budget airline that also serves other SE Asian countries quite widely. Their fares are rock-bottom, for example the one to Surat Thani was 40 quid, with all the extras in such as a charge for a checked in bag and a charge for credit card. Service, however, is not compromised at all, compared to a certain Irish based budget airline I could think of. Nothing is too much trouble – the miracle is that the Mandalay flight got in 30 minutes early, the aircrew moved me to the front of the plane so I could run off, the ground staff alerted central control with my booking reference and kept a check-in desk open and set aside just for my use, and all of this was my own stupid fault of course. There was even a later flight to Surat Thani they could’ve made me use, no reason for them to have any sympathy at all.

The transfer to downtown Surat Thani, where the night boat leaves from, was smooth and I had several hours to kill in the most boring town on the planet. In hindsight, I would’ve been better spending those hours in Bangkok airport eating KFC rather than hang around that dump. I found a guesthouse willing to let me use a room for a few hours for just 100 baht so I could lie down, as I was beginning to feel rather ill by now. Here’s the nightboat

And a shot inside just after dawn when we were close to the island. I’ve taken this boat before, but it was a different boat that time, this one is actually spacious in comparison!

This is my third time on Koh Tao, one of my favourite spots in Thailand, and I got a hut in my usual bungalow operation

I’m writing this post from my balcony, and I’m rather distracted as there are a pair of naked, Western breasts staring up at me from one of those loungers. It always astonishes that people do that here, it is I believe illegal, and disrespectful to the locals. Nevertheless, keep up the good work! And no, I’m not uploading a photo…

Top tip for travelling – if you bought a stash of doughnuts to get you through the nightboat trip and have some left over, don’t leave them on your bed when there is an ants’ nest underneath your cabin, otherwise this happens (not sure they’ll be visible in this little pic)

This was after the food and most of my clothing had been removed, including pants which literally did have ants in them, and there are thousands of them all over the bed and hut. Nothing that a Thai bloke with the world’s largest canister of bug spray couldn’t sort out.

And that’s about all I have to report, as I’ve been sick as a parrot since leaving Mandalay, clearly something was dodgy with the last meal I had up there and I’ve pretty much been wiped out. I’ve been unable to eat or drink much, and consequently have no energy and little desire to venture too far from a toilet. As today was Day 5 of this, I finally checked into a clinic here who’ve been pouring various substances into me and I’m happy to say I’m feeling much better already. So don’t panic, Mum.

Shortly I hope to have a little snorkel in Shark Bay which is very close by, pictured here from the viewpoint I struggled up to yesterday

Astonishingly, it’s famous for having large numbers of sharks in it. Tomorrow I plan to transfer over to Koh Phangnan next door to here for perhaps 3 nights, and I’ve booked a night train to Butterworth in Malaysia on the 19th, a bit later than planned, but that was the first one with a berth available. Then I plan to spend a night or to in Penang, after which I was going to choose between a ferry to Sumatra in Indonesia, or fly over to Borneo, in the general direction of the Philippines and China. The way that time is panning out, I think I’ll have to leave Indonesia for another time and go straight to Borneo.

We arrived in good time to Mandalay, and managed to bag the spare bed in the guesthouse that another traveller on my bus had reserved and I happened to share a cab downtown with, so that saved a headache. The city isn’t as bad as I’d been led to believe, I prefer it over Yangon actually, with the one exception that there is almost literally nowhere to go out and eat, very strange for a pretty big city.

I had enough time that day to hire a bike and cycle out to Amarapura, home of the longest teak bridge at about 1.2Km long and some 200 years old. I wish I’d had one of those head-mounted cameras to record the journey out of Mandalay on the city streets. The best way to describe it is that it’s rather like being in the middle of a video game, with things coming at you from all directions, some of which you can aim for as they will earn you points (generally, humans and animals) and some that should be avoided as they will make you lose a life (all other vehicles). Aiming for other bikes is laying the gauntlet down and that is where the fun really begins. Despite it all, you actually feel fairly safe on these roads. At home, people would simply drive into you, whereas out here, somehow room for everybody seems to appear at the last second, and there is no concept of road rage at all which is very refreshing.

The bridge:

Fisherman work on the shores below the bridge. The long shadows are being cast be the legs of the bridge in the setting sun

For the delight of tourists, I’m sure, just outside some restaurants at the end of the bridge, a monkey balances on a beer bottle whilst holding an umbrella

After an early night, as I was still feeling a bit rough thanks to Idaho Dave, next morning I got up for the 9am boat to Mingun, an hour’s river ride away and home of yet more temples, that were badly damaged by earthquake

From the boat, you can either take the 5 minute walk to get to them, or if you’re American or Scottish you can go by eco-friendly taxi

Lunch for me today was a typical Burmese dish, this one being a mutton curry. Just over a quid gets you all this, it’s almost a challenge to work out which dish is the actual curry. The thing that looks a bit like a bowl of soup is actually a bowl of soup, and that comes with unlimited refills.

Europe is missing a trick here as well, anyone who introduces anti-aging beer is surely going to cash in quickly?

Later I bumped into Debs again and went for beers with her and a strange English Jehovah’s witness. A heavy night involving plenty of Mandalay Rum, a half bottle of which will set you back 60p. At the end of the evening, I was almost beginning to believe, I think

So, if I get up in time for a 7.30 taxi, it’s time to leave Burma behind. It’s certainly been an interesting experience here and worth doing, I almost feel a bit guilty that I didn’t go delving deeper into the unknown as such, but mostly due to the relative hassle and expense of travelling here I’m cutting it slightly short and going to relax on a Thai island for a few days. Besides, I need to go somewhere that I might some food that will settle my stomach a bit!!