In previous posts I already wrote outline of the holiday. So in this post let the pictures talk more.
Singapore:
We (Michi, Henkka and I) started our trip first by taking a ferry to Macau and from there we flew by AirAsia through Bangkok to Singapore. Travelling by AirAsia is cheap, but be prepared for delays and not very good service. For example in Macau our departure gate changed after original boarding time without any notice on speakers... Also you can't book a transit flight, at least to my knowledge, so when we had to change our flight in Bangkok we had to wait for our luggage, go out from passport control, go through check-in again, notice that we have to pay 500bahts (~11€) for airport tax, go throuh passport control and security check again just to change our flight. So better prepare enough time between the flights. We had over 2 hours, which was not too much at all...Nevertheless we arrived happily to Singapore, where Calista was waiting for us. Renja arrived an hour later and joined us for the Singapore before she headed back to Finland.
Singapore is a small peninsula (or island) south of Malaysia on the very southest point of Asian continent.
Most of the city is pretty western looking, not too high buildings and quite lot of space, parks and trees etc. In the center there are some high buildings, but not too many like in HK:
The emblem of Singapore is the Merlion, which is mixture of a lion and a mermaid, makes sence:
It was sooo hot in Singapore... Renja was enjoying her beach holiday on Sentosa island
(actually it was raining on that day, but othervise the weather was nice though it was the rainy season. The temperature changes in Singapore are perhaps the lowest in the world, temperature is throughout the year between 25-35, day and night)
This picture of Henkka is from the Merlion on Sentosa island. Sentosa island is a leisure place with beaches, couple of resorts and some attractions. Very nice place to visit.
We also visited the Singapore zoo and night safari. Both were very nice and we met plenty of interesting animals, like the monkeys in the picture:
The zoo was pretty nice, but the cages weren't too big, actually believe it or not, but I think in Hangzhou the animals might have even better living conditions (see my previous posts from October)
Celebrating new year by drinking beer and waiting for the fireworks by the shore near center
After fireworks girls were not feeling perfect and they headed home (all of us were sick at some point of the trip...) Henkka and I headed to center without any glue where to go. Asking from the locals is quite a lot easier in Singapore than e.g. in China mainland, since practically everyone speaks fluent English... Somehow we ended up in a very fancy night club (without paying anything), where it seemed that most of the girls were hired by some very rich people or something, but at least they had to go when some guys with suits on wiggled their fingers... We left that place pretty soon and headed to more local places somewhere in the center, don't ask me where it was... Some very interesting bars and people in Singapore, but all the good ends. So when the bars started to close we had to head back home. We tried to get a taxi, but only fancy and expensive limos were available, so we decided to walk back home. Only problem was that we didn't have a map and certainly not a compass. In addition I wasn't exactly sure about the directions since had taken couple of beers and Henkka wasn't exactly sure about the place where we were going (he had also taken couple of beers...). But Henkka was certain about the direction and I was certain that I would recognise the place if/when we got somewhere in the vicinity, since I had walked around there. So with mutual agreement we headed to Henkka's direction which soon turned out to be the right one, and when we got to the vicinity I recognised the place and we got happily back home at around 5.30 in the morning. Singapore is actually very small place so it's easy to settle in and get to know the place.
Kuala Lumpur:
So to KL we headed after the New Years pary by the pretty comfortable night bus. The only problem was that driver was driving like a madman and sleeping was not too easy:
Everything has to be bigger in Asia! In KL there is a shopping mall where there is amusement park with a rollercoaster inside the building...
Petronas Tower is truly a nice looking building, as is the whole KL a nice looking city:
In KL there were Calista, Michi and Henkka accompanying me:
Believe it or not, but these guys were cleaning the Petronas Tower with tooth brushes. I only hope it was some kind of punishment and not their real job...
We also visited the Batu caves as I told. Bus travelling there and back was interesting enough in itself, since the bus stop there is next to a school or so and you get to see the efficiency of local school travels. If I remember right we calculated 11 or 12 kids getting in to a normal car. Also two adults and two kids is a common sight on a scooter. There is also a fancy golden buddha standing on the entrance of the caves.
And perhaps the most interesting part are the wild monkeys living in and near the caves. Don't pick their nose too much though, since they have very nasty looking teeth and some of them get angry pretty easy...
Langkawi:
As I told Langkawi is a very nice, modestly priced beach place with lots of backpackers. It is not too growded, it's easy to make new friends there and still there are couple of nice bars and even at least one decent night club to go. At least this applies to Pantai Cenang beach area. Other beaches on the island are reserved mostly for the very expensive and luxurious beach resorts, which might be nice if you happen to have too much money. And by the way, AirAsia has just started to fly to Langkawi from Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, so now it is easy and cheap to get there, but it might also make the place worse soon... So far the only bad thing about Langkawi is, that the nearby island are full of rubbish everywhere. Othervise it would be very nice, but when you see empty water bottles and all kind of trash thrown away everywhere it really makes me angry about people and their mindboggling stypidity.
The beach in Langkawi right in front of our hotel:
Main street of Pantai Cenang
Henkka and Michi, still so pale because this was from the beginning of our grilling holiday:
Some mangrove forest on a nearby island:
Otherwise a very nice island, but with a crappy house, some oil barrels and plenty of rubbish:
Phuket:
The trip from Langkawi to Phuket was a very interesting one, but also pretty exchausting. We had to wake up early in the morning before any restaurants were open, so we didn't even have any breakfast. Here we are eating "breakfast" cookies on the passport control queue in Satun when we just have arrived to Thailand without any idea about the continuance of our transportation.
The next transportation turned out to be a pick-up to somewhere. They put the luggages to another, crappier one and passangers to another. I was the lucky one who had to go with the luggage car because there wasn't enough space in the other. Perhaps for the first time in my travels I was really a bit nervous about where we might end up. The car was really crappy, the driver didn't see almost anything and was driving most of the time in the middle of the lanes. In addition the driver was touching my thighs and supposedly trying to tell me that I'm in pretty good physical condition. He didn't really speak any English. Compliments are nice, but at that point it felt just a bit weird =)
After that it turned out that our transportation for the rest of the trip will be a bus. The bus was not the most confortable one... As you can see we had to protect ourselves against raining and cold and in addition most of the time against very loud karaoke videos. Fortunately I had bought earplugs in case of this kind of situations =)
But eventually we arrived to Phuket. Phuket is probably very nice place if you come there just for a beach holiday, but if you have been around here for a bit longer, it is pretty expensive compared to other possibilities and probably the most growded tourist place in the whole Thailand. But there is still plenty enough space to grill yourself on the beach and also the food is still pretty cheap, even cheaper than in HK. Taxis and other form of transportation are the ones really ripping you off. Practically we didn't do anything else in Phuket but lie down on the beach and occasionally went either swimming, running on the beach or eating.
Oh, and AJ joined our jolly group in Phuket:
First night was pretty interesting, but then we got used to this kind of accommodation. The rooms are usually either with 2 single beds or one king sized bed. We were budget travelling and saved money by sleeping three persons in a bed. For some reason Michi always wanted to sleep on the floor... Usually we had to pay 1500bahts for a room like this, which is around 8€/person. The initial reason for such accommodation actually was, that there really weren't too many rooms available. It was the very peak season, so we should have booked the hotel before. But we always managed to find a place, though it took some time and had to change couple of times. The nicest hotel we were staying was Happy Inn Guesthouse, which is on the Karon Beach in Phuket, pretty close to beach but very quiet and nice place because it is surrounded by other hotels. Rooms were bungalow typed and the yard was full of trees and plants, which made it very down-to-earth.
Ao Nang:
After staying in Phuket for 3 days, we had gathered enough strength to continue to another place. We decided to go to Ao Nang, which is a smallish town/beach resort two hours boat trip east from Phuket. There would also have been plenty of islands to choose from, but nice travel agent told us that at least Phi Phi is totally growded this time of year and finding a hotel might be a problem. And since we didn't want to spend whole day sitting on a ferry so we had to choose a place from nearby. In Thailand boats, and any transportation, might sometimes be pretty full. Also it is common that you need to change a boat to another one on sail:
And if any of you wonder whether I have already got used to warm temperatures here, the answer is no. I'm still sweating like pig most of the time...
Town of Ao Nang:
Beach on Ao Nang is not the best one, but you can easily take a long tail boat to one of the nearby islands or take a tour that takes you to several of them in one day. We took a whole day tour to 4 islands. It was very nice and costed less than 10€/person. The motors of the long tail boats are something remarkable. Noisy as hell, pollute like a coal factory and still not very fast.
Nearby islands we visited were all really nice, though pretty growded at least this time of year. Snorkling there was really nice, though the visibility has probably been quite a lot better before Thailand came such tourist place... It is likely that at least in near future it will only get worse, since the local way of life is far from environment friendly and tourists don't usually give a shit.
The limestone cliffs and islands are just as remarkable as you could imagine after seeing them in pictures or TV:
And AJ as good looking:
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