Jeff has arrived and the three of us have been exploring Bangkok with reckless abandon! We’re still at the marvelous Atlanta Hotel, of course…

After three solid days of shopping at the Baiyoke Garment Center I’m ready to send a boatload of extra crap home, which I’ll do when the post office re-opens on Tuesday. Its hard to hold back when everything is so cheap! I’ll be sending my computer home as well, so that plus the fact that we’ll be traveling in more remote areas over the next several weeks will probably mean fewer updates until I reach a big city again (most likely Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam first). We’ve got a minibus ticket the Thailand/Cambodia border for Wednesday, and from there we plan to visit Siam Reap to see Angkor Wat and then continue east through Cambodia into south Vietnam, then north along the coast until we arrive in Hanoi. After that we will probably go west into Laos and then down into northern Thailand.

Tonight we have plans to go see a traditional Thai puppet show after a free show by the Thai Symphony Orchestra in Lumpini Park…

I finished up my PADI certification course on Ko Tao and by that time Sarah had grown tired of exploring, so we decided to leave the island. Jeff is scheduled to arrive late tomorrow night, so we traveled by speedboat / bus up to Bangkok to be here when he gets in. To avoid facing the Th. Khao San circus once again we landed in Sukumvhit to check out the highly recommended Atlanta Hotel. The Atlanta has turned out to be one of coolest hotels I’ve ever seen. The rooms are nothing special and it’s not the best deal around, but the place is an art deco time capsule.

Finding the building is not difficult although there is no visible ‘Atlanta Hotel’ sign anywhere - only a sign over the door which reads “This is the place you are looking for - if you know it. If you don’t, you’ll never find it.” Walking through the front doors into the lobby is like walking onto a movie set - every last detail has been kept the same as when the hotel first opened in 1952. Everything from the switchboard behind the front desk to the tip box in the restaurant remains unchanged. The menu in the restaurant has been carefully refined over the years and features academic-style footnotes full of fascinating information prepared by Dr Max Henn himself. In the back there’s even a large swimming pool (once the largest in Bangkok) and a garden, both of which look the same as they did on opening day. There is a bit of interesting history behind the place as well:

Dr Max Henn, a chemical engineer from Berlin, founded The Atlanta Chemical Company which eventually became The Atlanta Hotel. The transition occurred when American military aerial photographers arriving in Thailand in the early to mid-1950’s sought accommodation in the empty hall above the pharmaceutical laboratory. Because Thailand had never been colonised, no foreign powers had any proper maps of the country. The lack of maps during the Second World War made it difficult for the Allies to dislodge the Japanese who were belligerently occupying Thailand. This was rectified by the terms of the peace settlement, which permitted American military cartographers to come to map Thailand. Another cause of the transition from a pharmaceutical company to a hotel was the decolonisation of the Dutch East Indies, during which Dutch colonial administrators, plantation owners and managers sought accommodation in the hall above the pharmaceutical laboratory during their transit to The Netherlands. At that time, Dr Max Henn was appointed the Transit Officer by the Dutch government.

Yesterday after speaking with the concierge at the Atlanta I visited a custom tailor shop on his recommendation (Chinese Tailors) to look into having a suit made. I ended up opting for two suits: One all-white linen suit and one all-black cashmere suit. The prices were slightly higher than some of the other tailor shops I checked out, but the quality of the material was far better and the cost is still next to nothing compared to back home. I’ll have 3 fittings over the next few days and then finally send a huge package home including all the souvenirs and gifts I’ve been lugging around for months - but not before a photoshoot in the Atlanta.

After a couple more days of doing nearly nothing on Ko Phangan, Sarah and I decided it was time to move over to Ko Tao. Ko Tao (“Turtle Island”) is, like many Thai islands, named after its shape. It is home to an insane number of scuba-diving clubs and schools and is world-renown as one of the top spots in the world to dive. Not only is the diving incredible, its also cheap as can be considering the courses include all the equipment and accomodation. Unless you’re diving here, there’s not much to do; Sarah rented a scooter ($4 / day) instead of diving and has set out to explore every last corner of the island (its tiny) before we leave.

Naturally, I signed up to get my PADI open water certification and tomorrow is my first open water dive! I spent all day in the pool today covered in gear learning the basics. It’s whale shark season and today there were several sightings, so with a good bit of luck I’ll see one on one of my 5 dives over the next 2 days. And when I’m done diving I’ll get to do some wakeboarding as our intructor is good friends with a guy who drives a ski boat on the island! I do regret not having done a PADI course before I was on Rarotonga, but I guess its all the more reason to go back soon…

I wish I had some photos to post - maybe soon I can put up some of Sarah’s (who’s been shooting enough for the both of us). I’ve posted some of Sarah’s photos on Flickr… After another few days on Ko Tao, we’ll head north to meet Jeff.

The past few days have been pretty eventful…

The original plan was to travel by train, bus and plane all the way from Kuala Lumpur in southern Malaysia to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand in 3 days. We had even prebooked a cheap flight from Krabi to Bangkok for the 11th. After our 15 hour train ride immediately followed by a five hour minibus trip from KL to Krabi, though, we were feeling pretty zonked. When we started to have trouble getting a bus ticket from Bangkok to Chiang Mai we decided to scrap the Chiang Mai plan and head to Ko Phangan instead as the full moon was coming up in a couple days.

We ended up having a nice time in Krabi (my 3rd time there) staying at a hotel recommended by some friends in KL (Chao Fah Guesthouse) instead of the awful Thai Hotel. There was some kind of street fair going on with live music and good food and I ran into a Lanta Family friend, Mindy from Washington state (there is no escaping the Lanta Family). In the morning we booked our ride to Ko Phangan and were there by the early evening of the 10th.

Soon after arriving in Hat Rin we learned that nearly the entire town is booked up due to the holiday. Yesterday was the first day of the lunar new year and thus a full moon - Ko Phangan is world famous for its monthly full moon parties and this is the largest one of the year… after much fruitless searching for a decent affordable room we gave up and decided to just stay up all night to find one in the morning. We stashed our bags at an internet cafe, got some coffee, ran around all night and saw an amazing sunrise over Hat Rin beach in the morning.

At this point we were obviously tired as hell. At 9am we retreived our bags from the internet place and wandered about for a while to finally get a room. We ended up getting a double room at a crappy place near the edge of town and fell asleep instantly. When I woke up in the morning I met our roommates: a nice variety of cockroaches, lizards, centipedes, mosquitos, flies, ants, spiders, etc. (the only ones that really bother me are the centipedes). I took a shower, got dressed and went to grab my camera and head out only to discover it had gone missing. I’m pretty sure I left it on a bench somewhere as we walked around town looking for a room because i remember picking it up from the internet place that morning. Its depressing and I feel like an idiot for it, but in the end its only money. I didn’t lose any photos and thankfully none of Sarah’s equipment was attached to my camera at the time. It has inspired me, though, to send home everything of value that I have left. I have little need for my computer anymore and I’ve lost so many things on this trip already its just not worth the trouble.

I spent that day moping about, retracing my steps and talking to everyone about my missing camera but, of course, no luck. Later on that afternoon I was tackled in the street by Ide and Linda (swedish friends from, you guessed it, Lanta Family) who told me that the entire gang is here in Hat Rin - including Mat who I was supposed to meet up with in Chiang Mai!! Sometimes things come together in the strangest ways… I hung out with everyone (Mat, Ricky, Bazz, Stephan, Linda, Ide and Leigh) around their hotel that night and celebrated the new year.

Songkhran (the Thai water festival) pretty much comes down to a non-stop all-out water war in the streets for the 3 day period around the new year. As you might expect, everyone and everything is soaking wet the entire time… I spent most of the next day running around in the streets with buckets of water splashing and being splashed. Tons of fun.

Last night was the full moon party. Absolute madness. I’ve never seen such a crowded beach - not only is everyone from the island out and about, but boatloads of people from other islands arrive just for the night… I had a great time despite being tired from the past few days. Supposedly the town starts to clear out by tonight and Sarah and I can move to a nicer place on a quieter part of the island. After a couple more days here, we’ll move to Ko Tao for some scuba diving and then up to Bangkok (AGAIN, arg) to meet Jeff who is arriving on the 24th. From there I think we’ll go northward into Laos…

After the Cameron Highlands, we continued south to Kuala Lumpur.

From the bus we walked into chinatown and found a decent cheap room at Wheelers. Over the next few days we set off exploring the city and surrounds by day and hanging out in chinatown by night. I visited the monkeys at Batu caves, a couple museums and the KL tower - the standard tourist routine, really.

The hotel had a nice bar on the rooftop, so I hung out there a few times and met some nice people. One of them, Ben, performed at the bar some nights with his cousin. He had a spare guitar, so on the last two nights there I played with them at the bar and had lots of fun…

We are now in the Cameron Highlands, staying in the town of Tanah Rata. The Cameron Highlands is Malaysia’s largest hill station - a string of towns surrounded by tea plantations and small farms. We showed up in Tanah Rata with nothing booked, as usual, and found all of the hotels to be full! We were eventually pointed to the Twin Pines hotel who were also fully booked, but had a RM50 room in the retirement home just up the road. We offered RM40 and he agreed so we went to see the place. Turns out this is one of the nicest rooms I’ve stayed in yet! Its clean, has a private bathroom with a hot water shower (!) and there’s even free laundry facilities.

The highlands are a nice change from the coastal towns. The temperature is much cooler and the town is surrounded by beautiful greenery. There are a lot of other travelers here as well and a good range of accomodation and touristy stuff to do.

Today we hired a guide to take us to one of the plantations and on a couple short jungle walks. First we visited the Boh Teh plantation and enjoyed a great cup of tea in their tea room overlooking the fields, then took a walk up to a viewpoint with a couple jungle detours on the way to spot some pitcher plants…

The plan is to stay here for a couple days and then continue south towards Kuala Lumpur…

In the morning, Sarah and I checked out of our hotel (Olive Spring on Lebuh Chulia) and walked to the bus station to get a ride to Taiping. Lonely Planet made it sound nice enough and the friendly lady at the hotel said it was “nice”, so we decided to make a stop there on our way south. The bus ride was only a couple hours so we arrived in the early afternoon at the bus station just outside of town. We got ourselves a taxi and started for Taiping, but the car ran out of gas after about 500 meters just as the driver was pulling into the gas station! We waited for a few minutes while he refueled it and tried to start it again unsuccessfully before he went about hailing us another cab…

The next challenge was finding a hotel room. The first place we tried wanted RM55 for a double room and wasn’t willing to bargain. I walked around, checking hotel after hotel to find every one either utterly disgusting or fully booked. I finally went to the tourist info center and called around to nearly every hotel in town and came up with one place left to check: the Nanyang Hotel who wasn’t answering their phone. I went over there to check out the room and they had a double with A/C and a bathroom for RM35… not so bad looking at first glance… so we checked in. Upon further inspection, we learned that the sheets hadn’t been changed in at least 3 years (there was graffiti on mine dated 2003)…

Walking around town didn’t provide much excitement, either. It was starting to look all bad when we found a great restaurant - an all vegetarian japanese restaurant with excellent food. We ate too much and then went back to the hotel, shot some weird photos in the dingy room and then went to sleep (on our own blankets!). We agreed to leave for the Cameron Highlands the next morning…

We spent most of the day sitting in another full minivan en route to Penang, Malaysia. We arrived in the evening and found a decent hotel in Chinatown, then set out for an Indian feast. It took quite some time to find an ATM to withdraw some Malaysian ringgit…

Penang is a fairly large island off the coast, not far from the Thai border. Georgetown (where we stayed) is the largest town there and there are several other towns and villages scattered about the island. Sarah and I spent the next day exploring the place on our own; I went up to Kek Lok Si temple and Penang Hill.

I went up to the temple first, which had nice views but was partly still under construction and so not too exciting. I left the temple grounds and started to walk towards the railway going up Penang Hill, but got lost and wandered deep into a residential area. On my way, I walked past a small trash dump and was stopped by a guy: “Hello! Where you going?”. I told him I was going to Penang Hill so he immediately offered to take me there. Everything seemed cool until he started huffing a bag of paint he had been carrying around… He told me his name and some random stuff in broken english but it was so badly slurred I couldn’t understand a word. I was starting to get nervous - then he led me down a narrow, dark shortcut through a patch of trees. He could tell I was starting to act a bit tense and assured me that he “no robbery you, i no robbery!” It ended up perfectly fine - he took me right to the ticket counter. We each bought a ticket (I was really hoping he would leave me at this point) and boarded the train. The ride up was quite depressing. He continued to huff various things from his pockets, horrifying the orthodox Islamic family sitting around him. Every couple minutes he would point at something and ask me if I was going to take a photo of it - I did my best to ignore him. By the end of the 20 minute train ride the car reeked of shoe polish and I was dying to get away from this guy. Luckily I started talking with some other travelers and he wandered off…

Penang Hill is full of monkeys who aren’t shy about approaching humans so I was able to take a lot of photos of them. After hanging out for a while, I took the train back down and caught a bus back to Georgetown to meet Sarah for dinner.

The party did end up going well last night, but I slept through it! Oh well. I will be seeing some of my “Lanta Family” in Chiang Mai soon enough. Sarah and I woke and caught our minivan to Trang in the morning before most of the others woke up. It was a full car, but only about 4 hours on the road. Upon arriving we started chatting with a really cool couple from Spain. We split a tuk-tuk ride to a hotel, each got rooms, and then met up later to go to the night market.

Trang turned out to be a great stop. The night market was smaller than we expected, but packed with clothing vendors (engrish t-shirt paradise), food carts and the odd open-air tattoo studio. The four of us wandered for a bit, then stopped for a drink. Maria and David decided it was bedtime, so Sarah and I found two motorcycle taxis to take us to what we thought was another night market. The taxis took us back to the one we had just left and knew nothing about another market, so we had a pad thai dinner and walked back to the hotel.

We checked out of Sunmoon yesterday and got a ride back to Lanta Family. What can I say? Things are exactly the same as they were a few days ago, except they threw a big party last night with a live band to celebrate Thong’s birthday. Everything was going fine with the preparations until the rain started around 7:00… A massive storm rolled through and although there was a decent turnout, the band played for only a few minutes. Disappointed with the situation last night, Thong went around and pasted “27” over the “26” on all the signs around town and asked the band to stay one more night. Hopefully the weather will stay as nice as it is now and the party will go as planned tonight…

Tomorrow Sarah and I will take a bus to Trang and then continue south to Malaysia. My current visa expires in just over a week so I’ll need to renew it before we head north to Chiang Mai for Songkhran. After a couple weeks in Malaysia we’ll travel up back up the peninsula, make a stop or two in central Thailand and end up in Chiang Mai by April 12.