Monthly Archives: December 2015

Day 147 – walk to the pier

The bungalow for the first three nights

The bungalow for the first three nights

One more day that started like a real holiday. Good and long breakfast, chilling and lounging around and a cheap lunch that Flo went and bought at a roadside eatery while I was watching a movie.

In the afternoon, we were at a point where walking 50 meters to the pier to watch the monkeys didn’t sound outrageously exhausting anymore. We all got out our sunhats and off we went.

It might have still been a bit early and thus too hot for the whole gang of monkeys but looking out from the pier was lovely anyway. Enough monkeys showed up so that we managed to get some good shots while Flo even found someone with a motorbike to talk to.

In the late afternoon, we played two rounds of kniffel. Klaus won the first one with two totally undeserved kniffel while I won the last round…totally deserved that victory. :p

Day 146 – Let the chilling commence

We were thinking about whether to actually continue to blog for the next 11 days, since this Thailand trip is in a way not part of our home to home journey. Then again, it is what we are doing within that year, even if Rocinante had to stay tucked away back in KL.

limestone formations are all around.

limestone formations are all around.

So for the first time in our relationship, we are attempting to have a “normal” holiday. Like, staying in one place and not try something physically crazy or weird. Just a room, a pool and time to go by. For the most part at least 🙂

After a decadently long breakfast, we organised some wheels for our time here. We could not abstain from bikes entirely now, could we? Also, the place is cheap but a bit out of the way, so we need those wheels to get around. Unfortunately, no Honda Wave or any other (semi)-manual bike for me. Well, the 110cc automatic will have to do.

first LunchWe went out for lunch and to pick up some cash – which I should have done yesterday at the airport but have not. We had to go the 20

km to Ao Nang, the next tourist town down the coast towards Krabi. Once again, we were re-assured that there is nothing but ATMs and maybe other / cheap infrastructure that would hold us at these places.

We got back and hopped into the pool for the first time.

Day 145 – To a family visit – 11 day break

I felt quite sick when we got up. Somehow, I had gotten the sniffles and sneezed. Great start. Other than that we did all those things you do before you go on a holiday which is pack the last things, clean up the mess you have made while packing and organize transport to the airport.

The airport is about 70km outside of Kuala Lumpur city. Luckily, an airport express train runs from the central station (“KL Sentral”) to the airport every 20min. So we just had to get to the central station. In the end, we hailed a cab which took us there in almost no time.

Spending two ringgits and 8 minutes in a massage chair

Spending two ringgits and 8 minutes in a massage chair

At the Central Station, Flo wanted to check out a lot of things. We ended up hanging around for an hour to wait until the stores open and then be disappointed because none of the things we need were actually available. I still felt sick so I sat around with a short interlude of sitting in a massage chair. 🙂

Everything at the airport worked out as it should so we still had time to look at overprized Swiss chocolate and have lunch at Burger King’s (Flo’s favourite).

We made it on the plane!

We made it on the plane!

The flight itself was on the short side with 1 1/2 hours in the air. However, as seems to be our luck lately, we had a crying child on the seat behind us which made the time seem rather longer than it was. The Thai border surprised us. We were rejected twice and got quite annoyed before we finally had the “entrance” stamp in our passports.

Flo then found our driver who was holding up a sign reading “Florian” and we hopped into the back of a pick-up for a 40min ride to the resort. As you can probably tell, we were rather tired at this point.

It was a bumpy ride...

It was a bumpy ride…

Arriving at the resort, we were welcomed by Flo’s family, Klaus and Silvia, who had been waiting for our arrival. Nonetheless, we needed a nap so we retreated into our bungalow until dinner.

Dinner was lovely and we got the first taste of Thai food. It’s gonna be awesome. Cashew nuts in your stir-fried vegetables are a must. So yummy!

Day 144 – Chores

Yeah, we used Christmas Day for chores. As the weird Germans that we are, Christmas Eve is the important date for us so on Christmas Day, we were all back to business.

Ready for a wash!

Ready for a wash!

Most importantly, we had a whole clean-over. Not only our regular laundry got done but after 5 months, our biking gear also got a wash including the padding of our helmets. It didn’t improve the looks much but it had a definite effect on the smell. =p

We also caught up with more blog entries. This is when the mishap happened: Sonja has a really fast connection to the internet so we used our time at her place to upload all our photos from Indonesia to the cloud. It worked very well. Flo triple-checked that all pictures made the migration from our hard drive into the cloud, then deleted the pictures from the SD card. Just a second afterwards we realized that we hadn’t backed up the last four days onto the hard drive…the only copies had been on the SD card. Thus, we had just deleted the only copy of our pictures from the last days.

It was quite the disaster for me but Flo started some recovery program straight away. It took way longer than I would have hoped for (7 hours) but in the end, we had all our pictures back. *sigh of relief*

This vegetarian feast was served on banana leaves

This vegetarian feast was served on banana leaves

In the meantime, we had only managed to go out for really nice Indian food at lunch time. Most of the afternoon was spent organizing our things and re-packing for our trip to Thailand to meet Flo’s dad.

In the evening, we had a bit of time for one other Christmas tradition so we ordered Domino’s pizza with a whole bottle of Mountain Dew and watched Love Actually for the umpteenth time. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Day 143 – Selamat Hari Krimas!

Because we only arrived last night to book the flights to Thailand, there were none left until Boxing Day, giving us Christmas Eve and Day in Kuala Lumpur. To be honest, this was a long needed low key day for us.

They were not good, but totally feeling it!

They were not good, but totally feeling it!

We did some light catching up with regards to the blog and picked one big thing for tonight. Nina called her family at 5 pm, so early on Christmas Eve in Germany. After that, we took a taxi to take our one good chance to see “Star ‘The Force Awakens’ Wars” in English on the big screen. We were not expecting it at all, but Sonja’s decorated flat with the Christmas tree and the carol singers in the mall that housed the cinema really got us into a Christmas-y mood after all.

The movie was like Java for me. I loved it and I hated it. I think that is all I can say here. Oh, and having mandarin and Malay subtitles made us both realise how amazingly little dialogue it has. Need to find someone to talk about it …

Later that night at home we called my family and got our Christmas greetings all sorted. A good day!

Peter, if you may ...

Peter, if you may …