Category Archives: Visiting family

Day 150 – New Year’s Eve

In retrospect, this was probably the quietest New Year’s Eve we ever had. Close contender might be last year, where it was just Nina and I, but back then we had to ride there that day and had fireworks at midnight. This time around it was super calm. Well, except the almost 100 km on a scooter, but that does not count, does it?

So in spirit of this whole week-and-a-half break from our trip, we were planning on a really chilled day. One item on the list, though: Shopping for the night. Sweets, nibbles and drinks to keep us up till midnight, at least. For some reason, my dad got seriously restless when we were about to go and decided to go and look at some caves they had missed before. Thinking of a bunch we saw before not far beyond the big supermarket we thought we would join them.

Found the Hubis and made it all to the first cave

Found the Hubis and made it all to the first cave

We had to do the shopping first, since the shop closed early on NYE. We send the hubies ahead this time. They are usually slower than us, so we thought we would catch up with them anyway. So after shopping, I headed to the first cave signposted and … found no one. Hm … maybe they meant the second one then. So back on the road we went, another 5 km further … still nothing. Where could they be? Ok, there is one more cave … almost all the way to the national park / waterfalls. Another 10 km. But sure as, there they were 🙂 Was that not supposed a short trip? Now, again, we were 45 km from our hotel. But alas, let’s check the cave.

Such a pity that we were swarmed with mosquitoes

Such a pity that we were swarmed with mosquitoes

The infrastructure looked pretty abandoned and the path was almost entirely overgrown. We walked a bit through the bush until we came to a larger cave, but nothing too exciting. Instead, we were eaten alive by an army of mosquitoes. We were a bit defeated by this, but there were two more caves to check out, and from our visits earlier we knew that one was pretty much right on the road back.

This one then was way more exciting. The signs told us that they were the site of an archaeological dig excavating signs of human habitation 37,000 to 45,000 years old. The caves themselves were also pretty cool, although I got kicked in the face once when a henceforth unnamed participant tried to imitate me in climbing around on the more than dodgy constructs to get to the higher caves.

Trying to get a picture while riding on a scooter is hard

Trying to get a picture while riding on a scooter is hard

Back home we filled the time with eating our treats and playing a cool round of Trivial Pursuit. Everyone did pretty well, actually! Thus the hours flew by. We briefly checked out the hotel restaurant, for there was previous mention of a “party”, but no one was there. It was a bit odd, but I don’t think we have missed much here.

So as we have sent and received wishes from our New Zealand friends a couple of hours earlier, after a brief round of hugs at midnight and the merest echo of distant fireworks in Ao Nang we grabbed our devices and called friends and family in Germany.

What a year … it started on the road and it ended on the road. Will we settle for real in 2016 now?

Day 149 – Market Day

Awesome two-finger-typing technique =P

Awesome two-finger-typing technique =P

Since we had so much activity yesterday, we took it slowly today. After breakfast, I spent some time blogging. This is also the only picture we took today.

In the afternoon, we took the scooters to a local market. The market takes place every Wednesday and Saturday with the Wednesday market being the smaller one. I was very excited for donuts which I wanted to buy for New Year’s tomorrow but the stall was not there. Probably one of the things you can only get on Saturdays. 🙁

Flo, Silvia and Klaus then proceeded to have Pad Thai with shrimps while I had some deep fried sesame potato balls.

Day 148 – Falling, water

We will be so lost in any without translation from the Thai script

We will be so lost in any without translation from the Thai script

Right – today was day trip time. There has been talk of waterfalls for a while and we felt like some light hiking. The hubies (New phrase we invented for my dad and his partner Silvia) promised that we would get that at the Khao Phanombencha National Park.

Getting there got much easier once we took over navigation entirely – but we shall not talk about these things. The park entrance is about 40 km away from our hotel. It took us less than an hour on the scooters to get there. There were some complaints about my Indonesia inspired driving afterwards …

Did not look too bad in the beginning

Did not look too bad in the beginning

At the park we got on a path to a set of 7 cascading watefalls. About 500m in we came upon a turn of to what was labeled “Back to the nature trail”. It looked so harmless, and was supposed to be only 1700m long, so we got going. The first half was true to the expectations: A narrow path through the flat jungle. But then the track started to climb. A pretty hefty climb, actually. Last time Nina and I did a track like this was on Rarotonga, but this time we had my dad and his partner with us. Let’s say we operate on slightly different fitness levels 😉 – and so it took us two hours to ascend the remaining 800m. To be fair, we also went up almost 500m in the process.

the 2nd and 3rd level waterfalls

the 2nd and 3rd level waterfalls

We reaped the reward after another climb, this time down another 200m to the top one of the 7 waterfalls. We cooled down in the pool before making our descent back to the normal path.

Completely knackered we arrived back at the car around 3 pm. We were starving, too, so we dropped down at the first place in sight. Surprisingly, the food was neither bad nor expensive.

After getting home, the rest of the day was set aside for laying low and recovering (for the most of us). Nina and I tackled another movie. Good times.

 

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 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!