Izzy's SE Asia Experiment

I made it onto the Terrorist Watch List! Thank you US government!

KL feels really small. We walked most of the city in a day. We spent time at central market, Chinatown, the towers and Batu caves. If I were staying longer I’d have some difficulty finding anything else to do. My hostel bed broke before I fell asleep so I was forced to sleep on one half of a twin bed or risk falling on the floor. Not the best way to catch some sleep. This hostel also does not allow pork so we don’t offend Muslim guests. I find it strange that anyone would find what someone else is waiting as offensive (unless it’s jackfruit). I was tempted to find a pet pig and walk it around the hostel to see how offensive it’d be. If that wasn’t enough, I’d straddle it.

Anyway, I’m packed and ready to head to the airport. I have a full day of travel to get to LA via Taipei. It has been fun.

We went for a short 2 hour hike in a national park in Phuket before flying to KL and I still managed to get us lost. No surprise. The plus side is that because we went off the trail we got lucky and saw a wild gibbon (endangered ape) swinging through the trees. Pretty Awesome.

We arrived in KL late so I haven’t seen much yet. One thing that surprised me is the number of middle eastern restaurants and people speaking Arabic around here. A lot of signs are also in Arabic. Granted not everything is in Arabic, it’s still nice to be able to read and eavesdrop on some of the locals.

Yesterday we dove at Ko Phi Phi and today we took the long trip to the Simian Islands to snorkel. Here’s the rundown.

Ko Phi Phi is about a 3 hour boat ride from the cesspool of Patong that we currently call home. I have my AOW license so diving was no issue for me, but since it was Merrick’s first dive he had to get a guide. Kind of like an underwater scuba babysitter ;). We ended up getting a 52 year old ex-airforce guy living in Thailand off his pension named Mac. The guy was a talker, but interesting and hilarious. I know details of his life that I would rather not know. Both because some of it was disturbing and partly because it made me envy his life more. The guy liked to tell jokes that he referred to as “ethnic”, though they typically made fun of rednecks. Anyway, my dive partner was a divemaster in training named Marcos from France. Great diving buddy. We ended up doing 2 dives. Both were great, and in the second we saw 3 massive sea turtles. Twas epic. We also met Kazu and his wife from Shinagawa, Tokyo who were great to talk to. I’ll be grabbing some of his pictures from our dive. I’ve got a good one doing the fob pose underwater that I need to have. In exchange I’ll have to tell him where to get 100 yen beer in Shibuya.

Today was not quite as fun. Our tour bus was an hour late to pick us up and not very organized. The Simian Islands themselves are awesome. We did manage to snorkel with a giant turtle near the surface. It’s a bit cooler to see them snorkeling at the surface than 12 meters below the surface. The scenery was great, picturesque lagoons and what not. Funny thing is there were so many Ruskies you’d think you were in Russia not Thailand! It’s like all of Russia took a group vacation down to Phuket. They should consider annexing the island. Might as well.  I’m convinced one of our tour guides was a former lady boy.  Now he’s old and fat, but I’m sure in his heyday (emphasis on ‘heeeeey’) he ruled the streets of Patong with an iron thong. 

Hopefully I’ll be able to post up some pictures tonight! We forgot to book our hostel in KL (we head to Malaysia tomorrow evening) so we will need to find an Internet cafe to make our lives easier. For those wondering, I’ll be back in LA on Sunday.