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Rather excitedly I boarded my flight to Bangkok (my 5th flight in 10 days) with a strange sense of relief after the constant travelling of the previous few weeks. I was looking forward to chilling out in (now familiar) Bangkok and then relaxing even more on a beach somewhere with some much needed female company! Typically, my flight from Shanghai was delayed by 30 minutes but we managed to land almost on time and I whizzed through arrivals to meet Sarah who had been waiting patiently for 3 hours for me! Much to my relief, she still had a smile on her face and we hopped into a taxi and headed to the Khao San Road before checking in to the same hotel that I'd stayed in on my first night of my trip back in June. It was a little surreal being back there after nearly 3 months but the visit wasn't to last too long as Sarah saw a cockroach in our room within minutes of walking in and didn't sleep so we decided to move elsewhere the next night.
We spent the next two days in Bangkok and saw many of the main sights such as the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and lots more temples! We also went to the Muay Thai boxing at the main stadium where the atmosphere was excellent with loads of locals and tourists baying for blood. I'd updated my Facebook status saying I was back in Bangkok which prompted an email from an Irish guy (Donal) who I'd met in Vietnam who was in town too. I'm still amazed at the number of random meetings with people I've met during the course of my travels and we met up with Donal that night and both got royally drunk! So much so that I had to re-read my emails the next morning as I couldn't remember the name of the hotel we'd booked the night before! As an aside, I'd imagine there will be a perception that I've been drinking loads and getting drunk every night during my trip but this is far from the case and my capacity for drinking has significantly reduced over the last few weeks. My week long stag do in Las Vegas in November will be hard work at this rate! Both still hungover, we travelled to Krabi that same day and then took a ferry to Ko Phi Phi where we were met by a porter from the hotel who carried our bags. Very nice! The hotel was lovely and our room was an absolute palace compared to some of the places I'd stayed in over the previous few weeks! The original plan was to move to another resort after a couple of nights but we both liked the hotel and the island so much that we decided to stay. Despite a little rain and cloud and a bout of food poisoning for Sarah we had a great few days on the island and it was nice to just relax without having to think too hard about the next stop on the journey. I'd also had a call from work saying that voluntary redundancy was an option so it was time for some hard thinking and big decisions!
We decided to spend a few days in Kuala Lumpur to round off Sarah's visit and after a smooth transfer from Ko Phi Phi we took a flight down to Malaysia. Our room was a little less grand than our island hotel but we were very close to the city centre and a monorail station so it could have been worse! We explored the city on our first night and saw the Petronas Towers illuminated which was pretty cool. We also stopped off at a bar where we had our temperature taken by the bouncers before they would let us in. This was part of an initiative to minimise the spread of swine flu and had our temperature been too high we would have been refused entry! Kuala Lumpur was very big so Sarah and I took a sightseeing bus around the city to make sure we saw all the things that were a little too far to walk. One one particular evening, we took a trip to Chinatown and while we were sitting in a bar I spotted a couple of guys who we'd seen in Ko Phi Phi. I'd just started telling Sarah how often I'd seen people who I'd met or seen in other places when in walked Matt and Karen who I'd met in Cambodia. Unbelievable! We had a good catch up and sunk a few beers before having a nice meal from a street stall in Chinatown and exploring the very cramped night market. Hands on your wallets in there I can tell you!
Kuala Lumpur certainly was a multi-cultural city and had the widest variety of restaurants I'd seen in one place with everything from American to Palestinian places to eat. The shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur are also amazing and the one nearest to our hotel even had a theme park on the 5th floor! We managed to see all the main sights and areas around the city and really enjoyed our time there. All good things must end sometime and unfortunately it was time for Sarah to return home and for me to go back to flying solo so we finished our trip in true Warnes style with a KFC from the foodcourt in the mall opposite our hotel. I certainly know how to treat a lady! We were up very early the next day (4am!) and took a taxi to central station to catch Sarah's airport transfer bus. It was superb having some company for a couple of weeks and we had a great time together. I think Sarah may have caught the travelling bug too though so with that and my job situation, who knows what will happen when I get back home in December!
Next stop for me was Singapore and I'd booked a train ticket to get me there. Only first class tickets were left when I booked my ticket but little did I know this would turn out to be a blessing.......
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