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Kolkata
We were only here a day and were pretty tired after a 10 hour bus journey (Kathmandu to Birganj) followed by a 24 hour train journey (Raxual to Kolkata) down from Kathmandu. The best thing about our visit, though, was the food. Simon's friend Shoikot took us to a lovely restaurant where we ate a traditional West Bengali fish thali. Really interesting mustard and lemon flavours and loads of different fish and vegetable dishes served on a banana leaf and eaten with our hands. It was one of the best meals we've eaten in India! No picture unfortunately!
Bangkok
The flight to Bangkok on Jet Airways was good and we were excited to arrive in a new country. We spent two nights here and got stuck into Thai food, including a delicious curried crab. We enjoyed wandering around the Grand Palace and visiting the enormous golden, recling Buddha. We visited China town and took a boat up and down the river.
Ko Samui
We had a nice bungalow by the sea near Chaweng beach and didn't do much but enjoy a little bit of luxury, some good food and swimming in lovely clear waters. We had a feast at the hotel on Christmas eve which even included Turkey and 'sort of' roast potatoes, as well as barbecued seafood and various other things. Christmas day was spent enjoying a bottle of champagne, watching a Christmas movie and talking to family back home. Unfortunately, this was the day it started to rain, in fact it poured most of the afternoon and after that the weather didn't really improve that much. After boxing day, we moved to Ko Pangan and found a nice hut on Hat Yao beach. We ate some really good fresh fish here, though the weather continued not to be great. We swam in the sea and sunbathed whenever there was a crack in the clouds! New year's eve was good fun. We joined the seething masses at the famous Full Moon Party on Hat Rin beach and saw the new year in with a bang.
As the weather did not appear to be improving much (Apparently November's rains came late this year), we decided to speed up our schedule a bit and booked tickets to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Perth.
Kuala Lumpur
After a boat and a bus down to Hat Yai and one night in a hotel there, we spent an exceedingly frustrating 3 hours sitting on a barely moving bus, trying to get to Pedang Besar - the Thai/Malaysi border town where we were due to get a train at 3.50pm. We eventually arrived and virtually ran through the two border control places in the seering heat with our heavy rucksacks and made it to the station with 10 minutes to spare... only to discover that our train was delayed for one hour.
The train, when it did arrive, gave us a good first impression of Malaysia. We ate a lovely dinner whilst watching the sunset from the restaurant carriage and had a comfortable night in the sleeper carriage. The sleeper carriages seem slightly more luxurious than those in India - you get a mattress and they even make you bed for you!
After finding a guest house, we headed out to explore KL. It's a bustling, lively and clean city and we enjoyed wondering around gazing at the tall buildings including the impressive Petronas towers. Zipping around on the Mono rail is a good way to get from A to B and the shopping mall food courts seem to be the best way to find cheap but top quality food.
Today, we did a brilliant cooking course where we had our own little cooking stations and both produced a delicious three course traditional Malaysian meal.
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