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18/06/08
With only 2 days 'til we're home we're both pretty excited about seeing everyone again. That said we're still having a great time. In Singapore now and it's hotter than ever. It's their summer here and I don't think the temperature has dropped below 28C once since we arrived.
We had to abort our trip to Maya Bay (The Beach) last Wednesday as the weather took a turn for the worst. We were told we could use our tickets any time anyway. Instead we spent the day relaxing and picking up some souvenirs. The weather cleared up a bit by nightfall and we went out for a meal at a Thai restaurant built around a rocky outcrop in the sea, it was a lovely setting and the food was pretty good too. We finished up with a few cocktails at The Sunflower.
It rained more overnight and when we went for breakfast the next morning we had to wade into the restaurant. Everywhere dried up pretty quickly though and we jumped on our boat trip to Ko Phi Phi Lei and Maya Bay that afternoon. The boat was packed to the gunnels with tourists thanks to the weather from the previous day. Everyone had had the same idea. It was still a good outing though, the crowd turned out to be a pretty good one. We went kayaking and snorkelling at Pileh lagoon, then on to Maya Bay. Despite how it's depicted in the film, the bay isn't really sealed off from the ocean. That's just camera trickery. It's still immensely beautiful though. The wind and waves were too strong to enter through the mouth of the bay so we had to park the boat in a bay around the corner and swim to a cave in the side of the island, where there was a tunnel through to a clearing on the island. From there paths led us to 'The Beach'. There was a bit of surf going on because of the weather so I had a go at body surfing. We had about an hour and a half there but it felt like only 20mins had passed when our guide told us we needed to get back to the boat. We moored up a little closer to the resort for sunset and dinner. I and a guy from Melbourne did some jumping off the roof of the boat while Laura tried semi-successfully to get photos. We went for another walk in the evening and, surprise, surprise, we ended up at The Sunflower again! Max has a collection of flip flops he found on the beach and he's made a feature out of them, I broke one of mine at Maya Bay so I gave him the good one to add to it.
Last Friday we hired a long tail boat and driver to take us to Monkey Beach, which is named for obvious reasons. Unfortunately there were no monkeys about though so we went for a swim and a snorkel over the coral, until some turned up. It wasn't long before all the tourist boats moved in, packed with sun-seekers wanting to feed the monkeys. The beach quickly got crowded so we made a break for it. Our driver dropped us off and as we were walking back to the hotel we came across a woman with a pet monkey. She duly agreed to let us have some photos with 'Mickey' in return for 100bht.
We took a walk to Long Beach, one of the more secluded resorts on the island, although after a few minutes we were beginning to wish we'd taken a long tail boat. You'll see from the pictures how crazy the path was, and it was really hot too which made walking slightly more strenuous. When we finally arrived I rewarded myself with a beer and Laura had a sprite from a bar on the beach. We had some lunch then had a look around for a boat back to our resort. Unfortunately for us the wind had whipped up the sea and no-one wanted to land on the beach any more, so we were faced with the walk back again. A local pointed us up a road that took us through the islanders housing and brought us back out near our villa, which was slightly easier on the legs.
That night we said our goodbyes to Max and his staff, and the night staff at Banyan Villa. We'd become quite friendly with a few of the staff, including one girl who insisted on calling me 'Mr James'. We'd only been on the island 4 days but already felt a part of it, it was quite hard to leave.
We took an early boat the next morning back to Phuket, and decided to spend our last night in Thailand in familiar territory, back in Patong. Back on the beach there we decided to take a jet-ski out. Laura had never been on one and I had a hankering to get back in control of a moving vehicle. 1500baht bought us 40 minutes on a Yamaha WaveRunner and after a quick familiarisation with the controls we were 3' in the air at 45mph off the backs of waves. It was a lot of fun. We also decided to get henna tattoos as a small souvenir each. There were a few stalls on the beach offering them at very cheap prices. I had 'Island Life' written in Thai numerals on my right shoulder blade, to symbolise my time on Rottnest and on Phi Phi, and Laura got a gecko on her right foot. We were told they'd last two weeks but mine has already almost completely faded. We spent the night in town and got a tuk-tuk - a small pickup van with seats in the back - back to the hotel.
Our flight to Bangkok was pretty early the next morning and we landed (with the smoothest landing ever - we hardly knew we were on the ground until the brakes kicked in!) at about 10am leaving us with over 6 hours 'til we needed to check in for our flight to Singapore. We took a taxi into the city and had a small look around. We weren't allowed into any of the religious areas as we were wearing shorts and hadn't thought ahead, but we took a long tail boat tour around some of the river, showing us why Bangkok was also dubbed 'the Venice of the East'. We saw some charmingly ramshackle buildings on the shore and also passed what was left of the floating markets. Almost all of the boats had packed up and gone home, only 3 remained.
We had a late lunch/early dinner back on dry land and looked for a taxi back to the airport. We came across a sign outside a massage parlour that advertised: "Taxi to Airport: 380B". We'd paid 500 to get into the city and jumped at the price. I went in to find out about it and the masseuse led me through a door that took me into a café on a back street. A bottle of water later, and a man led us to a pick-up truck and drove us to the airport in it! We'd pre-empted bad traffic and had allowed extra time but our "taxi" seemed to sail through, and got us to Suvarnabhumi International 3 hours before we were due to take off. This put the taxi driver in a great light but left us in trouble. We found out after waiting at the airport for our flight to Phuket that there is absolutely nothing to do there, especially if you don't have much money. We managed to last the 3 hours and by that time were very glad to be on our way to Singapore Changi airport, somewhere things run like clockwork and no-one gets stressed.
After landing we collected our bags and were guided to a taxi. The driver helped us with our bags and we slid on to the leather clad back seat of the E-Class Mercedes. There was relaxing lift style music playing quietly on the radio as we passed under a sign that requested we "Have a pleasant drive". I sat back and closed my eyes, definitely no stress here. To our surprise, the driver told us our hotel was in Geylang, the red-light district of Singapore, but we kept our minds open about what the area would be like. Good thing we did, nothing seems at all 'rough' about the area and it's not too far from the city centre. Public transport is excellent, with busses running into the city every 10mins and really easy to work around.
We spent our first full day exploring and had a good game of themed mini-golf in the afternoon, having our dinner in Chinatown and a walk around the night-markets before getting the bus back.
Yesterday we had a little more planned; we headed out for Sentosa Island, Singapore's largest tourist attraction. On the way we had to change busses outside Park Mall shopping centre and decided to go in search of a good brunch before carrying on. We came across nothing less than a Dome Café! Of course, we had to go in and compare the café with our old workplace. There were a few differences but the atmosphere, staff uniform and logos were all exactly the same. We calmed our excitement and managed to climb aboard the next bus to Sentosa.
We took the cable car option across to the island, rising high above the harbour getting fantastic views, and started our exploring at the station at the other end. Our first attraction on the Island was the Carlsberg Tower… or the Tiger Tower, I don't think they were sure who the sponsor was as it was called one or the other, depending on where you were. Anyway, it took us to 167 metres above the island and gave us great views of Singapore and Malaysia. After that we went into the Butterfly Park and Insect Kingdom, which included a pretty cool bird show from some very smart parrots and I got an eight foot python draped over my shoulders. We then moved on to a 4 dimensional film, the 4th dimension being you were in the film - in the sense that you felt crabs running around your feet, bats flying in your face, and even water splashing over you! It was all very clever.
We went for a walk down the hill towards the beach, but before we'd got 2 metres down we passed a much better way of getting to the bottom of the hill. Luge carts! We free-wheeled down a twisty concrete track sat on plastic moulds with handle-bars, it was tremendous fun. Included in the ticket price was a ride back up the hill on a chairlift. Bonus! We spent some time on the beach and had a swim, then got a late lunch/early dinner and got the chairlift back up the hill as we wanted another go on the luge. This time we scored $2 off each ticket, but decided to save our rides until after dark as we were told it was more fun then and also quieter. We had a walk through the nearby jungle and came across an interesting dragon carving before it went dark. We then made our way to the 'Merlion', Singapore's own sphinx, a lions head with a fishes body cast in stone. Underneath was a gallery of mythical sea creatures and their history, including the history of the Merlion. We took a lift up to the lion's mouth and head where we got some great photos before making our way back over to the luge. It was definitely better the second time 'round, we could go a lot faster.
Laura walked the Merlion walk, a maze of waterfalls and water features you could walk through, and got suitably soaked, then we headed off to catch 'Songs of the Sea', a theatrical musical fantasy backed with light shows that promised to impress. And it did. The light shows were spectacular. I only got videos but I'll at least try to post up a couple of screen-shots. The whole thing was outdoors, with a backdrop of some ramshackle old buildings on stilts over the sea. It was made all the more amazing by an approaching lightening storm over southern Malaysia which was easily visible behind the stage. We managed to get the bus straight back to our hotel.
Well, we catch our plane tomorrow. We need to get the weight of our bags down first though as we're currently 6kgs over. Each. This will more than likely be the last blog, so thanks to everyone for keeping up with our travels and we hope to see you all very soon.
Lots of love, Laura and James xx
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