Lankawiiiiiiiii

After 2 years I find myself again on Kao San Road sipping a Singha beer. Although Bankok isn't my favorite place it still feels good to come back to a familiar place. Knowing where you will eat and what you will need. Knowing the guesthouse you stay at. Knowing how to get around etc... I won't be here for long though since my group will arrive tomorrow. Yes, the backbacking life and freedom will be over for a few weeks.

After a brief visit to the Cameron highlands where the weather was cool and rainy and we did some walks and visits to a tea plantation, we decided that we'd had enough of the cold weater and were desperately in for some beach time again. We was still Nina, Sonia and me. Clive stayed behind in Cameron highlands. We traveled up North East to Lankawi, a tax free island just before Thailand.

Coincidence brought us to a chalet right next to the reggea bar, about the only place to go out at night on Cenang beach. Almost every night there was a band playing reggea and other music and on the first night we already got to know most band members and started to feel a bit like locals. We soon would become half locals because in the nine days that we stayed on Lankawi we spent nearly all evenings in the same bar, except for the nights that the band was playing on another beach. Most nights we stayed up till sometime between 2 and 6 am, at least that's me, Nina and Sonia broke the records by staying up till sometimes 7 or 8 or even not going to sleep. Since I don't like to sleep in in the mornings I was always up before 9 or 10 and after a week I started to get really tired. Now I am recuperating from a heavy 9 days of partying.

During the day we sometimes hung out on the beach right in front of the chalets, or we rented motorbikes and toured around the island to some nice pools and waterfalls and some great beaches. Thanks to Nina and her Australian army connection, we also got to know the Aseania resort. A more fancy place with a swimmimg pool and more important, a bar in the swimmimg pool. Some afternoons we sat there and drank the nice coctails that Oen (Owen) made us. We got to know Oen through Rachel and Debbie from England and Northern Ireland whom we became friends with and partied with. During the second part of our stay Sonia left us to go to New Zealand and after Debbie left, Rachel moved in with us in our, by then, cockroach infested chalet. Luckily we didn't spend too much time in there.

To make things short, it was a fantastic 9 days on Lankawi. I met great people and had lot of fun in the reggea bar. I felt that is was enough though and time to leave.

Now it's time for another Singa!

Blood sucking creatures in the jungle

Back in Kuala Lumpur after some days in one of - or maybe even the oldest rainforest in the world. I am still traveling with my travel pals, Queen Elizabeth Tailor and Soniascheten and we managed to find a guy to join us out there in the jungle. We needed him to get rid of all kinds of creepy bugs for us but after all, maybe he wasn't the best person for that job.

We took a bus and afterwards a 3 hour boat trip to get to Tama Negara (the national park) and got there soaking wet - also our backpacks and everything in there. Yes indeed, it does rain in the rain forest!!!
The first day out there we did a small hike to a 'Canopy Walk' which was really cool. Walking through the treetops on very unstable bridges. We also go to see our first leech (bloedzuiger) on the trail. Well we weren't too sure about it being a leech but we would soon find out :(

The next day we took a boat a bit more upstream and walked for about 45 minutes to a hide in the jungle. On the way we had to flick off many leeches who were trying to make their way up our shoes, direction legs etc. Arriving at the hide we took off our shoes and socks and yes... there was a leech trying to get into my skin!! Awefull!!! I managed to flick it off and searched on toi find more. I thought that I saw a leaf hanging of my knee but after looking more closely we noticed that it was a leech who had done what it is supposed to do. It had sucked quite some blood and was all swollen. The conversation that followed was something like this:
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!! Heeeeeeeeeeeelp!!! Get it offf!!!! Someone sayd: Burn it. Nooooooooooo! Flick it offf! Flick Aaaaaaaaaaah Flick Aaaaaaaaaah Flick Aaaaah Flick Aaaaaaah! After flicking it off it was finally gone and I could relax for a while. It did bleed for a while though and now I still have a little hole in my knee.
Eventually Nina (Queen Elizabeth Taylor) discovered one on her side but the other had more luck.

We spent the night in the hide sleeping on wooden beds right in the jungle. At night it was very loud because of all the bugs and frogs around but except for some squirrels and rats steeling our biscuits we unfortunalelly didn't see any animals. In the morning we did wake up with the sound of gibbons though. It felt like waking up at home.

We managed to get back out of the jungle without any more leeches on our skin.

Now, back in KL it's good to not having to worry about leeches and other bugs.

Tomorrow we're off to the Cameron highlands for some more hiking and visiting tea plantations.