Leaving Paradise

Day 15 (14/04/08): Kota Bharu, Malaysia

Fabian had left the day before, so I spent the lasty night in the bungalow by myself. There are no ATM's on the island, so my last night was also my quietest, as I had no money to spend on anything. I was sad to be saying goodbye to my home of the last week, but all travellers in the area are making a beeline for the Thai Island of Koh Phangan. The full moon was approaching, and on the night of the full moon Phangan hosts the biggest beach party in the world, in excess of 20 000 people! And that is where we were all headed.

I caught the boat back to the mainland with a Canadian called Anna, who I had met a few days before. Back on the mainland, we unsuccesfully waited for the bus, before catching a taxi to the main town of Kota Bharu. Now that we were out of the sand, I tried to have a healing session for my toes. Several of my toes had raw abrasions, where ill fitting snorkelling flippers had rubbed them raw. They wounds weren't healing on the island, as they were always wet and covered in sand. I went to a pharmacy and got some bandaids, cleaned all the wounds, disinfected them and covered them up.

There isn't much to do in Kota Bharu, so Anna and I met up with an English girl, Siona who we met at the bus stop and was staying at the same hostel. We walked down to the night market and I ate some very good barbequed meat on a stick. We all felt like a beer, but finding a beer in a heavily muslim town can be quite hard. We kept our eyes open for a chinese restaurant, the standard souce of beer. We eneded up finding not only a chinese restaurant, but also a very nice lounge bar as well, complete with couches, disco ball and a dart board! What started as a quiet beer, turned into several and we had a great time just chatting about all sorts of things. The bar started to fill up, all middle aged chinese businessmen, and we noticed that the waitresses, all Chinese girls, were very friendly to the customers. So friendly in fact, that we soon realised that the girls were selling more than just beer to the old chinese men... We felt left out, because we were getting none of the attention all the other bar patrons were. Maybe it was because Anna and Siona were the only female customers in the place.

About midnight we went downstairs and got some food to soak up the beer. We chatted to a Japanese guy we had met at the bus stop, and he told us how we had been travelling for the last fifteen years or so, and didn't want to go back to Japan. His english was very good, and it turns out he even lived in Christchurch for a year!

We walked back to our hostel in the early hours of the morning, very happy that we had managed to create a great night out of nothing!

Jungle Train, Part 2

Day 8 (07/04/08): Kota Bharu, Malaysia

I spent my last night in the park, blissfully sleeping off the ravages of the jungle. My plan was to catch the early bus back to Jerantut, and from there I could get back on the train into the North of Malaysia, and from there to the Perhentian Islands. I got up ridiculously early to catch the bus, and then waited an hour at the bus stop!

I had several hours to kill in Jerantut, a small town with nothing to do, and so spent the time in an internet cafe catching up on this blog, telling the world about my Jungle experiences. Back at the train I met up with Fabian, a german guy I had met in the park the night before. He was also
going to the Perhentian Islands, so we caught the train together.

The train was pretty good, we had an air-conditioned carriage, and the seats were pretty comfy. Once again, the train went through the jungle (it's called the 'Jungle Train'), although I found this second half of the Jungle Train was a lot better than the first half I had done a few days before. The train went past some magnificent sheer cliffs, and rocky uprisings, all covered in thick green rainforest. Fabian was also a bit of a shutterbug, and as we were the last carriage on the train, we opened the back door and took photos out the back.

Besides watching the jungle and taking photos, I finished reading my book, listened to my iPod, and even napped a bit. Fabian and I also talked a fair bit and compared the cultural differences between NZ and Germany.

Towards the end of the 7 hour journey, we met a local guy called Eddie who we chatted to for a little while. He saw the cuts on my legs, and offered me some cream to put on them. I asked if it would hurt, and he said no. The cream didn't look or smell like Tiger Balm, so I rubbed a bunch of my cut and grazed thigh.

The train station is actually a fair way out of Kota Bharu, our destination for the night. Fabian and I shared a taxi, and it was during this taxi read, that the mysterious cream that Eddie offered me, actually turned out to be Tiger Balm. If anybody has put Tiger Balm on open wounds would know, it burns like a house on fire and stings like Muhammed Ali. I sat in the taxi grimacing my teeth, feeling like my leg was on fire. As soon as we got to the Backpackers I ran for the shower and washed it all off. Relief.

The room we stayed in was a tiny little shack of a room outside the main backpackers behind the kitchen. There were some really big rats or something, because the whole ceiling moved and thumped with their movement. We were pondering catching the 6.15 bus to the nearby town of Kuala Besut, from where you catch the boat to the Perhentian Islands. Luckily, two other Danes were also going to the island, so we organised a shared taxi. We could now sleep in till 8am the next morning!

It was pretty late at night by now, and so Fabian and I had a beer in the courtyard and chatted to some Swedes, before heading off to bed.

(Unfortunately no photos with this post, the USB on this machine doesn't work. I'll go back and add some photos to it later).