Part 7: Bali (part 2) and Thailand (part 1) - Days 38-45
DAY 38: as Sanur was kind of a sleepy place we decided to go into Kuta for the day. Kuta was about 15-30 minutes away by taxi, depending on the traffic. At first we had considered staying there, instead of Sanur, but I am glad that we didn't; because for the most part, I hated it.
It's really a dirty, touristy, crowded, horrible place. The beach was ok (decent surf) but it was so crowded. You couldn't really swim because there were so many people with surf boards everywhere.
We spent part of the day walking around the city. One decent thing was there was some decent boutique shopping. I bought a few little things. Otherwise the stores were awful. All the owners would stand outside and say "come look at my store" or "best price. Cheaper!" What is cheaper? Cheaper than what? What are you talking about?
Some of the stores had the worst stickers and t-shirts for sale. You could buy stickers with just about any offensive, offside, gross expression or sentence you could think of. You could also buy offside t-shirts that you could never wear in public. Just so tacky.
We had dinner and drinks in Seminyak which is an extension of Kuta to the North. It's a nicer area....still dirty and touristy, but less chaotic and more upscale. There were some cute boutique stores around and none of the aforementioned sticker and t-shirt stores.
We had a good dinner at a really busy trendy place, and then hit a few different bars for drinks. At one bar we ordered the daily drink special. When I read the list of ingredients it seemed pretty normal....I guess i skimmed over the last one; chilies. The drink came with two big red chili peppers in it. I liked the flavor, but after just a few sips my lips were tingling/numb. We were sitting at the bar and all the bartenders and servers came over to watch us drink it. I guess we were the only tourists drinking the spicy drink; they all thought it was pretty funny watching us suffer.
DAY 39: we spent most of the day in Sanur. We went for a long walk along the boardwalk and then spent some time at the beach lounging and floating around in the water. A large piece of wood had drifted up on shore and that was a great source of discussion and activity amongst the locals.
In the evening we went back to Kuta and met up with Joe and Kelly (my Irish friends from the china tour). I didn't think we would cross paths again in Asia, but they had a change in plans and arrived in Bali late the night before.
It was good to see them. We had dinner and drinks at a few different places and then ended up going into a huge club. It was 4 or 5 floors; just massive. For some reason there were free drinks and appies between 11pm and midnight, so we were just in time to take advantage of that.
One of the outdoor areas of the club had a big projection screen. For some reason, the entertainment of choice on the screen was old Nucks commercials. Seriously. They played that old Naslund/Kovelchuk Nike spot where they are chasing the puck through NYC, followed by the Sedin's Swedish twins commercial where some guys order "Swedish twins" to their party and the Sedins show up in full uniform (I forgot about that one....it's awesome when they dance). I think later on I saw a title that said "the best commercials you've never seen", so maybe that's what it was about.
Anyway, we had a really fun night and it was good to see Kel and Joe.
DAY 40: we had a 9am flight to singapore (and then a connection to Phuket) which meant we had to be awake at 6am. This was not cool as we got in very late and were super hungover when we woke up. Im not gonna lie, there were some touch and go moments while waiting for the flight. Luckily the plane was half empty and i was able to lie down and sleep for most of the 2.5 hours.
So we had a bit of a dilemma with our flights. I was notified a few weeks ago by air Asia, that our Bali to Singapore flight had been moved back 2.5 hours. Instead of leaving at 6:30am like originally planned, it was moved to 9am. Normally this would have been good, except for that we had another Air Asia flight at 1pm from Singapore to Phuket and the change meant that our Bali flight didn't arrive until after noon. On a normal carrier this would have been ok, but with Air Asia you have to book all legs separate, so this meant we had to clear immigration, pick up our luggage and check in again. When we flew through singapore last time it took us 45 minutes to get through immigration alone, so we were pretty positive the change meant there was no way we would make the connection.
As that was the only air Asia flight to Phuket that day, we didn't want to risk missing it and being stuck in Singapore for the night, and the ticket was under $50, we booked a second flight with jet star for $90 each leaving singapore at 8pm. When we landed at 12:15 we had given up any hope of being able to make the connection, but we decided to try anyway, just in case. We freaking booked it through the airport, amazing race style. After an argument with a lovely air asia employee, we managed to convince them to hold the flight as long as we carried our luggage to the gate. Anyway, we made it. We literally got on the plane, they put our luggage on, and we were in the air 5 minutes later. Of course, so far in Asia every flight has been at least half an hour late, but this one ended up leaving 5 minutes early. Regardless, we made it and saved having to spend 8 hours at the Singapore airport.
We spent just the one night in Phuket. We stayed at a hotel close to phuket town as we were leaving via ferry in the morning. We went to a local night market and had a good time trying local foods. This is where I discovered Thai pancakes; my new favourite food. They are very similar to crepes, but different some how. My favourite is banana with condensed milk and sugar on top. If I could eat nothing but those for the rest of my life, I would be perfectly happy.
DAY 41: we woke up to torrential rain. The weather in thailand has already disrupted our plans as we had wanted to go to the east coast (ko pha-nagn and ko samui), but that province has been severely flooded, meaning we are going to give it a miss. We had heard the weather forecast for the Phuket was literally monsoon rain for the coming week, and we were pretty discouraged as we took the ferry to ko phi phi.
We finally caught a break though....just as we arrived on ko phi phi, the clouds broke and it turned into a beautiful sunny day. I absolutely loved ko phi phi. We spent 4 nights there and it's been my favourite stop so far. Yes, the town area is over run by backpackers, but it's a super fun vibe, and the beaches and scenery are absolutely unreal. The town can be walked around in 10 minutes and there are no cars. The streets are lined with restaurants, bars, spas, stores, and Thai pancake stalls. The beach can be reached at the edge of town, however the nicest beaches are outside the town a bit and reached by a 10 minute long tail boat ride. Its a fantastic place.
Most days follow a similar pattern on Phi Phi. You have bunch late at one of the many good restaurants before taking a boat to a secluded beach and spending the day tanning on white sand or swimming in turquoise water. After dinner you enjoy drink specials at one of the many bars in town (think $2 jager bombs, and $3 mixed drinks), before making your way down to the beach clubs for fire shows, dancing and free Thai buckets during random 20 minute windows.
The day we arrived we just explored. We went to the beach in town for a few hours and then did a 30 minute walk to the highest spot on the island for fantastic views. Phi phi was devastated by the tsunami in 2004 but looking at the town from the view point, you would never know. It's strange how in just 6 years such a signifiant event is barely noticeable. Other than a few "tsunami evacuation route" signs and a few postcards showing the devastation, there is little evidence that the island was leveled.
We did the usual in the evening... Dinner and drinks in town before checking out one of the beach bars. We spent this night in a cheap but shitty hotel. When we arrived on phi phi we just wanted to find somewhere to get rid of our bags. The room looked ok, but that even we discovered there were no sheets on the beds....jyst towels. Strange. We found a much nicer place for not much more money for the next 3 nights.
DAY 42: at this point we thought the weather forecast still meant something, so we elected against a snorkeling trip due to expected "torrential rain". Of course, it turned out to be another beautiful day. Despite not doing the snorkeling, we had a good day. We took a long tail to "long beach" and spent a few hours at what i think has been the nicest beach of the trip so far. It was quiet and beautiful and calm and deep enough to actually swim.
After lunch we rented a kayak and paddled out to "monkey beach," which as you can guess, is home to an abundance of monkeys. Ugh. Still not a big fan after the Ubud incident, but at least these ones didn't attack. We took the kayak around the area and enjoyed the spectacular scenery. I can't explain how gorgeous phi phi is; its really unreal.
We did the usual in the evening, but checked out the really ghetto (and fairly unsafe) fire shows put on at one of the beach clubs that night. It was ok. Entertaining for about 15 minutes. I was more entertained by my cheap Thai bucket (in case anyone doesn't know, a Thai bucket is a Mickey of alcohol, a can of pop and a bottle of red bull, in a sand bucket. Some come pre mixed, but the ones you buy off the street you make yourself).
DAY 43: today the weather turned at it was a bit overcast. So we spent the morning at an Internet cafe doing photos and emails. The stupid Internet took FOREVER to upload my photos and the whole thing was a very frustrating and long process. In the afternoon I went for a mani/pedi and a massage and Craig went to the beach. We had a quiet night as I picked up a bit of a cold and wasn't feeling fantastic
DAY 44: as out last day in phi phi, we decided to do the snorkeling trip, even though the weather was just average. We paid for a half day trip around neighboring island "phi phi leh" however it wasn't until we were on the boat in the middle of the ocean that we were informed we were in fact doing a full day 7 hour trip. Normally we wouldn't have minded, however I was still feeling a bit sick and we were not prepared for a 7 hour excursion, we were not super impressed at first. Oh well, it is what it is. The first stop was a really pretty island where we did some snorkeling, had lunch and lounged on the beach. I'm not a big fan of fish, but I'm ok with snorkeling generally because the fish are usually more afraid of me than I am of them. This was not the case here; not only did the fish come at me, but they followed me back to shore.
After the island we made a stop for some more snorkeling off the coast of a different island. This was a pretty cool stop, because there were SO many fish. At one point I was literally surrounded by hundreds of fish. All I could see in every direction was fish. But no matter how much I tried to touch one, I never could. The coral was also really pretty here.
There were a few more stops before we went to Maya bay. The movie "the beach" with Leo Dicaprio was filmed here and it's what put phi phi on the tourist map. So Maya bay is phi phi's claim to fame. It was pretty beautiful, but for me not the highlight of the day or the islands, I think long beach was just as nice. The problem was that it was so busy - everyone has to go see it, so there were boats and people everywhere. The scenery was also similar to what we see all over the island. The water was pretty cool though, very very green. A breathtaking place for sure, but not the #1 highlight for me. Being there first thing in the morning for sunrise would probably be pretty special.
This night we stayed true to our horrible habit of getting the drunkest the night before a travel day. Cheap jäger bombs and free vodka buckets did me in. But we had a fun night.
DAY 45: this morning we left phi phi for ko Lanta. I was easily the most hungover I've been in years. I guess the booze, heat and lack of food were not a good combo. It's 9pm as I write this and I still feel ill. The ferry ride to Lanta was an hour and a bit. Lanta is very different than phi phi; like night and day. Where phi phi has parties and turquoise water, Lanta has beach front lounges and sprawling long beaches with surf.
Our hotel is really nice. Found it on trip advisor. Super cheap, right on the beach, great bar out front, and really nice bungalows with all the amenities (a/c, hot water, etc).
Most of the day was spent trying not to be sick, napping and lying on the beach. We had dinner on the beach and went to the bar at the hotel; where I had a fruit smoothy and we talked with an interesting couple from south Africa.
We are going to spend 4 days in Lanta. It's a small quiet island, so we are going to get scooters tomorrow for transport. Should be fun....i miss my scoot!
Cheers,
Siobhan
It's really a dirty, touristy, crowded, horrible place. The beach was ok (decent surf) but it was so crowded. You couldn't really swim because there were so many people with surf boards everywhere.
We spent part of the day walking around the city. One decent thing was there was some decent boutique shopping. I bought a few little things. Otherwise the stores were awful. All the owners would stand outside and say "come look at my store" or "best price. Cheaper!" What is cheaper? Cheaper than what? What are you talking about?
Some of the stores had the worst stickers and t-shirts for sale. You could buy stickers with just about any offensive, offside, gross expression or sentence you could think of. You could also buy offside t-shirts that you could never wear in public. Just so tacky.
We had dinner and drinks in Seminyak which is an extension of Kuta to the North. It's a nicer area....still dirty and touristy, but less chaotic and more upscale. There were some cute boutique stores around and none of the aforementioned sticker and t-shirt stores.
We had a good dinner at a really busy trendy place, and then hit a few different bars for drinks. At one bar we ordered the daily drink special. When I read the list of ingredients it seemed pretty normal....I guess i skimmed over the last one; chilies. The drink came with two big red chili peppers in it. I liked the flavor, but after just a few sips my lips were tingling/numb. We were sitting at the bar and all the bartenders and servers came over to watch us drink it. I guess we were the only tourists drinking the spicy drink; they all thought it was pretty funny watching us suffer.
DAY 39: we spent most of the day in Sanur. We went for a long walk along the boardwalk and then spent some time at the beach lounging and floating around in the water. A large piece of wood had drifted up on shore and that was a great source of discussion and activity amongst the locals.
In the evening we went back to Kuta and met up with Joe and Kelly (my Irish friends from the china tour). I didn't think we would cross paths again in Asia, but they had a change in plans and arrived in Bali late the night before.
It was good to see them. We had dinner and drinks at a few different places and then ended up going into a huge club. It was 4 or 5 floors; just massive. For some reason there were free drinks and appies between 11pm and midnight, so we were just in time to take advantage of that.
One of the outdoor areas of the club had a big projection screen. For some reason, the entertainment of choice on the screen was old Nucks commercials. Seriously. They played that old Naslund/Kovelchuk Nike spot where they are chasing the puck through NYC, followed by the Sedin's Swedish twins commercial where some guys order "Swedish twins" to their party and the Sedins show up in full uniform (I forgot about that one....it's awesome when they dance). I think later on I saw a title that said "the best commercials you've never seen", so maybe that's what it was about.
Anyway, we had a really fun night and it was good to see Kel and Joe.
DAY 40: we had a 9am flight to singapore (and then a connection to Phuket) which meant we had to be awake at 6am. This was not cool as we got in very late and were super hungover when we woke up. Im not gonna lie, there were some touch and go moments while waiting for the flight. Luckily the plane was half empty and i was able to lie down and sleep for most of the 2.5 hours.
So we had a bit of a dilemma with our flights. I was notified a few weeks ago by air Asia, that our Bali to Singapore flight had been moved back 2.5 hours. Instead of leaving at 6:30am like originally planned, it was moved to 9am. Normally this would have been good, except for that we had another Air Asia flight at 1pm from Singapore to Phuket and the change meant that our Bali flight didn't arrive until after noon. On a normal carrier this would have been ok, but with Air Asia you have to book all legs separate, so this meant we had to clear immigration, pick up our luggage and check in again. When we flew through singapore last time it took us 45 minutes to get through immigration alone, so we were pretty positive the change meant there was no way we would make the connection.
As that was the only air Asia flight to Phuket that day, we didn't want to risk missing it and being stuck in Singapore for the night, and the ticket was under $50, we booked a second flight with jet star for $90 each leaving singapore at 8pm. When we landed at 12:15 we had given up any hope of being able to make the connection, but we decided to try anyway, just in case. We freaking booked it through the airport, amazing race style. After an argument with a lovely air asia employee, we managed to convince them to hold the flight as long as we carried our luggage to the gate. Anyway, we made it. We literally got on the plane, they put our luggage on, and we were in the air 5 minutes later. Of course, so far in Asia every flight has been at least half an hour late, but this one ended up leaving 5 minutes early. Regardless, we made it and saved having to spend 8 hours at the Singapore airport.
We spent just the one night in Phuket. We stayed at a hotel close to phuket town as we were leaving via ferry in the morning. We went to a local night market and had a good time trying local foods. This is where I discovered Thai pancakes; my new favourite food. They are very similar to crepes, but different some how. My favourite is banana with condensed milk and sugar on top. If I could eat nothing but those for the rest of my life, I would be perfectly happy.
DAY 41: we woke up to torrential rain. The weather in thailand has already disrupted our plans as we had wanted to go to the east coast (ko pha-nagn and ko samui), but that province has been severely flooded, meaning we are going to give it a miss. We had heard the weather forecast for the Phuket was literally monsoon rain for the coming week, and we were pretty discouraged as we took the ferry to ko phi phi.
We finally caught a break though....just as we arrived on ko phi phi, the clouds broke and it turned into a beautiful sunny day. I absolutely loved ko phi phi. We spent 4 nights there and it's been my favourite stop so far. Yes, the town area is over run by backpackers, but it's a super fun vibe, and the beaches and scenery are absolutely unreal. The town can be walked around in 10 minutes and there are no cars. The streets are lined with restaurants, bars, spas, stores, and Thai pancake stalls. The beach can be reached at the edge of town, however the nicest beaches are outside the town a bit and reached by a 10 minute long tail boat ride. Its a fantastic place.
Most days follow a similar pattern on Phi Phi. You have bunch late at one of the many good restaurants before taking a boat to a secluded beach and spending the day tanning on white sand or swimming in turquoise water. After dinner you enjoy drink specials at one of the many bars in town (think $2 jager bombs, and $3 mixed drinks), before making your way down to the beach clubs for fire shows, dancing and free Thai buckets during random 20 minute windows.
The day we arrived we just explored. We went to the beach in town for a few hours and then did a 30 minute walk to the highest spot on the island for fantastic views. Phi phi was devastated by the tsunami in 2004 but looking at the town from the view point, you would never know. It's strange how in just 6 years such a signifiant event is barely noticeable. Other than a few "tsunami evacuation route" signs and a few postcards showing the devastation, there is little evidence that the island was leveled.
We did the usual in the evening... Dinner and drinks in town before checking out one of the beach bars. We spent this night in a cheap but shitty hotel. When we arrived on phi phi we just wanted to find somewhere to get rid of our bags. The room looked ok, but that even we discovered there were no sheets on the beds....jyst towels. Strange. We found a much nicer place for not much more money for the next 3 nights.
DAY 42: at this point we thought the weather forecast still meant something, so we elected against a snorkeling trip due to expected "torrential rain". Of course, it turned out to be another beautiful day. Despite not doing the snorkeling, we had a good day. We took a long tail to "long beach" and spent a few hours at what i think has been the nicest beach of the trip so far. It was quiet and beautiful and calm and deep enough to actually swim.
After lunch we rented a kayak and paddled out to "monkey beach," which as you can guess, is home to an abundance of monkeys. Ugh. Still not a big fan after the Ubud incident, but at least these ones didn't attack. We took the kayak around the area and enjoyed the spectacular scenery. I can't explain how gorgeous phi phi is; its really unreal.
We did the usual in the evening, but checked out the really ghetto (and fairly unsafe) fire shows put on at one of the beach clubs that night. It was ok. Entertaining for about 15 minutes. I was more entertained by my cheap Thai bucket (in case anyone doesn't know, a Thai bucket is a Mickey of alcohol, a can of pop and a bottle of red bull, in a sand bucket. Some come pre mixed, but the ones you buy off the street you make yourself).
DAY 43: today the weather turned at it was a bit overcast. So we spent the morning at an Internet cafe doing photos and emails. The stupid Internet took FOREVER to upload my photos and the whole thing was a very frustrating and long process. In the afternoon I went for a mani/pedi and a massage and Craig went to the beach. We had a quiet night as I picked up a bit of a cold and wasn't feeling fantastic
DAY 44: as out last day in phi phi, we decided to do the snorkeling trip, even though the weather was just average. We paid for a half day trip around neighboring island "phi phi leh" however it wasn't until we were on the boat in the middle of the ocean that we were informed we were in fact doing a full day 7 hour trip. Normally we wouldn't have minded, however I was still feeling a bit sick and we were not prepared for a 7 hour excursion, we were not super impressed at first. Oh well, it is what it is. The first stop was a really pretty island where we did some snorkeling, had lunch and lounged on the beach. I'm not a big fan of fish, but I'm ok with snorkeling generally because the fish are usually more afraid of me than I am of them. This was not the case here; not only did the fish come at me, but they followed me back to shore.
After the island we made a stop for some more snorkeling off the coast of a different island. This was a pretty cool stop, because there were SO many fish. At one point I was literally surrounded by hundreds of fish. All I could see in every direction was fish. But no matter how much I tried to touch one, I never could. The coral was also really pretty here.
There were a few more stops before we went to Maya bay. The movie "the beach" with Leo Dicaprio was filmed here and it's what put phi phi on the tourist map. So Maya bay is phi phi's claim to fame. It was pretty beautiful, but for me not the highlight of the day or the islands, I think long beach was just as nice. The problem was that it was so busy - everyone has to go see it, so there were boats and people everywhere. The scenery was also similar to what we see all over the island. The water was pretty cool though, very very green. A breathtaking place for sure, but not the #1 highlight for me. Being there first thing in the morning for sunrise would probably be pretty special.
This night we stayed true to our horrible habit of getting the drunkest the night before a travel day. Cheap jäger bombs and free vodka buckets did me in. But we had a fun night.
DAY 45: this morning we left phi phi for ko Lanta. I was easily the most hungover I've been in years. I guess the booze, heat and lack of food were not a good combo. It's 9pm as I write this and I still feel ill. The ferry ride to Lanta was an hour and a bit. Lanta is very different than phi phi; like night and day. Where phi phi has parties and turquoise water, Lanta has beach front lounges and sprawling long beaches with surf.
Our hotel is really nice. Found it on trip advisor. Super cheap, right on the beach, great bar out front, and really nice bungalows with all the amenities (a/c, hot water, etc).
Most of the day was spent trying not to be sick, napping and lying on the beach. We had dinner on the beach and went to the bar at the hotel; where I had a fruit smoothy and we talked with an interesting couple from south Africa.
We are going to spend 4 days in Lanta. It's a small quiet island, so we are going to get scooters tomorrow for transport. Should be fun....i miss my scoot!
Cheers,
Siobhan
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