Hanging in Penang...

For the past few months as we have zig-sagged our way around Asia, Malaysia has been in some respects a bit of an afterthought. Not that it deserves to be so, as the more we read, the more we learn that there us so much to see. Its just that it's never been a country that stands out like the big hitters of Thailand or Vietnam. Now we're here though, we realise we are probably in one of the most culturally diverse places we have ever been to.

As we said before, we were truly sad to leave Bangkok behind after a fun filled six days and an incredibly two months in Thailand. Our flight down to Penang went by without much fuss, despite mild turbulence, and we managed to hire a taxi with ease to take us up to georgetown, Penang's UNESCO listed city. As we drove, two things became apparent. Firstly, there were many more cars on the road, very expensive cars at that, replacing the hum of battered old motor bikes. Secondly, the traffic moved in an orderly fashion, they had rules!

Driving through the old town towards our hotel we instantly got the impression that this was a curious mix, we'd never really seen anything like this before. You'd have to say if your being totally honest, that it wasn't the prettiest place. Only first impressions though!

After dumping our bags we quickly went in search of some of Penang's famous hawker food, essentially street food of various varieties spanning a number of cuisines. Our first stop was a place called Kapitan, a Muslim-south Indian restaurant famous for it's roti chanai's and tandoori chicken. the roti channai's were amazing, really light, almost pastry based breads cooked in the tandoori oven. We also had some amazing turka daal to go with it, a tasty lentil dish that everyone seemed to be eating.

The next day we woke absolutely shattered, the past few days had been really busy-almost non-stop but we both wanted to get out and explore the city of Georgetown. The town itself had some very attractive parts, the British colonial buildings were very impressive, they had been meticulously maintained to make sure they retained their former glories and looked as good as new.

After a good old tour around the unesco heritage buildings we walked on into little India, were we stood and sniffed up all of those delicious smells! The place was very loud, almost every shop pumping out vicious Indian pop music to try and shift a few of their Now; Bollywood compilations. It was a great sight though and so very different to the sight of Asia we have had elsewhere on the continent.

By this point, and we're not expecting sympathy here, we were so tired. The last couple of weeks had definitely caught up with us so we headed back to try and chill out, you know, listen to some decent music and set curry puffs, but found it increasingly difficult due to being in one of the noisiest hostels we have been in. Basically, most of the accommodation in Georgetown is within extremely old buildings that have absolutely no soundproofing whatsoever. That meant the Chinese people above us actually sounded like Robocop wearing corrective walking shoes. We also had a locked door in our room that after closer inspection opened to the adjacent room! It was locked ofcourse but meant that we heard all sorts of noises from that room and whenever they put their light on it lit our room up. Oh well, at least we didn't hear the guys upstairs taking a dump, oh yeah, scrap that, we did.

The next day we waited patiently for a bus that would take us to the centre of the island to a lookout. We did indeed wait patiently, for an hour! In the end we gave up and caught another bus to a small national park, the smallest in Malaysia in fact. We went because it sounded cool but in the end spent four hours on a long jungle trek. You see the guy at the park headquarters told us it would take 2 hours there and back. He lied. After two hours we didn't even make our destination, a beach at the other end of the jungle. Instead we walked through steamy jungle, all in flip-flops, for 10kms! We had a great time though and even though the flip flop combination wasn't a great idea, it made us hungry for more treks! Need to buy footwear first I suppose.

Being tired anyway probably wasn't helped by a 10km jungle trek but that night we were so shattered that we hopped out for more food, this time an indian-Malaysian combination called nasi kandar before heading back to the hotel to rest up before tomorrows four hour drive up into the Cameron highlands.

Penang was an interesting place, it has some very attractive buildings and the food, even though we didn't do it justice, was fantastic. It does feel strange to be in Malaysia though, it is so very different to Thailand. The mixture of Indian, Chinese, British and Malay cultures is fascinating, if not a little strange but the biggest thing is the fact that order, or something resembling it, had now been resumed. Give me chaos!

Anyway, onwards! To tea, hill walks and scones!

Much love, Tommo and shellface xx

Night markets and dentists in Chiang Mai...

Flights scare me, especially ones that are powered by propeller and which are too short to pop Valium. Fortunately for us the flight to Chiang Mai passed as quick as a breeze, despite a fair amount of wobbliness as we came into land. Amazingly, as we passed through immigration, the owner of our new guesthouse was waiting with a big sign that read 'mr tom' in massive letters. The guy was a legend and drove us to the guesthouse, all for free, where we were welcomed like family and shown to our room, a really big and spotless space, all for £6 per night. Back downstairs we were told we could stay as long as we wanted and that we would just have to tell them the day before we wanted to move on. At this point I think we made the fundamental decision that after around 3-4 weeks of constant travelling, pretty much every day, we would like to stay put in one area for a while. From speaking to our hosts we have a lot to see and do here so I think we could easily spend a couple of weeks here and in the surrounding countryside.

That night, as lucky as it may seem, was Chiang Mai's most famous event, the Sunday walking Market. Apparently, people come from all over Thailand to stroll around the markets and as such, were told by our hosts that we were lucky to have this as our introduction to Thailand. I don't believe in luck but I'm glad we came today! The markets were phenomenal, we bought a few little bits (to add to the hoard we need to ship home) and stopped every now and again to feast on red pork curry, Chiang Mai sausage, spring rolls and tiny Japanese pancakes filled with blueberry filling. Needless to say, we were in our element. It's funny that out of the people we have met travelling so far, no one seems to have food right at the pinnacle of importance as much as us. Food has been and will continue to be the best thing about our trip and up to yet, Asia has done nothing but astound us with it's variety and quality.

Anyway, we spent hours walking through the markets, occasionally getting stuck in the maelstrom of people until we got back to the hotel, shattered, at 11pm.

The following day we made our way out of the hotel to find breakfast before the daily onslaught of wats and temples. Chiang mai's old city, where we were based, has numerous temples, almost one on every corner. We spent the entire afternoon visiting some beautifully ornate buildings that if were at the start of your trip, would be staggeringly beautiful. This being the third month now of visiting Buddhist monasteries, you'd be forgiven for feeling the opening pangs of temple fatigue. Unfortunately my day would be completely and momentously overawed by pain. Having got yet more antibiotics and painkillers to try out from the chemist, we were hoping for an end to the pain. It would get worse.

The next morning we found an extraordinary place to eat breakfast that made their own brown bread rolls. To say they were good is as big an understatement as you are likely come across. The rest of the breakfast, big fluffy omelettes, were also exceptional, as was the several coffees. We stayed for hours in this place, writing, making lists and making good use of the wifi to plan our next movements. As time progressed through the day the pain in my mouth was making me dizzy so we decided to see out a dentist, at long last. The dentist was ultra clean, with the best facilities imaginable so put my mind to ease for a little while. Basically the dentist told me, after x-ray, that I have no infection but that my wisdom tooth is growing diagonally against my back tooth. He told me that it needed to come out. So there you go, I will bite the bullet and pay around fifty pounds for the operation but I hope at the end of it I will be pain free once and for all.

From there we took a red-taxi-pick up truck over to central plaza, the big city mall, to try and find some relatively cheap running shoes so that I can hit the streets. We couldn't find any trainers but what we did come away with was two awesome haircuts!! We were both amazingly pleased after getting two haircuts for a tenner that were better than anything that we would have got back home, we should have never have been worried!!

Back in town we had another hankering for Italian so found an amazing little eatery that we had read about and shared the veggie and beef lasagne's, again, absolutely fantastic food and completely homemade. I will never get bored of describing food so If it all sounds a tad repetitive then I apologise!

The next morning, after visiting our favourite place for breakfast, we caught a tuk-tuk to Chiang Mai zoo, a zoo so large that it actually let cars in, so people could effectively drive from the Otter enclosure to say, the lesser spotted Peruvian Tapier...or something like that. The zoo, although a bit rough round the edges, was pretty amazing. Amongst all the usuals we saw a White lion, 2 agile lemurs that looked like a couple of mischievous brummies. We were also lucky enough to see three giant pandas who were brilliant. They were just totally content with stripping pieces of wood and eating a tonne of bamboo. They looked like the happiest creatures we have ever seen. I think shell may have fallen in love with them. I have competition. Anyway, we spent most of the day in this place, mesmerised by the sheer quantity of animals and the impressive view of the city below us as we were now relatively high up the surrounding mountains.

Heading back into town we decided to walk to the night bazaar, a nightly extravaganza of Market stalls, all with the western wallet firmly in mind. Although out of the old city, which is a blessing in itself, the night Market area is the type of south east Asia you hate seeing; mcdonalds, Starbucks, subways all were in place but search a little further and you can find these little nuts and crannies of authenticity, such as the food courts. For three pounds we ate four dishes of fresh northern Thai food before heading off back towards our hotel. On the way back we managed to stumble upon a place doing margarita's for 55 baht so decided to take advantage of that for a while too, one constant holiday...

The next morning and knowing that the following day would be taken up by dentistry we decided hire a scooter. After some initial wobbles and horrified looks from the hotel owner, we were on our way. Chiang Mai is surrounded by mountains to the north of which one of them, Dui suthep, has a temple sat at the top. It also has two minority villages that you can visit.

The roads are fantastic leading up the mountain. We had an absolute blast as we rode up, overtaking all the struggling cars until we reached the temple at the top. It was an incredible ride which took about 2 hours. The temple itself was astonishing, it was encrusted with thick gold and had practising monks in every corner, all with the heavy aroma of incense that burned from the altars. The views from the top were out of this world, almost as if you had been placed on a cloud above the city. From there we headed further into the mountains to check out a minority village. The village itself was pretty dissapointing as the inhabitants had firmly taken consumerism to heart. Almost every inch of an otherwise peaceful and remote village had been taken up with the selling of items. The big selling point though, in fact scrap that, the vastly underused reason for people visiting the village was the huge winter garden that lit up the surrounding landscape with a hundred different types of flower, dad you would love it!

From there we jumped back on the motorbike and swerved our way through through the 6kms of hairpin bends and dirt tracks to another tribal village. This time, in a very secluded spot, the village seemed much more insular than the last. As we drove around, a chap in full traditional gear shouted at us as we rode past so we quickly made our way out of the village and back on to the mountain track to take us the 30kms back to chiang Mai. About 5kms in we pulled up to small coffee shop, sat astride an adjoining coffee plantation, and had two unbelievable cups of the freshest coffee you can imagine, all while looking down on a great view of coffee plants, banana trees and green fields. If the ride to the top was fun enough then the rude back was out of this world. I cannot wait to do it again.

As we got back into town the traffic was atrocious, thousands of cars and bikes all stood in a huge, choking jam. We did as the Thai do and wriggled our way through the traffic until we finally made it back to the guesthouse just before dark. An amazing day and one we will not forget in a while!

Due to tomorrows operation to chop out my wisdom tooth it looks as though we will be here for a while longer yet, not least since I have to go back to have the stitches out next week. You what though, I think were both secretly happy. We both felt like we needed a pit stop of sorts and we have it here. Chiang Mai is phenomenal, the people are great, the bars and restaurants of mindblowing quality and the surrounding countryside mesmerising. A week has nearly gone by here and we haven't a clue where it has gone!!

Much love, as always, Tommo xx

Monks and croissants in Luang Prabang...

As usual, after dropping our gear off in the hotel (very hard to find!) and after managing to completely perplex a laos hotelier with my bolsover brogue, we headed out into the chilly night air to finally explore luang prabang. Although we only saw a couple of streets we instantly got the feeling that we were somewhere special. Luang Prabang is unesco listed which means, thankfully, the town has a ban on cars and busses after 6pm which makes it one of the nicest places you can think of to stroll around. Again, it could be argued, much like Hoi An in Vietnam, Yangshuo in China or Siem Reap in Cambodia, that this is not a fair representation of the wider area, just an artificial tourist bubble. You know what, screw it, it's just bloody great, nevermind if some 'seasoned' travellers say it's not an authentic Laos experience, what do they want? To scrap that in favour of smothering ourselves in mud and eating weeds, just to be 'authentic'. I sound like a bitter old fool but some other travellers you meet are about as annoying as being made to sit in a room with Nigella Lawson or Fearne Cotton, always looking down on other travellers for not fitting into this archetypal traveller who strives to make life as hard for themselves as is humanly possibly....

After eating a traditional Laos meal of Luang Prabang sausage (think coarse sausage meat with a massive hint of lemongrass-truly delicious) and stir-fried beef, we headed back to the hotel, a 15mins walk out of town. Although in Laos, Luang Prabang, by south-east Asian standards anyway, is an expensive place. Due to it's beauty and unesco status it happens to attract an older, more wealthy crowd which in turn has pushed the price of accommodation through the roof. We were staying in a nice place run by lovely people but the best we could do on our budget was quite a walk away. We probably need the exercise after 2 months eating baguettes!

Anyway, the next day, after an incredible sleep, we decided to go exploring, to really get a feel of the place. After stopping for an overpriced and disappointing breakfast we headed off into the ever-warming day. We walked up the large central hill to take in the views and to try and release some birds! Basically lots of women have tiny birds in extremely small wicker cages, hundreds of them, for you to buy and then release at the top, for good luck. It's a terrible sight, these birds can't even flap it's so small. Just another small example of asia's complete disregard for animal rights, it truly is non-existent! I had to fight back the urge to 'liberate' the poor things in a swift but ultimately bold move. Shell told me I couldn't...

After climbing back down we then hit the streets, to search out the river and the numerous temples that surround the old town. As we strolled along the river the smells were unbelievable, like sitting in an English garden on a hot summers day, maybe pint in hand. It's the first time we have been in a climate cool enough for smells like that to appear, it's usually been suffocatingly hot.

Making our way around another huge wat, luang prabang's largest, we were amazed at the intricacy of the tile mosaics that adorned the several temples. We saw yet more giant buddha's (I have a feeling it won't be the last) all in different positions, something we have learned the meaning of. If you have a Buddha at home with arms open, placed on legs, this is meditation. If he has his arms folded, this be enlightenment. And so on...

After catching a very rickety bamboo raft over to the other side of the river we had a drink at a very very cool place that had individual candlelit bamboo huts, almost like tree houses, for you to drink in. We stayed there a while before heading back to the hostel just before dark (bamboo rafts-fast flowing river-the dark-2 Laos teenagers as captain-no ta!). After a good old day sight seeing we grabbed some quick Laos curry, similar to Thai i.e with coconut milk, before heading around the myriad stalls of the nightmarket on the way back to the hotel.

The following morning we were picked up at around 11, along with an english-indian couple from Nottingham, to go to luang prabangs most famous waterfall, around 30kms away. As we drove through the lush Laos countryside it dawned on you just how pretty this country can be. It's almost, I guess, much like being back in an old English countryside summer, in say 1876. Almost like jumping head first into a Constable painting. The waterfalls themselves were immense, around eight different levels in total, slowly climbing to the 45 metre falls at the top of the gorge. It produced the bluest water imaginable and although ice cold, lots of people braved the conditions to jump in! The only thing wrong I guess were the crowds, some of them the most annoying type i.e loud, obnoxious and generally have no clue whereabouts they are. Despite the crowds we had an awesome time which was reinforced by the adjoining bear sanctuary. The bears, all moon bears due to their crescent markings on their chest, have been confiscated from poachers who had used the bears to farm their bile, a popular ingredient in Chinese medicine. Another caring plus point for the medievally insane superpower-to-be. In fact, by reading bits and pieces whilst being here it becomes increasingly apparent that the Chinese play a big part in pretty much all negative aspects of Laos natural environment as millions of hectares of pristine forest are illegally logged every day to satisfy china's ever increasing demand for natural resources. It's an atrocious state of affairs.

Back in town we searched out the same central restaurant for Laos curry before heading back to the hotel to pack and huhum...watch football. It's a sad state of affairs in a way that I've been able to watch more football here in Asia than I ever would have at home. We haven't planned our days around fixtures or anything but because of the time difference we have been able to get back after a packed day and watch a game late at night, I say we I mean me, firmly me...

In the morning we waited outside for our tuk-tuk to the airport but were to be surprised when a small black sports car pulled up playing adele at it's highest volume possible. We were duly told to put our bags in and off we went to the airport! On the way I tried to tell him that a guy his age needed to replace his god awful noise with a bit of rolling stones or at least the Beatles but he was having none of it! Why do we have to export all of our crap!

Arriving at the airport we checked in with no hassles before boarding our propellered plane of dreams that would take us over the border and to chiang Mai, to begin our two month Thailand adventure!

We wish we had spent more time in Laos but I guess we saw the highlights. It's hard but Laos biggest attraction is surely it's natural beauty, which to truly appreciate means heading out into the countryside. Due to Laos having the unenviable title of having the most unexploded bombs and mines of any country in the world, to head out into the interior without proper knowledge and guides is suicidal.

Laos other great asset, it's incredibly mellow people, is something you can experience anywhere. This we did in abundance.

Anyway, onwards!! Feels as though we are late to the Thailand party as lots of friends have been here before to this greatly visited country but we are truly excited about the months ahead!

Love as always, Tommo (with ever increasing mouth pain)