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Having arrived in Georgetown, Penang and after a short walk in search of a guest house I found the cheapest place I had stayed in so far. Unfortunately the stay was not so much of a pleasent one as the bed was full of bugs, so in the morning I checked out and moved to another guesthouse just up the road which was far nicer.
I had initially planned on staying in Georgetown for a couple of days and then heading on to Kuala Lumpur, however having read the comments book in the second guesthouse I decided that instead of heading straight for KL that I would head to the Cameron Highlands first for some walking. I spent a few days in the highlands walking the jungle paths with a german that I met in the hostel when I arrived. The paths were relatively easy to follow, which was lucky as you are not able to get very good maps, the maps that you are able to get just show the vague routes of the paths and where they meet the road. In some cases two different maps showed the routes doing different things e.g. one would show a path coming off another path, and the other map would show the second path coming off the road a little way after the first path met the road.
From the Highlands I made my way to KL where I spent 2 1/2 days before getting the night train to Singapore. KL was alright but I’m not sure that I would have wanted to stay more than the time I did. I had wondered about getting the train after 1 1/2 days but as I had arrived sunday afternoon and most places were closed on Monday I decided to stay for the extra day.

The journey to Malaysia was quite an interesting day, was picked up at 7am my one minibus to then be dropped off about 500m from where I started and was told I needed to wait for another bus which should arrive about 15 mins later. That bus arrived with some people already on board, and we set off to pick up a few more before a quite hair raising ride to Had Yai which is slightly north of the Malaysian border. Here we were dropped off at another travel-agent and told that another bus would then pick us up in about 30 mins time. After 10 mins waiting the person operating the travel agent realised that there was one more of us than she was expecting for the next bus. After a little while it was discovered that my ticket for the next part was for another company, so just after the others left in their bus another bus came and picked me up. I was given an malaysian imigrtation card to fill in ready for when we arrived at the border, so finnaly I was on my way. Or not! a couple of minutes later yet again I was told I needed to get out as there wasn’t enough room on this bus and that I would have to wait another 15 mins. Luckily after this wait I really was on my way to Malaysia.

After writing the last post I hired a moped for the day to explore the island and as a way of getting into the town, as the resort was in the north west corner of the island, and it was cheaper to hire a bike than to get a taxi.
Left Koh Phangan on wednesday, and took a bus to Phuket. There were four other travellers on the bus, and we were taken to Patong beach which is where all the tourists seem to go. The bus dropped us of outside what the driver said was a cheap guesthouse but at 900THB (13.50GBP) we didn’t agree, so went of in search of cheaper places. The others ended up staying at a place oposite for 500THB but I continued searching and found a new guest house which had just opened with dorm beds for 300, and there were only 2 of us staying there.
I didn’t like the town that much so after a day on the beach I booked a ticket to Kho Phi Phi. I wasn’t sure if I would spend a night there as I had been told there was no cheap accomodation, but following a short walk after arrival I found a dorm room for 200THB. Phi Phi is one of the islands that was affected by the tsunami in 2004, but has now mainly been rebuilt, with there still being some building works continuing, but wether this was to replace stuff lost in the tsunami or just new buildings I don’t know. Having seen pictures from before and now the town does look quite different.
The second day I went on a snorkeling trip, and saw lots of fish and coral. Despite wearing sun cream I still managed to get quite sunburnt on my back, which made sleeping quite painful.
This morning I took a boat to Krabi back on the mainland, and have booked my ticket to leave in the morning to Penang in malaysia.