Leh

Our flight from Delhi to Srinagar was a little under an hour and a half. Srinagar wasn't anything too special, just a rather dingy town (or more like city) with some cheapo dankish hotels. We got a prepaid taxi from the airport and our irritating taxi driver kept wanting to take us to the houseboats. Finally we had to demand that he took us to the Tourist Reception Center and we got there with a few detours by the houseboats.
On our drive from Delhi to Agra my Dad's knee started getting sore and by the time we were in Srinagar it was very inflamed and painful. So once in Srinagar we decided to go the the hospital right near our hotel. The doctor suggested it was sprained and he should keep it elevated and give it lots of rest.
The following day we got on the bus to Leh with an overnight stop in Kargil. Luckily the whole front of the bus was like a flat padded platform, so my dad got to sit up there with his leg up, with the driver and the conductor. The drive was absolutely gorgeous! The mountains were so ginormous and amazing, it's really hard to describe. Even pictures can't do those things justice! The drive to Kargil wasn't really high up but we were on the edge of a cliff almost the whole time so it was pretty sketchy. It was still really high up, but not as high as the other ones we were yet to go on in Northern India. That evening we got to Kargil and found a decent hotel quite quickly. In order to get some sleep for our early rise the next morning. After a bit of confusion with the taxi drivers we made it to the bus station by 4:30 in the morning, just in time to get on the bus to Leh. That stretch of the drive was equally beautiful, getting a bit higher and dryer with less greenery and more barrenness.

By the time we were nearing Leh, we were fully immersed into the Great Himalayas. The town of Leh itself, was very beautiful at 3500m above sea level. There were prayer flags strung across the street and plenty of little souvenir shops to poke your head in. Leh was really quite a nice place to wander around. We stayed in Leh for about 4 days. One of which my mom and I ventured up the monastery. It really wasn't that far to hike up the the monastery, but it was a lot of work. My mom and I were both getting headaches, a symptom of altitude sickness and there was zero shade on the way up. It was very beautiful at the top. The view of Leh was gorgeous and there were many prayer flags blowing in the wind. I love prayer flags, they are so picturesque, strung across Himalayan mountain peaks. I just had to buy some to put in my room!

Once my mom and I were finished at the monastery we headed back down to Leh and to our favourite little Tibetan restaurant. Tashi Tibetan Restaurant was amazing! The food was great and the prices were dirt cheap. You could get a really good bowl of veggie soup for a dollar! Oh and the cinnamon cardamom tea was some of the best tea I have ever had and it was only 25 cents! For breakfast we would have a piece of naan bread topped with jam for 35 cents. The food in India is the second cheapest we have had, with Myanmar in the lead. Hotels in India are cheap also, only about $20 for a decent triple room-we have had some trouble with cleanliness though.

We were debating whether to go to Nubra Valley but in the end we decided that we would. Nubra Valley is an area outside of Leh famed for scenic landscape. But most of Nubra's pride and glory comes from the road to get there. Or even more specifically, the pass-Khardung La Pass. Khardung La is the highest motorable pass/road in the whole world. So pretty much when you are at Khardung La Pass, you are as high up on the world as any vehicle can go. That's a pretty big feat, so I bought a plaque at the little souvenir shop on the top. We posed for a few photos by the sign before getting back on our way to Nubra. Ooops! I forgot to mention the most important part...the height! Khardung La is a whopping 18,380 feet (around 5,602 meters) above sea level. The drive to Nubra was great, the towering mountains peering down at you as you drive by. The best part was the variety- you would be in a lush green forest, then all of a sudden in the arid desert and then drive alongside a raging river. We bunked down in a small town called Diskit and then went up to see the giant Buddha statue nearby. The next morning we headed back over Khardung La and continued on back to Leh.

We arrived back in Leh just in time to do some last minute shopping. The next morning we rose early to catch the bus to Manali.

Agra

We arrived in Delhi in the afternoon and got picked up by a taxi right there at the airport. In Bangkok we had called and arranged for a taxi driver by the name of Raju to pick us up. He had been recommended by a friend of a friend that drove around with him for 2 weeks. And there he was standing there at the airport with our names on a piece of paper. We were glad he showed up because over time we have had quite a few taxi no-shows.
There was no need for us to stay in Delhi, so Raju took us to Agra-home of the Taj Mahal. The drive was about 4 hours with a samosa stop on the way. Mmmmm, samosas, our first taste of Indian food, it was great! He took us to a good cheap hotel called Maya Hotel, only about a 10 minute walk from the Taj Mahal. That evening we ate some really good Indian food for dinner. Indian meals usually work by ordering a few different dishes and sharing them, with some roti or naan on the side to dip with.
The next morning we had an early start in order to be at the Taj by 6am. Wow. Wow. Wow. The Taj Mahal was AMAZING! It was so much more than I expected! The whole entire thing is made of beautiful white marble. From a distance it just looks nice, but you can't fully take it in until you have been up close. The intricacy and detail is mesmerizing. It is full of what looks to be flowers painted onto the walls, but they aren't actually painted, they are inlaid. Every single flower is carved of numerous semiprecious stones and then inlaid into the marble. These stones were shipped from all over the world just to make the Taj. The Taj was built some 350 years back by an emperor named Shah Jahan for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal. He built it for her as a memorial, as she died giving birth to her 14th child. It took an estimated 22 years to build by 20,000 workers. Now every day about 10,000 people visit the Taj Mahal everyday.

After gazing in awe at the Taj for a while, we headed back to the hotel for some breakfast and rest. Once rested and well fed we headed out again to do some souvenir shopping. By far the most popular souvenirs in Agra are made of marble, lots and lots of marble! I bought a miniature Taj made of marble and my parents bought a pile of other marble stuff.
My mom and I continued on to visit the Agra Fort, while my dad went back to the hotel to rest his sore knee. The Agra fort was amazing, a really unique style. It kinda reminded me of a medieval fort with the huge red brick walls and moat with a drawbridge. Part of the interior continued on with that theme, while other parts were marble. The fort is very old and has been passed along through many generations but there is one story that most people know it by. I should of mentioned earlier that the Taj cost over $500,000 to build 350 odd years ago! To give it more perspective it would cost about $40million dollars to build today. As you may think not everyone in the picture would be happy with Shah Jahan spending that much money to build something for his dead wife. The person who showed their dismay most was Shah Jahan's own son Aurangzeb. Shortly after the completion of the Taj Mahal, Aurangzeb overthrew his father and imprisoned him in the Agra Fort. Shah Jahan was imprisoned for eight years (until his death) in the Agra Fort. Probably the most important thing to mention about the Agra Fort is, where Shah Jahan was imprisoned there was a great view of the Taj. I guess it would be bittersweet looking out at your creation everyday for eight years and knowing it was the reason you were in the situation you were in. But it would probably also give you some emotional strength knowing your beloved wife was buried inside of there and waiting for you. And after those eight years he got reunited with his wife at last, his body got brought down from the fort and buried beside his wife inside the Taj. After seeing the area where Shah Jahan was imprisoned, I didn't really feel that sorry for him, it was really a gorgeous place with white marble and stone inlays and a spectacular view of the Taj and the river below. I enjoyed walking around the fort, it is huge above ground but it also has many blocked off corridors and dingy rooms used to house servants underground.

We headed back to the hotel and booked some train tickets to Delhi for the next morning. Once we arrived in Delhi the next morning we hopped on a plane to Srinagar.

Bangkok

It took about an hour and a half on the boat and about 8 hours in the bus before we reached Bangkok. We checked in at Bhiman Inn, close to Khao San Road, but not so close that you can hear the thumping music. Khao San Road is an iconic landmark in Bangkok, known for it's bars, restaurants, accommodation and shopping-all at a cheap price. It is of the most popular backpacker hotspots in all of Southeast Asia. Since we got in to Bangkok rather late we just got some cheap pad thai and had a little it if a wander to check things out. While on our walk about we found some amazing street food-another thing Bangkok is famous for.

The following day we decided we were going to walk to a temple called Wat Pho. On our way a suspiciously friendly Thai man confronted us and we talked for a little bit. We told him that we intended to go to Wat Pho, but he said it was closed until 12:30pm(it was about 9am when we started off). We believed him and we were also on the look out for souvenirs, so he suggested that we go to a certain place. He arranged for a tuk tuk to take us their for only 50baht ($1.50) and we agreed. The tuk tuk took us halfway across town to a fancy jewellery factory. As soon as we pulled in and saw ladies with fancy dresses we knew it wasn't where we belonged. We tend to shop at cheap local markets not upscale gold and silver jewellery manufacturers. We peered inside and turned right back around to flag down a taxi, which luckily is very easy, even in remote parts of Bangkok. Obviously there were some commissions being paid to the involved parties in the scam. It wasn't really a bad scam, we didn't loose anything except a bit of time, but it was aggravating to know we couldn't just assume that people would be honest and helpful instead of trying to rip you off.
After the scam we went back to the hotel to have a swim and relax before my mom and I headed out to Wat Pho. And of course when we arrived we soon found out it wasn't actually closed till 12:30pm. Wat Pho is home to Thailand's largest reclining Buddha. Wow! It sure lived up to it's title because the Buddha was absolutely enormous. It is 46m long and 15m high! The reclining Buddha was the first and most impressive attraction in the temple compound, but there were many other ponds, statues and pagodas as well. Since we walked over to Wat Pho we decided to take the river boat back. The river was a rather hectic place with boats constantly stopping and starting, going in all directions. It was a neat experience and the view of the city was great-a different perspective than from the road.

The next morning we checked into a different hotel a bit closer to the Khao San action, but still not noisy. The room was nicer and we also got English TV channels.
After we got all checked in we took a taxi over to MBK-the most well known mall in Bangkok. MBK is known for it's cheap stuff, you don't go looking for Louis Vuitton and Chanel. There is a good variety too, it's quite boring looking around a mall with only clothes or only electronics, MBK has a bit of everything. We did a bit of shopping and browsing around MBK before searching for a hotel for the following night nearby. There are several other malls in the same vicinity so we thought the location would be great. And great it was, we found a hotel called A-One Inn, only about a 3 minute walk from MBK. We then booked the hotel for our next two days in Bangkok (since we already had one on Khao San Road for that night).

Back to Khao San we went, after we knew we had a new hotel in a great location for the next night. On that evening we took the river boat to Asiatique night market. We had a long and fun river boat ride to Asiatique, the boat constantly cruising into the docks at full speed and then hammering on the reverse, meanwhile the conductor is blowing piercing noises out of the whistle. I gotta say the boat ride to the market was quite a bit better than the market itself. It was overpriced and the shopkeepers wouldn't even look (let alone talk!) at you when you said you could buy it somewhere else cheaper. In my opinion Thailand in general did not live up to it's reputation of being the 'land of smiles', there were just so many miserable people. I think it's because they have had so many tourists that they don't care any more and we are a nuisance to them more than anything else. I'm not saying all Thai people weren't friendly, but there were lots that were. I think by far the friendliest people we have met in Thailand, were from Myanmar working. The Thai people don't have to pay the Burmese (Myanmar) people as much money as they would other Thais, and even at that the Burmese still make more money than they would back in Myanmar. The Burmese were appreciative that they could get a job in Thailand and were happy to help the tourists. I think that the Burmese both in Thailand and Myanmar were the most friendly I have met abroad. Now back on track...we didn't stay long at the market but it was worth going just for the boat ride. We passed some very beautiful and nicely lit up temples on our way up and down the river. There were also some very fancy dinner cruise boats we passed on the river, most of them almost empty.

That next morning we did some last minute t-shirt shopping on Khao San Road before checking out of our hotel. On Khao San Road there are also many vendors selling all kind of insects to eat. My dad decided to try some scorpion, cricket, cockroach and larvae. Yuck, yuck, yuck, definitely not for me!  Once we got the taxi to MBK we dropped our bags at A-One Inn and went shopping. We checked out some of the other nearby malls but wandered back to MBK in the end, because it was our favourite.
For dinner that night we ate at an amazing restaurant inside MBK. I don't remember what it was called but it was spectacular! It was all you can eat hot pot, sushi, ice cream and juice for an an hour and fifteen minutes. There was a conveyer belt going around with all sorts of stuff to cook in your built in hot pot table. The sushi bar was also great, with loads of different types of sushi. It was a VERY good meal for 300 baht ($10) each. It was expensive for Asian standards (we usually eat at little cheap places on the side of the road) but it was well worth it. You would NEVER be able to get something like that at home for even a remotely similar price. Evidently word had gotten out about the great deal because there was a big lineup just to get a table.

The next day was our last day in Bangkok. So we made the most of it and full out shopped all day. An early start was made so we could head out to Chatuchak Weekend Market and beat the heat. Chatuchak market is absolutely huge! It is 35 acres and has about 15,000 stalls. Luckily we came on Saturday so it wasn't very busy and not all the shops were open. I'm glad they weren't all open because we made out just fine with the hundreds or thousands that were open. It would be too overwhelming with all if them and all the people. We bought lots and lots of souvenirs there and even found some obscure and difficult to find carvings we saw on Koh Tao. We were overjoyed that we finally found them, because we had been looking all over Bangkok for them. We did a bit more shopping in MBK and I found a really cool retro Pan Am Airlines bag.
Finally we headed to the post office to mail home our hoards of stuff. 25 kilos actually! After a lot of packing up the parcels we headed back out to shop yet again!
This time we headed over to Pratunam Market. It was a not bad market but there wasn't a lot of variety, so I bought a change purse and a t-shirt. We ate some lab kai and papaya salad at a tasty sidewalk restaurant before continuing shopping. There were some stalls set up on the side of the road with very nice stuff that we checked out on our way back to the hotel. The stuff I thought was a lot better looking than the stuff in the market itself and was also quite cheap. So I bought some shorts and a tank top and my dad bought some really cute baby outfits for his friend's kids.

After an exhausting day of shopping and walking we headed back to our hotel to catch some sleep, before our flight to Delhi the next morning. We walked A LOT in Bangkok, on our last day alone we walked at least 10km, we left at 9am and never really had a full rest until we got back at 9pm. We were totally ready to do some sitting for a change, on our four hour flight to Delhi.

Koh Tao

Koh Tao...literally 'turtle island' is best known for its diving. Diving courses to be exact, Koh Tao issues the second most PADI diving certificates in the world. Unsurprisingly Cairns, Australia, is in the lead. Bans (one of the bigger dive schools on Koh Tao), alone qualifies about 8000 people per year. And there are about 60 dive shops on Koh Tao, so that means ALOT of people learning to dive (they won't all get as much business as Bans, but still that's a lot of people).
We got flagged down on the ferry by a guy from Bans, so we decided to check out their rooms, but soon found out they didn't have any triple rooms. We moved down along the beach checking out places as we passed until we settled at Lotus Resort. The room was somewhat dark and dank, but the pool was really nice. Both Bans and Lotus were located on Sairee Beach-the main beach, the busiest, the loudest music, the best shopping and the most variety of places to eat.
The next day we upgraded to Wind Beach Resort for a little bit more baht, but a nicer room and it came with buffet breakfast. The pool at Wind Beach was quite nice too, very nice at the beginning. Our first couple days on Koh Tao were quite mellow...but then all the full-mooners came up Koh Phangan and it got busy FAST. It was crazy the amount of people that arrived in a matter of days. It wasn't intolerable, it was just really busy. For our hotel, cleaning the pool wasn't high up on their to-do list. Then they turned off the pumps for a whole day, that combined with not cleaning the pool and tons of people swimming in it, didn't end up too well. On the evening of the day they had the pump turned off the pool started looking grossly murky and not clear. By the next morning the pool was completely disgusting and you couldn't even see the bottom. The pool wasn't very deep either, only about 5 feet. Our stay at wind Resort was cut short to four nights because of the filthy pool and the buzz of Sairee was getting a bit tiresome. Most of our time in Sairee was just spent wandering around town and hanging out at the pool or hotel room. We got a TV in the room that had three English channels: the odd animal documentaries, the mediocre movies and the crime show reruns.
On one of our days at Sairee, my mom and I went for a walk over to Hin Wong Bay, to check it out. The walk wasn't very long in distance but there was a massive hill that we slogged up. Hin Wong Bay was quite nice, very bouldery though with only one patch of sand. It just so happened that the only patch of sand was private and you had to buy a drink at the bar to access the beach. We bought a drink and then donned our masks and snorkels to check out the apparent 'snorkelling spot'. I was surprised by the amount of life around the bouldery shoreline, nothing great but still something to look at nonetheless. After our snorkel we ate some pad thai at the restaurant next door before heading back to Sairee.
Like I said before, we spent a total of five nights at Sairee, one at Lotus and four at Wind. So after a fair bit of looking we found a nice place just south of Sairee on Mae Haad Beach. Our new place was called Koh Tao Regal Resort. Sounds fancy but it was actually a little cheaper than our last two hotels and a bit nicer too. The pool at regal was nice as well; a three tiered infinity sure pool, looking out over the ocean. The pool even had a makeshift wooden diving platform. We stayed at the Regal Resort for 3 nights before checking out and moving on. We were only a short walk away from Sairee, so we made frequent trips there.

One day we got ambitious and decided to walk to Chalok Bay, on the very south of Koh Tao. It took only about half an hour to walk to Chalok. We checked out a few resorts, our favourite being Koh Tao Resort Paradise Zone. Koh Tao Resort has two areas-Beach Zone(its location is rather self explanatory) and Paradise Zone(up on the hill). The view from Paradise Zone was breathtaking, you could see so much. In my opinion the pool mixed with the view was the perfect combo. The pool was just spectacular, it was an infinity pool looking out over the ocean. It really felt like you could just keep swimming and swimming and swimming, like the pool had no edge. And when your feet hit the wall, it was like reality was softly nudging you back, not the all-too-powerful shove reality often likes to give.

Afterwards, we peeled ourselves away from the serenity and headed down the hill to the dive shop so we could organize some diving. And that was just what we did, the following day we went out for two dives. Our first dive was at Hin Wong Pinnacle, not super exciting, but there were a couple of fun swim throughs. We also spotted a cool looking nudibranch, it was black and white and reminded me of a cow. The visibility on our second dive was only slightly increased, but I liked it a lot better. Laem Thian Pinnacle (our second dive) was a bouldery dive site, leading to not much life but a whole lot of swim through tunnels. The swim throughs were really fun and a great practice for buoyancy. I saw TONS of nudibranchs on that dive, most of them the same black with white and yellow bumps. We had fun so we decided to go on two more dives the next day, one of which was at Chumphon Pinnacle, the best dive site on Koh Tao. I was very surprised when I jumped in the water and looked down I could see the dive site clearly. The visibility was much improved from the last two dives. Their vis was about 10m and Chumphon was double. The visibility was better still in Indonesia at about 30m, but it was a pleasant surprise to have 20m. The pinnacle had a bit of coral but it was mostly brown hues, with lots of pasty pink anemone fish taking cover in the fields of anemones. The highlight of the dive was definitely the schools of fish. We saw an enormous school of barracuda and massive school of fusiliers. White Rock was our second dive that day, not super exciting but still good. We saw some huge groupers so that made it more exciting. We are finished diving for this trip, that brings my total number of dives up to 26.

After we finished diving and enjoying the view at Koh Tao Resort, we headed back to Regal Resort for our last three nights on the island.
Now I will talk about food. Yum! Since we stayed on Koh Tao for so long we tried out our fair share of restaurants. We ate at a really good duck soup place in Sairee, but they closed down for some sort of event after our first couple days. We decided to try out a duck soup place in Mae Haad, but it was terrible. We found two different great restaurants in Mae Haad though. One was called Pranee and the other was called Yang, both very cheap and very good. In Chalok we ate mostly at Buddha View and had a great barbecue one night. The pancake stalls at Sairee and Mae Haad were amazing! We tried a few different kinds-banana, peanut butter and nutella on one and pineapple and coconut on another. It's probably best not to watch them make the pancakes though. Seeing all the dollops of butter and glugs of oil going into it, doesn't make you feel great about eating them. But they taste absolutely amazing and I'm sure they wouldn't taste nearly that good without all that butter and grease. Greasy food is the norm in Asia so it will be nice to go home and actually eat stuff that isn't fried.

We continued on our journey by catching the boat and bus up to Bangkok.

Koh Phangan

The boat ride to Koh Phangan was fairly short, only about 40 minutes. Our day was going quite nicely until we arrived at Baan Haad Yao Villas, then it started spiralling downhill.
We booked 3 nights at Baan Haad Yao Villa on Agoda.com, assuming we were getting a deal. When we showed up we found out, in fact we weren't getting a deal on Agoda, the walk in price was exactly the same. Then when we went to look at the room we found mouse crap all over the beds, the not-so-helpful-staff tried to deny it and say it was geckos, but we knew all too well it was mice. The pool on the brochure was blue and clean, but the one at the hotel was green and you couldn't even see the bottom. It was a battle to get our money back (we paid online with Agoda). First they tried to say it was low season and they had no money, they were broke. Somehow that just isn't very believable, they have a big resort sitting there but they have no money...I don't think so. Finally after a bit of arguing we just called Agoda and got two of the three nights refunded.
Then we walked over to see if there room available at another resort, yes they had room, but as soon as we came back with our stuff they jacked up the price another 200baht ($6). Six dollars isn't really a big deal, but it just irritates you to know they just always want to get that extra money out of you, so we moved on once again. We went back to another hotel for the third time, and rechecked the price in the lobby but as soon as we walked over to the room the jacked it up 200baht, just like the last place. We finally found a hotel, but then my dad went to have a shower and saw that the water coming out of the tap was brown and there was a HUGE cockroach on the pillow. Finally after most of the afternoon and some of the night looking we found a cheap little place that was good enough to lay our heads for the night.
In the middle of all this mess we stopped for dinner, I had some alright tuna pineapple curry. But within 10 minutes of eating it I puked it right back out. So overall, not a very good day. The next day we packed up and moved over to Salad Beach.
We found a great hotel called Salad Beach Resort, with a nice pool and an amazing breakfast. I could go on and on about the breakfast, there were eggs, toast, bacon, fruit, yogurt, granola and cereal. I haven't had granola and yogurt for a long time now and even though it was loaded with raisins (which I hate!), it tasted sooooo good! It was nice to have the pool because the beach was really shallow and not great for swimming. We even found a cold hot tub with a cascading waterfall while we were wandering around the garden area. One day kinda merged into the next while we were here, but I'm pretty sure we stayed 5 days.

We found another great place to eat called Big Mama's Restaurant. The food was amazing. All of the sauces were so flavourful and just plain yummy.

On one of the days we decided to go diving at sail rock-the best dive site in the gulf of Thailand. We did two dives, both at sail rock and they were alright. I came expecting not a whole lot of the diving and my expectations were met. I saw a few cool things like cleaner shrimps, nudibranchs and a school of barracuda. The visibility wasn't very good, only about 5 meters, give or take. It almost seemed like swimming into a snowstorm, with all the plankton floating around. It sure didn't feel like it though, the water was very warm-30 degrees Celsius!
After we knew the diving wasn't anything special at Sail Rock and got a bit bored of Phangan, we hopped on boat up to Koh Tao. The ride was only about an hour, but a choppy one at that.

Koh Samui

We got off the train the next morning in Hat Yai and quickly found a travel agency to buy bus and boat tickets from. The bus we took from Hat Yai to Surat Thani took about 6 hours. At Surat Thani we took an hour long ferry to the touristy island of Koh Samui.
That got us to Samui at around 7pm. It was dark by that time so we just hopped in a taxi and got the driver to takes to a good hotel on Lamai Beach. The room was pretty good, good for the night anyhow. By the next day we were well aware of the Samui taxi mafia. The extremely exorbitant taxi prices were a huge shock considering we were just in Indonesia where you can get a 13 hour taxi for only $70. And in KL you can get a taxi across the city for only about $5. It cost us 400baht ($13) to drive about half an hour-from the jetty to Lamai (not cheap like what we are used to, but that doesn't even start to explain the mafia's ridiculous prices). Then when we wanted to get a taxi from Lamai to Chewang-about a 5 minute drive, they asked us to pay 500baht ($16). Yes that's right...$16 for a 5 minute drive!!! We managed to get local transport-benches on the back of a truck for 300baht ($10) to Chewang (evidently they are part of the 'taxi mafia' as well!). The 'taxi mafia' kind of restricted us from going around and checking things out so we only spent a few days on Koh Samui.
While we were on Samui we found a great little restaurant called Sunshine Café with tasty baguettes and Thai food. The fried bananas and ice cream were absolutely amazing! They were every bit as good as I remember from Thailand six years ago. I'm so glad I'm in Thailand, the food in other places we have been is great, but in Thailand it's excellent. It's really different in the way of flavours, lots of lemongrass, coconut, curry and chilies.

The beaches on Koh Samui were pretty nice, although Chewang was super busy and lined with really fancy resorts, Lamai had more of a nice laid back vibe. It was hard to explore Samui, because it was all very spread out and the extreme taxi mafia prices weren't making us inclined to go check out other beaches.

So after a few days we got on the Songserm ferry and headed to Samui's neighbour-Koh Phangan.

Back in KL

Yup, back in Kuala Lumpur again! Good thing it's my favourite city in Southeast Asia because we have been there 3 times so far on this trip. It feels like my home away from home on Asia. We checked into Hotel New Winner again and went for roti, by tradition. It was 11:00 at night and there were far more people at Hussain Cafe (our roti place) than at 11:00 in the morning. The people of Kuala Lumpur must love their late night snacks because about a month ago when we arrived at 3:00am all the restaurants/street stalls were full of people happily snacking away and chatting amongst themselves. After our late night roti with the locals, we went back to the hotel and watched Beverly Hills Cop on our old English movie channel, last time we were in KL we watched Rocky. I'm getting my fix of old movies in KL anyways.

Our main mission in KL this time was to get out Thai visas, and that is just what we did the next day. The Thai embassy was a world of difference from the Myanmar embassy. It was air-con, there were seats and very fast moving queue tickets. We walked in and grabbed some queue tickets from the machine, we then started filling our application forms. Within about a minute our numbers were called and I had barely wrote in my name. I went back and grabbed more numbers but they just kept coming on the screen so I gave up and just finished my form, then got a number. Well the visa process was very simple and quick, fill out the form, give them your picture, your passport and hand over the money. The whole embassy 'experience' 1000x different and better than Myanmar's was.

Our afternoon was spent wandering around MidValley MegaMall before heading back to KL Sentral in time for a yummy feast of roti. The following morning we spent organizing train tickets up to Hat Yai, Thailand. Finally after a lot of waiting we got the second class sleepers booked for that evening. Then we hopped on the LRT and picked up our passports complete with Thai visas at the embassy. For dinner we had roti (surprise, surprise!), before heading out on the train to Ha Yai. I'm excited to see what Thailand is like, haven't been since 2007, so it will probably have changed a fair bit.