Our Asia Trip Diary – Part Twenty Four
This week’s travel diary starts in George Town, Malaysia. We had some good Chinese noodle soup as breakfast and then started our walk through the city. There are lots of murals to be found in George Town, and we had this big map where we can cross them off.
We also walked to the jetties, these are small piers and some of them have some shops and restaurants on them! Next to the jetties, there is also a Chinese temple, which is definitely worth the effort due to the nice view you have of the jetties in the water.
In the evening we went to New Lane Street Foodstalls, where we found a variety of food to choose from.
The next day, we hiked on Penang Hill. To get to the top, you can take a funicular. We first went by bus to a nearby station and when we started to walk to the funicular station, this lady in her car called us. She offered us a ride to the station, how nice! We then took the funicular all the way to the top and started the longest hike they had which was only 3km long. The road was mostly paved which was disappointing, but halfway through we saw lots of Dusky Leaf Monkeys! These are adorable! Once we finished the hike, we decided that we didn’t have enough yet and wanted to hike down to the botanical garden. Going down was extremely steep, as much as 30%! But we saw lots of monkeys and big squirrels, so it was definitely fun. Once we reached the botanical garden by taking a weird passage through the forest-like area; we were relieved and very tired. Our water was running out and we were sweating hard. The botanical garden was nothing to write home about, but there were lots of cute (tourist-attracted) monkeys and a monitor lizard.
On Wednesday it was time for us to leave Malaysia behind and officially go to our final country of this Asia Trip journey. We booked a ticket from George Town to Koh Lipe, an island in the very south of Thailand. This trip took almost the entire day, as we went with the bus through the mainland of Malaysia, crossed the border to Thailand, transferred to a different bus in the west of South Thailand, and then went to the harbour to take the ferry to Koh Lipe. Quite the journey but we made and our hotel is not more than 10m off the beach, how amazing!
On Thursday we had a relaxing beach day where we did nothing more than read a book on the white sandy beach and swam in the beautiful clear blue water. We also watched the sunset on Sunset Beach (duh), which is on the other side of the island.
Friday, we went on a snorkel adventure. We went back to Sunset Beach at high tide (tides are way longer here, about 6 hours!) and took out our snorkels. We went to multiple locations but our favourite was near a bunch of rocks in shallow water. There were lots of fish here and it felt adventurous to navigate between the rocks!
On Saturday we had an amazing day. We booked our first diving lesson and we were quite anxious! Luckily our instructor stayed calm and explained everything clearly to us. It was such a wonderful experience! We started from the beach, going into shallow water to learn the basic techniques. We first had to learn to calmly breathe underwater with our equipment. We also learned what to do if the regulator (the thing you used to breathe) falls out of your mouth and how you can get water out of your diving mask. We learned to use our BCD (a sort of lifejacket) and the required hand signals. We then continued deeper and actually swam about a dozen meters down through coral reefs and saw lots of cool fish! After this first dive, we got picked up by our boat and continued to a different site and we dove off the boat this time. Such an amazing experience!
The rest of the day we were exhausted. The diving was amazing but we were tired afterwards and just relaxed on the beach for the day. In the evening I decided to eat some fish and here in Koh Lipe, you can casually choose from their catch of the day! The fish lay on the ice for display and after I chose the Groupie Fish (because the fisher recommended it to me) they lay it on the bbq and bring it to your table. They serve it freshly prepared and marinated to us and Kobie and I munched away. Later that night, we grabbed two beach chairs and pulled the backrest down in order to lie down on them. This is how we ended our day with some beautiful stargazing.
Today is Sunday and we are currently in Koh Mook. We travelled this morning by boat from Koh Lipe to Koh Mook and it was quite the journey. It took about three hours and the boat trip was intense… The prow of the ship was constantly banging against the waves and we felt like we were in a big bouncy castle. But we arrived and we booked a tent! Back to basics but it’s fun and good for our budget.
We will tell you how it went next week!
