City Hotel Narathiwat

... island. Or so we thought! We haven't bothered with a guidebook for Malaysia as we don't intent to be here that long and any cycling we do won't be that involved. So, we copied down a load of notes from one of the books in Bangkok and found a tourist map which we thought would suffice. We could see from the book that from the border to Kota Baru you are actually going north, to get to Kuala Bersut it's south east. So having stayed at the border overnight we figured the ...

In Kota Bharu we stayed at The Ideal Guest House, at least that was what it was called, but I'm not sure that it quite lived up to it's name. Maybe they should rename it the Fairly Good Guesthouse, but I guess that's not as catchy. It was quite run down, and cheap (only NZD$16 for a double room with private bathroom). The old Chinese couple who ran the place were very nice. Kota Bharu itself was an interesting experience. It ...

... and find my way back (without a torch, genius!) i was accosted. By a kitten. It just wouldnt leave me alone. There i am on my back watching the stars and generally being your typical white rasta (me got dem beats ya one love, me feel de rhythm ya blah blah blah) and something crawled onto my chest, it wasnt a cockroach it was giant so thats colin out the window, it wasnt a snake, it was soft and it purred and ...

... in full burkas. Every restaurant is halal and the guide books all warn women not to walk around in tank tops or short shorts unless they want to be harassed. It definitely has a very different feel than the hectic motorbike craziness that I've encountered in many other parts of South-east Asia. After a fun couple of days and about 5 hours total of internet time, I had clean clothes and was ready to head south into the jungle.

... the extent that he will not approach you like the others but only waiting to be approached - as if he is surrendering his daily earnings to fate and fate alone. It was a good choice as we soon realised that he is already 86 years old!! And still very fit to be able to cycle so well - he does not have any children and his wife has passed away. He is still doing the job as he has been ...

... another island or (4) return to the Perhentians for two nights. Unable to decide we settled on spending another night in the not so nice city of Kota Bahru. Unfortunately the nice hotel we were staying at was fully booked so we had to check out of that and into one which looked more like a pay by the hour joint but never mind. I took myself off to the hairdressers for what turned ...

The journey to Malaysia was great, we went from Krabi to the border in a little mini bus with air con so it was probably the comfiest journey yet as we could put our feet up and stretch out, it was a long journey. We were debating whether to extend our visa to see more of Thailand but it would have meant doing a visa run to the border anyway. As soon as we entered Malaysia we were really glad we continued south as we could already see how ...

... to be one on today. So i went along and watched a performance of silat, a traditional martial art of self defence without weapons, which is traditionally practiced whilst drums and wind instruments are played in the background. They also had performers showing how they make kites and these rather interesting spinning tops, or gasing uri. These weigh about 5kg and the longest record for one spinning is 1hr 45 mins. pretty impressive ...

We left the Island by boat and were joined by Livia and Reto the Swiss couple we had met on the dive course (Reto has loads of curly ginger hair and uncannily resembles Gary Steele for any of you who went to Bradfield School). On arrival in Kuala Besuit we asked if the trains we running to Hat Yai and were told that they were (we had been told previously they weren't). As the Southern region of Thailand is a no go area as far as ...

... qui etait aussi la divemaster et je lui ai montre le probleme. Je ne sais pas pourquoi mais j'essayais de remplir mon masque d'air avec mon regulateur, en le sortant de ma bouche et en faisant des bulles dans le masque. Bon j'ai garde les yeux ouverts dans l'eau salee pour voir ce qu'elle me montrait, et j'ai fini apres plusieurs essais a realiser qu'il suffisait que je souffle par le nez en position verticale pour vider mon masque. Ah ca je dois dire, j'etais contente. Avec ...