TravelStream™ news feed for member phillthomas on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/phillthomas en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Fri, 09 May 2008 13:55:58 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207935840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207935840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207935840/tpod.html Fri, 09 May 2008 13:55:58 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Perhentian Islands, Brunei

Ok, so when I left KL, I had everything planned this time for my trip to the air port, as the last time I tried this in KL I ended up being a little bit late. I STILL managed to cut it pretty fine though~

Upon arriving in Brunei I was a little lost with my lonely planet being gone - but from past experiences I have learned to not rely on it too much anyway. It seems I struck it lucky.. and unlucky too. I had had a brief look online for accommodation before I came just to get an idea of what was available, and it seemed that a cheap hotel was the most budget option on offer. When I tried to explain to the taxi driver what I was looking for he had just the ticket... a YHA dorm room for only $10 Brunei a night!! That sounded excellent compared to a hotel room starting around B$60. The part I didnt like so much is the taxi driver charged me B$25 to get there, and it was only a 10 min drive! Ouch... :( At first I thought I was getting ripped off, but it turns out that taxis in Brunei are ridiculously expensive!

To put things in comparison I got a meal of fried noodles and a whole coconut (chopped open so I could drink the coconut milk as a beverage) for B$5. A big bottle of water went between B$1 and B$2 too.. so $25 for a taxi was rediculous.

Anyway.. I stayed in the main city of Brunei called Bandar Seri Begawan ( I think its called) and there wasnt a lot happening. Town was tiny - it consisted of about 4 blocks with one mall, and about 10 places to eat. There was nothing to see, and nothing to do. You couldnt go out for a drink as alcohol was totally banned. I started to wonder why I ever came here.

When I arrived it was late at night, and being hungry I went walk abouts for food, and to my surprise managed to get hassled by a prostitute... I think it was the only prostitute in town, as I managed to see her again the next night I went out for food. She wasnt pushy or anything however, just really annoying - and I couldnt quite tell if she was a man or not either!

My first and only day in Brunei I spent walking around the city trying to figure out what one of the worlds richest countries would be like. I decided it wasnt worth spending any money to do any sight seeing as there was nothing to see. I was bored within about 30 mins! I found a huge mosk gleaming with gold, contrasted with old falling-to-bits made-of-scrap houses on stilts in thw water right next to it. It was really strange seeing these poor looking houses in "one of the richest counties in the world". The rest of my day I spent checking out the big mall in town, but there wasnt much to see there. The whole place had such a run down, empty, boring feel to it. I couldnt understand why anyone would want to live there. Im glad I only had one fill day here... I was gonna make like a bald man and "get outta hair" as soon as I could!

After my 2nd night in brunei it was an early morning rise to catch a 6.something am bus to the main port town of brunei called Muara. In Muara I got my passport stamped and I caught a boat to a duty free island of Malayasian Borneo called Labuan and had about 4 hours there to kill until I caught my boat to Kota Kinabalu.

Pics = here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080411Brunei
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207935780/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207935780/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207935780/tpod.html Fri, 09 May 2008 13:54:58 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Brunei, Brunei

Ok, so when I left KL, I had everything planned this time for my trip to the air port, as the last time I tried this in KL I ended up being a little bit late. I STILL managed to cut it pretty fine though~

Upon arriving in Brunei I was a little lost with my lonely planet being gone - but from past experiences I have learned to not rely on it too much anyway. It seems I struck it lucky.. and unlucky too. I had had a brief look online for accommodation before I came just to get an idea of what was available, and it seemed that a cheap hotel was the most budget option on offer. When I tried to explain to the taxi driver what I was looking for he had just the ticket... a YHA dorm room for only $10 Brunei a night!! That sounded excellent compared to a hotel room starting around B$60. The part I didnt like so much is the taxi driver charged me B$25 to get there, and it was only a 10 min drive! Ouch... :( At first I thought I was getting ripped off, but it turns out that taxis in Brunei are ridiculously expensive!

To put things in comparison I got a meal of fried noodles and a whole coconut (chopped open so I could drink the coconut milk as a beverage) for B$5. A big bottle of water went between B$1 and B$2 too.. so $25 for a taxi was rediculous.

Anyway.. I stayed in the main city of Brunei called Banda Seri Bagwan ( I think its called) and there wasnt a lot happening. Town was tiny - it consisted of about 4 blocks with one mall, and about 10 places to eat. There was nothing to see, and nothing to do. You couldnt go out for a drink as alcohol was totally banned. I started to wonder why I ever came here.

When I arrived it was late at night, and being hungry I went walk abouts for food, and to my surprise managed to get hassled by a prostitute... I think it was the only prostitute in town, as I managed to see her again the next night I went out for food. She wasnt pushy or anything however, just really annoying - and I couldnt quite tell if she was a man or not either!

My first and only day in Brunei I spent walking around the city trying to figure out what one of the worlds richest countries would be like. I decided it wasnt worth spending any money to do any sight seeing as there was nothing to see. I was bored within about 30 mins! I found a huge mosk gleaming with gold, contrasted with old falling-to-bits made-of-scrap houses on stilts in thw water right next to it. It was really strange seeing these poor looking houses in "one of the richest counties in the world". The rest of my day I spent checking out the big mall in town, but there wasnt much to see there. The whole place had such a run down, empty, boring feel to it. I couldnt understand why anyone would want to live there. Im glad I only had one fill day here... I was gonna make like a bald man and "get outta hair" as soon as I could!

After my 2nd night in brunei it was an early morning rise to catch a 6.something am bus to the main port town of brunei called Muara. In Muara I got my passport stamped and I caught a boat to a duty free island of Malayasian Borneo called Labuan and had about 4 hours there to kill until I caught my boat to Kota Kinabalu.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207413900/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207413900/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207413900/tpod.html Fri, 09 May 2008 13:35:55 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Perhentian Islands, Malaysia

Perhentian Islands..

It all started with me arriving too late to catch the last boat over to the island! Bugger! As the boats dont tend to run frequently, I ended up having to stay a night in Kota Bharu (where I flew into). I stayed at KB backpackers which was super dodgy.. and not very nice, but it was cheap and convenient. Kota Bharu really didnt have much to see, so there was no point staying anywhere nice. The back packers did manage to organise a minibus to Kuala Besut, which is about an hour away from Kota Bharu where you catch the boat to the islands from. Getting to Kualur Besut cost me only RM8 instead of RM40 which saved me some cash... so the cheap backpackers was good for something. :) And it was on the mini bus I met Molly a Canadian from Vancouver who i ended up spending a bit of time with.

The next morning, once I made it to Kuala Besut vis the mini bus it was onto the fast boat to the island. These fst boats were dodgy lil boats, about 5 metres in length, with a basic material roof, and two massive 200HP outboard motors on the back! It took about 1 hour by these to get to the island, and if it was choppy there was a good reputation you would get very wet! Luckily our trip in was relatively calm so we didnt get too wet from the waves, but it did rain so it seemes we were to get wet one way or another. Upon getting to our beach there was no jetty so another smaller "taxi" boat came up to pick us up and take us the rest of the way... and charge us the RM2 charge.. cheekey buggers.

Perhentian Islands are Malaysia showpiece islands on the East Coast right up north near the boarder to Thailand. There are 2 main islands called Kecil and Basar (meaning small and big... literally) I stayed on the small Island, Kecil, at a place called long beach which is famous for its backpacker scene (and night life). It has a lot of low budget accommodation options and has the most night life of all the spots on both islands. The beach is a lovely white sand beach with some AMAZING turquoise water surrounding the bay, with jungle surrounding the beach and the guest houses in amongst the jungle. There is also no electricity in most places during the day (at night they run the generators), and there are no roads or cars on this island either which makes it a pretty chilled out kinda place... exactly what I was looking for.. and I loved it from the begining!

Neither me or Molly had arranged any accommodation on the island prior so as soon as we got to the beach we went trudging around looking for accommodation. I couldnt be bothered lugging my bag around with me so I trustingly left it on the beach while we search, only to find out that everywhere was full!! We did manage to finally find somewhere at the end of the beach called rock gardens, and it was very cheap too.. RM20 per night, and you got your own wooden shack to yourself. It was one of the grottiest places ive ever stayed though!! The huts were ok, and consisted of roughly peiced together bits of wood - you could see the ground through the floor boards, the sky through the roof, and the outside through the walls. The largest gap in the floor was about 1 inch wide... but that also meant that due to the lack of fan, it wasnt too hot with all those "ventalation holes"... "speed holes" you could say. Me and molly ended up getting lil huts right next door to each other, AND we got an ocean view, so we should have considered ourselves lucky. We also later discovered that all sorts of wild life came free with the hut too, including some rather unusually large geckos - these geckos must have been up to 30cm long and came in a range of colours! The toilets however were in a block in the middle of the complex and were totally disgusting. No hot showers, no toilet paper, no lights, no locks on some of the doors, no doors on some of the showers, and no toilet bowls in some of the toilets.. just a hole in the ground with a place for you to squat... hmmm... nice.

After settling into our new homes me and molly went to get some lunch, of which I ordered a side of fresh water melon, and i nearly got a whole watermellon!! I couldnt believe how MUCH there was~! Both me and Molly had trouble finishing it! Not a bad deal this was... I liked this place already.. but now i liked it more! :)

Now one of the main reasons for coming to perhentians was a girl i met in thailand last time had come here and raved about it, but also said that the diving was fantastic, so I wandered across to the closest dice shop called Spice Divers and enquired into some diving with them, and before you know it I was booked into the next dive at 3pm. In the mean time i managed to lose molly, so I just spent some time taking in some of the beautiful sun on the beach. For the dive we went to a site called d'lagoon which was one big coral reef just off the shore, not too far from the beach and it was magnificent! The visibility was great and there was all sorts of marine life to see! All in all apart from seeing the usual I saw a turtle, 3 reef sharks swimming in a line over the reef and thousands of "nemo's". :) All in all it was a great dive, and with the water temp at 30 degrees it was hard not to enjoyed it!

After the dive I managed to finally find Molly again and we went out for some dinner, and later down the beach to discover some what the night life consisted of. We were disappointed to find out that the beer was between 8 and 10 ringgit per can! Thats really expensive for asia.. There was another option however, not that it was a hell of a lot better, but it was a small bottle of vodka for 25 ringgits. The bar would sell you the whole bottle, and then give you cups to drink it out of. You just had to either supply your own mixer or buy a few cans of sprite or juice from the bar. This was the asia I was used to! The name of the bar we were at escapes me, but we ended up there till the early hours of the morning with a bunch of people we met, two of them being an irish couple with one being a music producer, and the other being a singer. So while someone played the guitar, she sang along. She had the most beautiful voice, and it definitely made the evening. Somewhere along the night I also lost my "room key".. I put this in quotes as its not a room key as such, but more of a key to a padlock that attached to a bolt on the front door of my hut (I wasnt staying in luxury, so I didnt get a door knob). Lucky for me however my wooden window doesnt shut properly so I could wriggle my way through that and get in.. a lot better at disturbing the owner at 4 in the morn! From now until I got this sorted out I had to enter and exit via the back balcony, so I threw a chair off the balcony so It made it easier to climb back on when I wanted to get back in.

The next morning I woke up in unbelievable heat with a good quality hang over, mainly due to the cheap vodka, but also lack of drinking water. I thought it would be a good time to sort out this lost key business. Thinking they had a spare I asked "reception" (a small hut down the stairs) if they had a spare key.... to which they had confused faces and a quick argument in malay. I waited patiently for 5 mins when a small malay man came up with a jar of keys. He tipped them out.. about 80 of them.. onto the ground outside my hut, and proceeded to try each key one by one. About 20 mins later we discovered that NONE of them worked so it was off to get the master key... and by master key I mean hammer! They then pryed the lock and catch off the wood and let me in. All in all it cost me 10 ringgit for a new lock and catch to be attached, but it was all a laugh at the end of the day.

By now I was starving and I had to make it down to the dive centre (about 20m walk) for my dives as I had signed up to complete my advanced course. For this I needed to complete a compulsory navigation dive and one optional dive, which I chose to be the wreck dive. The fist dive was the wreck dive and was to be done at Vietnamese wreck. This wreck is about 30 years old and was a pontoon type vessel that used to carry refugees during the Vietnamese war. No one died when it sunk, and it landed in about 18 - 23 metres of water upside down. The visibility on the dive wasnt amazing, but there was one really weird thing I saw. During the dive we got to go inside the wreck, and as it was quite old it had a large amount of coral growth on it. Once inside you could look up, and you would see coral growing upside down from the upside of the wreck. What was weird though is that the fish would also swim upside down as if they were swimming the right way up with the coral.. and it wasnt just one or two fish either. Every fish I saw on the roof was swimming upside down!! What made it look even stranger was watching your bubbles go up passed the fish swimming upside down, and into the coral growing upside down... it almost looked like your bubbles were floating to the bottom. Other than that we saw a few other large fish, some barracuda, and quite a few puffer fish.

The next dive I did was my navigation dive which consisted of underwater navigation by means of compass and natural surroundings. Funny thing was when I practiced on the beach I screwed it up, but underwater I was spot on! One of the tasks I had to do was use the compass to navigate a square traveling 30 metres for each side, and i managed to end up right on the spot where I started within about 1/2 a metre! Once I had completed the tasks we used the rest of the time to do some pleasure diving, of which I spent a lot of time playing with all the nemo's I could find. The best thing about these fish is that they are very aggressive which makes them quite fun. As you swim up to their home in their sea anenome they will come out and dart around trying to threaten you, even though they are only 5cm long. Occasionally they will try to bite you, but this never hurts. Sometimes you can put your fingers close to the anenome and the clown fish will come up to scare you away, and you can then cup your hand under him, and slowly bring him away from his home, and you end up with a nemo swimming in the cup of your hand! Its great fun!

After the dives I found molly up at her hut, and she was going down to play some volley ball. I had to finish some paper work to get my advanced diving license, but I managed to catch up with her for a short trek through the jungle to the other beach on the other side of the island called coral bay for sunset. This is where I met Linda who was from Holland, and Suji from Canada. Coral beach was a bit like long beach where I was staying, only smaller and less busy...and the sun set turned out to be crap anyway. There was a rather large cloud sitting on the horizon which kinda ruined the colours, but despite my complaining it was still nice.

After the trek we organised to meet up with everyone for dinner, and I told everyone that tonight was going to be a party night as it was my birthday at midnight!! Sandro who I met in Langkawi also made it to the island tonight so we had a group of 5 to go out with. We all started with a dinner on the beach, and then onto a bar called palm tree. It was at Palm tree where someone finally had some kerosene so i could do some fire twirling! I had been asking everyone if anyone had kerosene.. problem was everyone looked at me sideways as they didnt know what kerosene was. I finally managed to find out what the malay word was for it ( I dont know how to spell it, but it was something like: minya tana) and it was only after that I started to get somewhere! Although people wandered what the hell i wanted that for, and trying to explain fire dancing to a maly was out of the question!
After some fire spinning, it was a countdown till midnight and then we all started partying! I dont know what it was about the night, but everyone seemd to be in just the right mood to have FUN! We all went up to the bar and the main dance floor and we were all dancing away, just the five of us. Within about 1/2 an hr we had nearly the entire bar up dancing with us too...we WERE the party there!! After a while things started to quiet down a bit so we left to go to another bar down the beach, but there wasnt much else happening.
It was about this time Molly, Linda and I decided it would be a good idea to go for a swim in the sea.. and with the sea temperature being up around 30 degrees, it would be rude not to! Which also reminds me that when its pitch black at night and you're in the water you can move your hands really fast and then all the fluorescent plankton start to glow, and you get some briefly glowing fluro green specs all through the water... its sooo cool!! The whole night ended up being a really great night, and was an excellent birthday!!

The next morning I work up extremely tired, and only JUST managed to get my boat off the island in time in attempt to catch my flight to Bali, and found a very nice couple from England to share a cab to the airport with. I got on with them really well.. and its just a shame that I cant remember their names nor did I get their contact details. :( This time I was heading to Bali... or so I thought!! I had my flights all booked and paid for - and I paid next to nothing for them as I had booked ahead with air asia, the only problem is I had a similar problem of not having enought time between the connecting flight in KL, and I was going to miss one of them. I wasnt too concerned with that, as I could always purchase another one at the airport. The only problem was that the air asia flight I was going to get had been canceled... When I went to try malaysian air I found that wasnt an option either as their flight was too late. Oh ohhh.... I could then change my flights so I could have had the time in Bali, but that would have cost around 1000 ringgit.. or about 330 australian... and for a couple nights in bali that was just going to be too expensive!! Ouch!! Soooooo... I decided to go back to perhentian, as after all... I really loved it there!

So another missed flight... I missioned it back to the island. Back on the island I managed to run into Molly within about 20 mins, and she had the most confused look on her face, and wondered what on earth I was doing back!!

With all my running around at the airport It was about 7.20pm by the time I made it back onto the island. I had found everyone by about 8pm, but still hadnt managed to find some accommodation! :O I also really didnt want to go back to the delightful pleasure of rock gardens, so I was looking everywhere but there. I ended up settling for something more expensive at RM70 per night at a place just close by which was a lot nicer. This time I had a lock on my door, an actual door knob, light switches, a fan, my own bathroom and shower and power outlets to charge my phone / camera etc - these were ALL things that my rock gardens room DIDNT have! (although the light and power only worked at night when the generator was running). I quickly got changed and met up with the gang at a nice restaurant called panarama.

Later we went down the beach to a new bar called safety stop bar, that only opened last night. This was a basic bar right on the beach with tables in the sand, and was the bar where most of the beach was at. It was here where i met another kiwi, a lovely german couple that I originally met on the first boat ride to the island, and some irish girls that I just happened to be on the yacht I was on when I was sailing the whitsundays in Australia! This bar also had some "minya tana"... or kerosene.. and they were keen for me to do a "fire show" as it was a new bar and they wanted some attention. :P Cool! I ended up getting a free beer out of it, and was beginning to get a reputation as "fire man",not that I minded. Later that night we also went for another swim in the sea and got home at about sinrise... hmmm... seems to be a familiar thing happening. On summary my birthday was all over the place during the day, but Ive managed to turn it into two really really fun nights, and met some great people!

The next day was a killer waking up. I missed check out time of 11.30, so that meant I had to pay for another night in my "expensive" room. Although, I didnt mind so much though as it was a nice place to be. This day quickly became a nothing day, and involved a lot of lying on the beach, swimming and eating. JUST what I needed!! :) This was also my last full day on the island so I was quite happy to simply take it all in. Later that night again I met up with Molly and Linda again for dinner, and went back to saftey stop bar, where they wanted me to do some more fire spinning, of which I was happy to do and got a few free drinks out of it again. Tonight was a bit more tame than the previous nights, and didnt end up with a midnight swim in the sea this time. Also a lot of us were all leaving the next day so we didnt want to be too hung over, so I had an "early one" at about 3.30am.

I struggled to get up the next day at 9am to check out and make a dive I had booked in. This time we were diving sugar wreck. Surgar wreck as I am told was a larger ship carrying too much sugar when a big wave washed over the ship, and as she was over weight she couldnt handle the extra water and she sunk. No one died on this sinking either. The entire wreck is about 60-70 metres long and is in one piece. It went down in 2001 so there wasnt a huge amount of coral growth on the wreck. The best thing I found about this wreck was that apart from the low visibility trying to stop you, you could see the ship reasonably clearly under water, and it still had a lot of its ropes and nets all strewn around the place. Going inside the wreck there were some strange air pockets you could poke your head into if you wanted to, however we were advised against this, and I didnt particularly want to smell how bad that air was. One other great thing we saw on this dive was 4 lion fish all in the same spot! Its nice to see just one lion fish... very occasionally you might see two next to one another.. but here were 4 all within about square metre!! We saw a few sand sharks, and a few sting rays as well, but other than that this site didnt have that much marine life on offer.. Just cool ship wreck stuff!

The rest of the day I hang out on the beach talking to Katharina, one of the germans (one of the coolest germans ive met in fact.. GO Katharaina!) I met the other night who I got on really well with! After spending as much time on the beach as I could possibly manage I went to grab my stuff and had to then catch my fast boat back to the mainland. It was good bye to Perhentian Islands :( I seriously had a good time here, and with a combination of the people, the weather, the lack of cars and commercialism, and the vibe of the place... this has to be near the top of my list of my favourite spots... if not THE top. Its sad to leave.

Back in Koala Besut I said my good byes to molly, and started on my Mission to KL. I met 3 other travelers who I could share a taxi with to get to kota bharu where I was going to catch my bus to KL. 2 of them were from england and were also trying to get to kl by bus, which worked well for me as thats what I was trying to do also... but this catching a bus business was proving to be a little bit more difficult than I had imagined! Due to it being school holidays (its always a holiday where I go!?!?) all the buses going to KL were full!! We then got in another taxi to another bus station and found a bus with some space, but it wasnt one of the nice buses that big comfy limited seats.. so we decided against it and caught the same taxi to the train station now. Problem was the trains were full too!! Argh! I had to get to KL to catch my flight to Brunei, so I had no choice but to get that other bus. Luckily they still had some seats left when we went back to 2nd bus station. We purchased our tickets, killed some time in the near by mall, and then got on the bus at 9pm. It was a pretty uncomfortable journey but we made it to KL at stupid oclock in the morning... 5.30am.. and I was planning on not having to pay for a mornings worth of accommodation, but I didnt want to stay on the streets so I went back to the hostel I stayed at the first time I flew in a few days ago. They had space available, and I managed to get in one free breakfast at 6.30am, have a sleep, and get in a 2nd free breakfast when I woke up at 11am. YUS! haha

My day in KL wasnt much of anything as I had a flight to catch at 6pm so it ended up being what I called an "admin" day where I sorted out my travel blog, replied to emails, and generally planned things. I was in need of one of those so it worked out. Next stop was Brunei..... Stay tuned.

Photos from Perhentian should be.... um.. HERE.. but my camera broke, so i dont have that many :( : http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080405PerhentianIslands
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207248540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207248540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207248540/tpod.html Tue, 06 May 2008 15:03:26 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Langkawi, Kedah, Malaysia

For those who dont know Langkawi is an island at the very top of Malaysia on the west coast right on the boarder of Thailand - you can actually see Thailand from the island. Its also a duty free island, not that is has much to do with anything, but a lot of islands off the mainland are this way.

My arrival went smoothly until I got to where i was trying to go (pentai Cenang - pronounced che-nang - which was the main beach on Langkawi). I didnt know that I arrived at the very beginning of a 3 day water festival, so the place was packed! Also I was following the lonely planet to try and find a guest house that doesnt exist. This place was full of hotels, and no guest houses or hostels, and seeing as it was really hot and I had all my bags, I wasnt in the mood to go walking. I went into the first hotel I could find called Nadias Inn and enquried about a room. 150 ringgit per night~! ouch... guest houses charge somewhere in the region of 30 - 50 ringgit per night, albeit they arent as nice. Im not sure how, but I managed to bargain it down to 100 riniggit per night and thought that it would just have to do. After all it was only 2 nights and I was looking forward to having my own room for once so I could sort out all my stuff.

Walking around there were stalls everywhere with food, and all sorts and music playing everywhere. The beach was busy with action and games everywhere, and it was full of malaysians. I was expecting to see more westerners here, but there were almost none to be found which I found a little odd. Maybe I was just used to Thailand. Also I could figure out that there was a festival happening, but I had no clue as to why it was a water festival?! There really wasnt a lot to do with water here, apart from the fact it was on a beach, and it was nothing like the water festival in Thailand where everyone goes mental with water pistols, water bombs, buckets, hoses... or anything that can project water at another person. With the whole festival being in malay, and with lots of malaysians everywhere I felt a little out of place.

Later that night I went down to the beach looking for a place to have a beer, and with a strong muslim influence here there wernt too many places that sold alcohol. I found one not after too long and this is where I met a scottish guy and a swiss guy to have a beer with. Later a german girl, welsh girl and aussie girl joined us so we had scotland, switzerland, wales, germany, australia and new zealand all represented at the one table... Very international I must say. It was weird having just one of every nationality there. The night consisted mostly of drinking and crazy conversations until we all decided to mission to sanbar.. supposed do sound like samba - the spanish dance. It was a funky lil bar with everything being made from wood, but had nothing to do with spanish dancing! It was a bit of a crazy night, but I tried to have an early night as I had booked and paid for 2 dives the next day! I SOOO didnt end up going to bed early though. I ended up waking up t5he next day with about 5 mins to get ready, and the van that was picking me up calling me to ask where I was.. Whoops.

The dives were to be on an island about 1 hour fast ferry ride away called pulau payer.. or payer island.. which is a marine park and is supposed to be a good dive location. The first site was at a site called coral gardens and it had a spectacular amount of hard and soft coral with lots of different colours. I managed to see all sorts of marine life including sharks, lion fish, a moray eel, some big mackral, and a few barracuda. Lunch was on the island and was complete with a fish / shark feeding show which was cool as! They threw dead fish into the water as food and the fish went nuts, and every now and then they would all dissappear from the food with a moment to follow a shark would come in and gulp the food in one go. There was a large resident baracuda, rounghly about 1.5 - 1.8 metres, there too which did the same thing from time to time... it was cool to watch.

The second dive was at a second nearby island, and I didnt find it quite as good. The current was a little bit stronger and visibility not as good. We did manage to see parts of a wreck however as well as a few large baracuda along with some of the usual corals and things.

Back on the main island of Langkawi I was due to meet up with the gang again from last night, only this time we gained an extra sweedish and english girl - so we managed to keep the maximum level of representatives from every country at 1. This time it was a few drinks on the beach in amongst the festival they were having. They had a big stage set up on the beach with singers and entertainers on the stage. The music was nothing that anyone I know would be terribly interested in however, and the entertainment was all in malay, so understanding was a little out of the question. Nonetheless the australian member of our group managed to get very drunk and said she wanted to dance on the stage. Low and behold about 5 mins later we saw her on the big screen!! Those crazy Australians!! I have no idea how she managed to do it, AND not get kicked off either, but it was very funny to watch!

After having enough of drinking our vodka of our leaking paper cups I managed to get some plastic ones in attempt to find some kerosene (and some plastic cups) to do some fire twirling..... plastic cups I could get, but no kerosene.. :( so no fire twirling for me. We then decided to mission it to another bar down the beach called reggae bar.. and reggae music they played.. funny enough~! It would have been a perfect place to take over the sound man and play some fat freddy's... which I explained to the sweedish girl, and to my surprise she had their album and already loved them to death.. but its hard not to. The whole evening was awesome and ended in another late one and a headache the next morning. I have to say though... if it wasnt for the people i'd met in Langkawi it would have been a pretty boring trip. :P

The next morning I was due to fly out, and this is where some of the trouble started. At the time booking my flights, all that time ago in Melbourne, I was a little tired and stressed from work and it was late at night, and I accidently didnt allow enough time between my connecting flights in KL to Kota Bharu, so I was going to miss one of them for sure. I tried to change either of them, but tht wouldnt work either. Long story short I went to the airport and ended up purchasing a ticket with Malaysian air instead and it worked out to be the same as fixing everything up with air asia - only with malaysia I got to go to the new flash KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport - domestic terminal), and they transfered my baggage for me to my other flight (which air asia wouldnt do) AND not only did they have a higher baggage allowance, they didnt charge me any excess baggage charges too.. so that made me much happier. :D

Soooo.. now im on my way to the Perhentian Islands... I have heard some good things about this place and im excited!

Once again for photos please go to.. http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080403Langkawi
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207894980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207894980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207894980/tpod.html Tue, 06 May 2008 14:47:27 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

KL....

Sooo... after a delayed air asia flight I arrived at KL airport - but it wasnt the world class one that KL has, oh no... it was the shitty air asia budget one knows as LCCT (low cost carrier terminal), which uses the same runway, but is about 15 mins drive away. No matter tho, I was there and I paid bugger all to get there so I was happy. Getting to my hostel was one hell of a mission too tho! I arrived at 3.30ish in the arvo, and finally got to my hostel at 7.30! The bus went every place in KL before it went to Chow Kit, which was where my hostel was, and adding in the factor of peak hour traffic and the fact that KL airport is fricken ages away from KL. The joys of traveling huh?

The hostel I stayed in was called hostel cosmopolitan and was almost impossible to find. The bus was supposed to drop me off on the street corner outside the hostel, but didnt. Lucky for me I had a map of KL from the last time I was in KL and managed to wing it most of the way. They had night markets on the street the hostel was on too, so I couldnt find the street name and didnt know where the hell I was. After looking like a lost tourist for about 20 mins I managed to ask someone who spoke enough english for some directions. Turns out I was walking up and down the street it was on, and it was about 20 metres away - but it was on the 4th floor of a building and it had very poor singage. Once I was there though it was a very nice place to stay, and offered free beakky and internet.I settled in alright sorted my stuff out and then went walk abouts. There wasnt much to see in this part of town except from a few night markets and a malaysian man performing magic tricks. I didnt understand a word he was saying, but he was funny and his tricks were good!

For my first day in KL I checked out some caves called Batu Caves. These are some large caves that are also sacred and at a certain time of the year many people come here to pray.. It has a huge statue of a standing golden buddah out the front and there about 253 steps (or a number there abouts, as I cant quite remember the exact figure) to climb to get up to the caves. The caves were impressive, but like a lot of things in asia, not very well looked after. They were dirty, and smelt pretty bad. I didnt hang around for long as I had a lot I was trying to cram in to the day.

I caught the bus back to KL, where I caught the monorail to KL Sentral (KL Central station - they spell things funny here) where i was going to catch another bus to Genting Highlands which is a big entertainment spot on the top of a mountain. It contains an indoor theme park, and out door theme park, a casino and a big hotel. From memory it sits at something like 2,200 metres, but I could be making that up too.

The bus trip there was absolutely insane however!! There were so many occasions where I thought the bus was either going to run off the road, hit another on coming car, or roll over! The roads up the mountain was extremely windy with some crazy bends. I was just glad that most of it was uphill - this meant that he couldnt drive too fast!

Once I was there finding the main entrance was nothing close to easy, and I soon discovered a lot of the rides seemed to be not working. The cable car that takes you up to the top was under maintenence and "temporary closed" is what they said. I head this saying a lot. Also the MAIN reason I went is they have a ride there where you sky dive over a massive fan, and I was so looking forward to that, but no - "temporary closed". I checked out the out door theme park too, but most of the rides were temporary closed due to the rain which was on and off. I did however manage to get a ride on one called the flying coaster. Its a roller coaster where you lie on your stomach facing forwards while hanging from the coaster above, so it feels like you're flying. It was really fast, and did barrel rolls and all sorts! It was crazy, but heaps of fun!~ I also checked out this motion master thing, but the show was well below average. You wore 3d glasses so things could come out of the screen at you, but it didnt work that well. The show was kinda like watching a game preview for a 90's arcade shoot em up game where you go around shooting skeletons and monsters... not very impressive.

After walking around being disappointed by all the temporary closures and not being able to go on my sky dive ride I had enough and decided to go back to KL. I was just hoping that the driver on this trip was better than the last. I WAS WRONG! I didnt think it was possible, but he was WORSE! This was WAY scarier than any of the theme park rides, and i thought that i was going to die. Whats worse too is that it was raining, AND it was down hill, so he go as fast as he wanted. Suicide I tell you, but im alive to tell the story.

Back in KL I decided to check out Times square, which is a big flash shopping mall in KL. Big and flash it was too. It had a impressive entrance with huge pillars and a drive up sections for taxis and buses. The mall had lots of the major world brands in there too, along with almost every other conceivable shop you can think of... and.. oh... you know... a theme park~! The theme park takes up something like 9 floors and has a full blown roller coaster in it too! It was unreal! The shopping here was great too, and the best way I could probably explain is that everything is flash and modern, and the prices are roughly the same (give or take a bit) to prices in NZ or Aus, but... it in Ringgit, so if you are spending your Aussie dollars - as i was - then you can devide everything by 3! YUSSS! Ill have 66% off thanks. :) The shops have a lot on offer too, so you can always find something you like.

After Times Square mall it was about 10 at night, and I was nackard, so I went back to the hostel to get ready for my flight to Langkawi tomorrow. Judging by the mission it was to get from the airport I thought I should allow plenty of time to get there.

The next morning I slept in though and was late! I managed to get to KL Sentral to catch a more direct bus there this time, as I didnt want a repeat of what happened when I was in Sydney and miss my flight. Turns out I got there just as the bus was leaving, which was great... But the bus was full which was not to great. At this stage if i was going to catch the next bus I was going to miss my flight...hmmm... I can see where this is going. It was about this time a nice taxi driver persuaded me to catch his "teksi" there. It was a hell of a lot more expensive, (80 ringgit, which is like $23AU) but not that bad considering it was an hour trip going at like 140kms along the motorway~. In hindsight it was a good thing I caught the cab, as there was no way I was going to make it the airport in time other wise.

I went to check in my air asia flight, but this also turned out to be harder than I thought. As my original flight was canceled and they moved me to another flight 1 hr later (which I knew about and had planned for). but this flight check in had closed. Hmmm... this trip seems to have a repeating theme to it now. I keep missing flights. The guy was nice enough to put me on the next flight tho which was about 40 mins away so it all worked out in the end. Another thing that hurt was the excess baggage charges. Air Asia only allow 15kg on their domestic flights, and I was 9kg over. That translated to a 90 ringgit charge - my flight only cost something like 100 ringgit~! Go figure.

Anyway, Langkawi here I come... finally.


I havent taken many photos while in KL, mainly as I took att the touristy ones last time I was there. Incidently, I actually just noticed on my last trip went on bus from KL to singapore to catch my flight to brisbane, and this time I went by train from brisbane to gold coast to catch my flight to KL... so it was almost a reverse of last time. I really was going back to where I left off on my last trip!

Anyway.. of the photos I did take.. you should find them here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080401KualurLumpurBhatuCaves,
here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080401KualurLumpurGentingHighlands,
and here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080401KualurLumpur
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207032780/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207032780/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1207032780/tpod.html Tue, 06 May 2008 14:21:29 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Gold Coast, Australia

After a long train trip (long being comparitive.. it was only just over an hour) I arrived at the hostel to find Heather there checking in. I guess that means she won the race - but only by 5 mins or so! The hostel was really nice though. It was part of a hotel, so it had a nice 24hr reception, large pool, and all sorts of facitlities. I was in a room full of irish - I could tell immediately as I never saw them without a beer in hand - I was also in with one swede who had eaten too many hash cookies and was feeling a little worse for wear. We all had no idea where he got them from, or how many he had, but he was lieing on his bed grasping his stomach in pain and asking for someone to call an ambulance!! The paramedics came, and the next time I saw him was at 6 in morning and he was fast asleep. Go figure!?

That night I ended up having a quiet beer with the Irishfolks, and talking to some stunning girls from Denmark.... The more girls I meet from this area the more motivation I have to go there!! Guess where im planning on going in Europe?? Nuff said.

I ended up starting the morning almost as bad as the previous one. This time due to the combination of me using my old nackard phone as an alarm and me sleeping like stone giant... I.. well... didnt wake up. What did wake me up however was the bus driver calling me wondering where I was. LUCKY for me this time he was a nice fellow, and waited while I hap hazardly scrambled my stuff together and made a record check out from my hostel. I made the bus! Only just tho. It turns out the plane was running an hour late too.... ahhh... so goes life.

Anyway, its a little odd thinking that im FINALLY out of Australia. Ive kinda come to love the place and call it home. But, as I now say.. Home is where you hang your hat - I just have many hats.Many hats = many homes, and Australia will always be one for me now. It was also GREAT to get to opportunity to see some of aussie before I left too. If anyone is thinking about traveling Australia, I highly reccomend it!!! Its a little more expensive to travel than Asia or South America, but the back packer trail is set up well here with some awesome hostels (and i mean AWESOME, some of them are flasher than a lot of hotels!), really beautiful places to see and lots of swedish, germans, english, and irish to meet en route.

I really love Australia... It would be a fantastic place if it wasnt for all those australians! :P (Sorry guys, but as a Kiwi it is obligatory to give aussies some stick)

Next stop: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.... Cant wait!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206946260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206946260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206946260/tpod.html Tue, 06 May 2008 14:14:26 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

So I finished Fraser island, and stayed in a bit of a shitty hostel in Hervey Bay called The Palace. It was the cheapest I think, but I wouldnt stay there again. Hervey bay (for some reason pronounced Harvey bay) is a bit of a nothing place, and best to avoid if you can help it. Tired as I was from the trip I sorted out my stuff ready for an early morning bus ride to Brisbane. This trip was only about 5 hours or so,... so it wasnt too bad.

In Brisbane I happened to meet a Canadian called Heather who also arrived by bus and was destined for the gold coast like me. We ended walking into the city together and I showed her around some of the old spots. It was strange being back there again.. but mainly in the fact that it hadn't felt like I had left. Everything was the same, and I still knew where everything was - which is bloody fantastic from a travelers point of view! I ended up checking out a few familiar sites down memory lane, and took a "cruise" along the river in the ferry. I was expecting to possibly stir up some of the negative emotions from some of the not so great things that happened while I was in Brisbane last, but to my surpise nothing came up at all. It was a little surreal.

After my "cruise" it was time to catch my train to Gold coast. I happened to run into heather from Canada again at the transit centre, where she was catching a bus to the same hostel as me... it was a race! Me on the train, and her on the grey hound bus!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206773340/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206773340/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206773340/tpod.html Tue, 06 May 2008 14:01:49 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Fraser Island, Australia

Fraser Island here I come!! For anyone who doesnt know it is the largest sand island in the world and is world heritage listed.. and for good reason - its stunning!! I was about to commence on my 2 day tour with cool dingo tours.. and it all started smoothly.

I caught the over night bus from Airlie beach, and this time the bus was much nicer as it was an old McCaffertys bus and not a minimal greyhound one... and they played a movie too - now thats luxury!! This time I also poichased one of those inflatable neck pillows for the trip, and that did wonders!! I also managed to reunite with my bag that they managed to leave in Townsville which was a relief.

My neck pillow was so good I ALMOST slept through my stop!! I arrived at 7am, and was then picked up by my tour from the bus stop at 7.20am... so I was cutting it pretty fine, but all went well. I caught the ferry across no worries and met a lovely and very attractive sweedish girl on the ferry over called caroline who I ended up spending most of the trip with. We started by getting into thie mammoth 4wd bus, which was totally necessary as the roads there are made of sand, and quite possibly the bumpiest EVER! We were also instructed to wear out seat belts... and for good reason too. If it wasnt for the seat belt there would have been several occasions where I would have hit the roof or head-butted caroline in the face. Im sure Caroline being the typical perfect looking sweetish girl she was didnt want her face rearranged either.

Our first stop was at a place called basin lake. Its unreal when you show up, you drive through rain forest growing out of white sand. The lake is fresh water, is absolutely crystal clear and actually makes great drinking water... all surrounded by beautiful white sand. Swimming in it was awesome too as it was just so clear! After the swim it was a walk through some rain forest. And as exciting as this was there isnt really too much to say. It was awesome walking through the massive trees mixed in with palms and ferns - all growing out of white sand. In the middle of it was a creek which is just impossible to explain, but ill try.. It was a white sandy bottom, and well... you couldnt see the water it was SO DAMN CLEAR!! The water is pushed up from a massive under ground water table the fraser island has through a natural spring, and is about 12 degrees in temperature. Its absolutely stunningly clear and pure to see. From what i remember I think Frazer island has an underwater table of roughly 30 times the capacity of Sydney harbour... and if you ask me... thats a LOT! This is also where we found leeches. One of the girls was unlucky enough to find one attaching itself to her foot, but we did manage to get it off in time!

Next stop was lake McKenzie which is another natural lake on the island, once again with stunning crystal clear water on white sand. This lake is the most popular spot on the island, and the most photographed. It also has a ph balance of about 5 - 5.5 which is about equal to human skin, and hence makes it a very nice sensation to swim in. The sand in this area is also very fine and excellent for exfoliation or cleaning jewelery, so you can really have a bit of a beauty make over here! It is also home to some fresh water turtles, however I didnt manage to spot any.

This was the end of day one, but this also meant the beginning of night one. We all stopped to get some incredibly important alcohol, and for the two irish on the bus it was just an opportunity to replenish the beers they had been drinking all day... those crazy irish. :P I was lucky as we had a good group who mixed well so we all got together before dinner for a few drinks... and after diner for some drinking games!! The accommodation standard on the island was 1st class too! I was very impressed considering it was domitory styled accommodation. We had nice bathrooms, and the use of all the resort facilities including tennis court, volleyball court, and heated swimming pool - although we didnt use any of these as I found getting drunk with the foreign girls much more interesting... haha.. ahh the joys of being young and traveling!

The following morning wasnt has hard as I thought it might be, and was kick started with an awesome beakky. And to go off on a tangent the food on this tour was fully comprehensive and just down right good! AND I got to stuff myself.. and that I did. Our first stop today was a wreck on the beach that I had fogotten the name of. It did used to be however, a fast service passenger ferry between Sydney and Auckalnd. Then during WW1 it became a hospital ship, and was painted white with a big red cross. After the war it went back to ferrying people between Australia and NZ. After it started to become a little older and slower it was the converted to a luxury liner and was decked out with the flashest of flash furnishings and chandeliers etc. Once it started to get a bit old, it was then sold to a japanese shipping form for scrap metal. The Japs sold the propeller on the vessel and decided to tow the ship back to japan. During an out of season hurricane the ship broke off the lines and washed up on fraser island. They thought, no worries, we'll tow it out at high tide. High tide came, and it wouldnt budge. They then thought, next tide. They tried again and nothing. They then thought.. ahh... no worries, we'll wait a month untill king tide. King tide came and still nothing. Long story short they tried this for almost a year until the realized they werent going to get the ship out, and so thats where it has been ever since. Another interesting point is that during ww2 the Aussie airforce used the ship as target practice for bombing. Itonically they dropped something like 200 bombs, and only 2 hit the ship. Gives you confidence in the airforce huh?

Our next stop was Eli creek, which was another amazing crystal clear creek. Unfortunately I managed to get an "uber" splinter in my foot... and this sucker was huge.. and went almost an entire inch into the ball of my foot, so I proceded to spend all my time here with a pocket knife and scissors trying to get the damn thing out. I did manage to in the end, but it wasnt fun. Right when I got it out it was time to leave for the next spot too, so they only part I saw of Eli creek was to wash the blood from my foot. Nice.

Next on the list was Indian head. Some say it was called indian head as when Captain Cook sailed passed he saw it and though it looked like an american indian with his head decoration on. The more accurate story (or so believed) is that he saw some aboriginals on the head, and he said they looked like the native american indians. ANyway, its a beautiful spot to climb up and look over fraser island. I dont know what was going on, but it was almost like nature was putting on a show for us as we managed to see a few big fish swimming in the ocean below, a number of large sharks, one with a baby in tow, a number of turtles, and a pod of dolphins!! The water was so clear you could see almost anything in the water, it was amazing.

After lunch it was a stop at bunch of rock pools called champagne pools. Champagne as when the massive waves break over the rocks and fill the pools it feels like you are swimming in champagne bubbles! I thought the champagne was a little salty for my liking. :P

This was our last stop in the island, and it was another mission drive back to the resort for another great dinner. We also got to sample to the pools where were pretty damn nice to watch the sunset in! After this it was back to Hervey Bay where I would stay a night before catching the bus to Brisbane in the morning. Another bus trip... YAY.. or not.. :P

All in all this trip was fantastic and I really had so much fun! Part if this was due to the good group we had, but the tour guide, Chris, was the main catylist as he was th best! Cheers Cooldingo, and cheers Chris!

Once again, to check out some piccies... try looking.... um... here... http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080329FraserIsland
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206514020/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206514020/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1206514020/tpod.html Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:51 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Whitsunday Islands, Australia

After a grueling 11 hr bus ride to Airlie beach, I arrived with not much sleep, a sore neck and a missing bag. Not the best way to start. After a phone call we found my bag however, and it had been left in Townsville somehow. Not to worry though, as I would get it back the next time I was on the bus. It was a good thing there wsant really anyrhing really important i needed in there.

I proceeded to confirm my place on my boat and walked down to the mariner with about 10 mins to spare before we boarded the vessle. Talk about a tight schedule i run! I was a little disappointed too as I had booked a boat called broomstick, and ended up on a boat called condor. Broomstick was smaller and lighter, and also had less people, and I was looking for that more personalized feel to it. Ah well... Condor it was. There was a weird mix of people on board too. I couldnt really fit in to any of them. About half the boat was American girls who were "studying abroad" and already had their groups and didnt much talk to the others on board, there was a small Sweedish group, who stayed to themselves, same with a small group of Irish girls and a small group of poms who stuck to themselves. I did manage to befriend a few of the American girls, but it wasnt that easy as they wernt that welcoming. :P

Our trip started out with a quick sail out to a snorkeling spot where I managed to find and swim with and photograph a turtle! The water was colder than cairns though, and visibility was a lot lower too, so it wasnt overly amazing in comparison (still really nice though). After the snorkel it was a quick sail then anchor over night. The next day I slept in right passed breakfast I was so tired from the day before.. and i wasnt happy that no one woke me for it. Never mind.. this was the day we went to see white haven beach, which is the 2nd (I think) most photographed point of australia, and for good reason too. It is stunningly beautiful!! It is made from 98% pure white silica sand, and is amazing to look at and to feel. It was such a beautiful bay with stunning sand formations in the sea/inlet. We first walked up to a good vantage point to snap some pics, and then it was down to play in the sand. It was blindingly white and beautiful, and the water so clear just like a tropical paradise. I managed to find a big stingray in the sand too and got few close pics of him. :) We had a few hours down on the beach frolicing in the sunshine before we had to get back to the boat for lunch. I was sad to leave, as this was THE most beautiful beach I had ever been to!!

After lunch it was a sail to another snorkeling spot. I had an opportunity to go for another dive now too, but I opted out as I knew it wouldnt compare to the diving I had just done in Cairns. It was this snorkeling trip I managed to catch a school of about 12 or so reasonably large (about 50cm - 80cm) bumphead parrot fish. These guys were cool and crazy at the same time.. they were great how they let me get up really close to them, but crazy as they were just munching huge chunks of coral left right and center, and then it was coming out their rear end as.. well... sand. So really... all the coral beaches you see really just consist bumphead parrot fish poo... mmm... nice.

We anchored over night at the same location of the snorkeling spot, and due to the light on the boat this attracted all sorts of fish! One of the staff collected the blood from the steak and put that in a bag overboard too.. so maybe that may have helped to attract the fish.. and the sharks.. who knows? We did get a show though! We were out with the spot lights over the side where we saw loads of different sharks - at a guess they were black reef tips, so not very aggressive. There was the odd trevally, and we saw dolphins too!! Occasionally we would see a squid swim near to the surface, and if you shone the torch long enough on it a shark would eat him.. cooooool! :D

The next morning we could jump in for a quick snorkel if we wanted before we sailed back to the mainland. I took the opportunity to swim with the bat fish that were hanging around underneath the boat, but then someone thought it would be funny to throw some bread in the water right in front of me. Needless to say the fish went nuts and I had a feeding frenzie right in front of me. Alright! After the swim it back on board and the last leg back to the mainland. There was quite a strong wind about so we got some good speed up along the way... that also meant that we got back quicker and had less time on the boat.. so goes life. :P

I must say although I did enjoy the trip over all, I wasnt all that impressed, particularly compared with my superb prodive trip. The changing of boats was a surprise to me, the mix of people wasnt the best (but you cant do much about that), but the main thing that upset me most was that my 2.5 day / 2 night sailing trip translated into a short trip to Whitehaven beach and 2 snorkeling trips. It left me feeling disappointed, like I was expecting more.

Back on the mainland I had half a day to kill before I got back on the bus to Hervey Bay - Gateway to Fraser island... i sound like an advertisement when I say that. I ended up talking to Nora, one of the Irish girls on the boat and discovered that I got on with her really really well! Its a shame I didnt figure this out at the BEGINNING of the trip. :P She invited me back to her hostel to have a shower which was nice of her. As the showers on the boat were a) cold, b) not very fresh water, and c) we basically didnt use them, I was very glad to have a nice hot shower, and felt a lot better once I was cleaned up. Me Nora and an English guy called Nick ended up going down to the lagoon in Airlie beach and had lunch / after noon tea there and chatted for a while before I had to catch my bus which was a nice change from the boat. This time it was a 13 hr trip... urgh! Idid manage to poichase an inflatable neck pillow before I left... this turned out to be one investment that was well worth every cent!

I will update photos soon... please click here... http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas/20080326AirlieBeachAndWhitsundays
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1205995500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1205995500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/phillthomas/sydney_-_sep_06/1205995500/tpod.html Mon, 05 May 2008 23:03:10 -0400 Phill's big "OE"! My own WORLD tour.. as I had always wanted... See how I've been doing so far...

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Cairns, Australia

I flew into cairns in the evening, and it must be a weakness in me for tropical places, but I loved the place instantly. Especially after arriving at my hostel. Smelling the warm sweet wet tropical air, and being in amongst the lush tropical palms and plants was my idea of paradise! The hostel I stayed in was called Bohemia Resort, and it was the nicer one of the two, the compromise being it was further away from the center, but worth it. It had a really nice pool, and bar area surrounded by tropical plans and palms. and the rooms were nice and clean too. It was a bit of a catch 22 though as this place was full of rules! NO alcohol on premises... what!? This is a back packers right?? No food in the rooms, you cant bring your own pillows or sleeping bags... and the list went on and on and on. I didnt know what to think... it was so nice, yet so restrictive (actually Australia as a country is a little like that, its a nice place, but full of ridiculous rules)

My fist day involved my first day of my dive course with Prodive Cairns!! It was awesome to get the scuba gear on and breath under water, and my class was a good group! My 2nd night in Cairns was great too. Everything just seemed to go right! I met so many people, including a guy who did some fire twirling, and so we got some fuel together and spun some fire by the pool. And boy this attracted the ladies attention!! It was funny actually, but (and please excuse me for being rude and saying this but it was someone else who came up with this expression) they dont call fire twirling the "panty dropper" for nothing.. heh heh.. I did end up meeting a very attractive girl from Norway who was trying to pick me up.. and I would be lying if I said I wasnt loving the attention! It was a good night. :)

Needless to say I was a little tired for my dive course the next day, seeing as I had a 6.30am pick up. But I managed to get through the day no probs. I tried to get an early night, but alas, no mater how much I try I just seem to end up out again.

The next day was my 2 night, 3 day reef trip and I was excited.. and tired! Pick up was at 5.50am! But breakfast was on board the boat, and it was a good breakky. Our first dive started as soon as the boat stopped! We jumped in and it was exciting to get in the water and go under for the first time in the sea. Our first 4 dives were all training dives where we had to complete various tasks such as taking off our mask, buoyancy control, using our buddys emergency air supply, and making emergency ascents.

My first pleasure dive after I was certified was on day 2 and it was amazing! We got to go out without out instructor, and I went out with my assigned buddy mark, who was a crazy canadian fellow. We saw 2 turtles, of which one of them was a HUGE turtle called barry. Ironically they named barry before they could determine the turtles sex, and barry is actually a girl, but the name sticks. I couldnt believe how MASSIVE he was!! He (or she) was about as big as me, and gave me one hell of a fright when he caught my eye.

That night we also got to complete a night dive!!! It was SOOO COOOOL!! Off the back of the boat you could see hundreds of fish in the water with a few sharks circling around too...a little nerve racking seeing this and thinking "im going to jump into that!?" it was all worth it though. I only saw one shark however, and that was in the distance. I t was weird diving at night as you could only see where you pointed your torch, so you never knew what was going to jump out of nowhere. Sometimes you can "play god" with your torch - you shine it on a small fish for a while, and then a big fish will come out of nowhere and eat the little one! As we were last group we didnt see all that much as the other groups had scared much of the life away, but I did see some massive crayfish!

The next morning it was up at the crack of dawn again for a deep dive, this time to 30 metres. It was fascinating to see the colours change as you went deeper - things mainly getting bluer as the red light was absorbed by the depth. Another thing that can happen at that depth is people can get nitrogen narcosis which is nothing serious, but is kinda like having a beer when you are thirsty and hungry - it goes to your head and gives you that buzzy feeling... while other people can feel tired and want to sleep. It effects eveyone differently, and I didnt really notice much of a change. Its not a bad thing, and will go away as soon as you rise into shallower waters.

After the deep dive it was another pleasure dive with my buddy Mark, and this was an awesome one!! By this time the sun had come out and we were at an excellent location on the reef. We saw all sorts of marine life and heaps of beautiful coral formations, and the very end I got to swim with a reef shark!! He wasnt a huge one though, and I chased him and he swam away. :P As we were pretty shallow we managed to make the dive last nealy an hour!! This was my favourite dive so far, but unfortunately it was my last one on this trip. After 3 days out on the reef it was time to return back to the main land, say good bye to all the wonderful people I had met, and catch an over night bus to Airlie beach for 2 more nights on a boat in the whitsundays, only this time it was a racing yacht.

Once I was back on land however I had the worst sea legs ever!! When I was standing still I started swaying, when I was leaning on things I thought it was moving, and it wouldnt go away! It was so funny! Apparently the only cure is alcohol... it counter acts one sway with another sway and you end up standing straight..... or so the theory goes. We all had dinner together at the rattle and hum, and I left them at about midnight to catch my bus.... the journey never stops!

I have to say I was really really impressed with the entire trip. It was professionally run, well organised, and a lot of fun at the same time. The food was excellent, the facilities were all clean and new, and I would highly highly recommend this trip to anyone even thinking about diving!! CHEERS PRODIVE!

To check out some pics from the trip I will upload em soon to.... (you will have to select the cairns photos).... http://picasaweb.google.com/mrphillipthomas
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