Winter Travels

Well time has come and the trip was semi planned, I was heading for 2 and a half weeks to travel in Malaysia and Thailand.

The first week I was on my own.  It was my first trip to be on my own, and I was a little nervous but mostly excited to see what the week was going to bring me.

The first day was a long one.  I left Korea at 4:30pm, had 2 hours in Shanghai before I boarded for my 5 hour flight to KL.  Once in KL though I had a 5 hour wait until I could fly out to Penang, where I would spend my first few days alone.  Lucky for me a friend from orientation, Ariel was on my flight along with a few other guys we met on the plane.  We sat around in the main terminal in a Burger King (I refused to get any food despite being starving, because Burger King was not going to be my first meal in Malaysia).  We sat around until about 5:00am when the trains were up and running.  This is where my solo journey really began!

Penang:  I got in around 9 in the morning and found my hostel.  I was exhausted from not sleeping but I didn't want to sleep my day away, so I went and walked around Georgetown (the little area I was staying in).  I went back to the hostel early afternoon to take a quick nap.  After my nap is when I started meeting the others in my hostel.  The first were 2 guys from Germany.  They were young, 20 years old, and just out of high school.  They were fun guys and really excited about their travels.  The three of us had an amazing Indian meal!

First Meal

Little India

Penang Street Art

Penang Street Art

Fort Cornwallis

 That evening we all sat around in our hostel just talking and getting to know each other.  The first night it was me, the two guys from Germany, a girl from Vietnam who had lived in China for 7 years, an Australian girl teaching in Indonesia, and a Canadian girl.

The next morning there was a new guy from China that had come in.  The two of us and and the girl from Vietnam decided we wanted to go to Penang Hill.  So...we caught the bus that took about an hour to get to the hill and took the tram on up.  For whatever reason though we decided it would be nice to walk back down the hill, yes in our flip flops.  BUT we ended up going off the paved road and walking through the dirt trails of the forest!

In the end Penang was amazing and I got to meet some really amazing people.  I have added them to facebook and have heard from a few of them as they continued their travels.  I just hope to stay in touch with them.

Penang Street Food

Penang is famous for street food

Last night in Penang

After Penang I took a 3 hour ferry up to Langkawi.  I stayed on the more popular beach Cenang Beach.  The first day I was there I made a beach day, I got a little too much sun however :(.  The next day in attempts to stay out of the sun I rented I scooter and rode up to Langkawi Cable Car and the Oriental Village.  The cable car was closed due to wind, so I rode over to the waterfall that was near by.  I climbed up to where the waterfall was and sat in the water for a little to cool down. After that I went up a little higher to the top of the waterfall to see the 7 Wells.  Langkawi was very different from Penang.  It was more of a beach environment, but I also stuck to myself a lot more and really didn't meet any people.  I was ok with it though and enjoyed just relaxing on the beach, playing with the monkeys on the side of the road, and riding my scooter around the island to see a lot of different things.

Cenang Beach

Cenang

Waterfall

Sliding at the 7 Wells

Friday night I took the last bus out of Langkawi to head back down to KL.  It was about a 8 hour bus ride, which I slept most of the time.  We got into KL around 6 in the morning, I got a taxi, and went straight to the twin towers.  I made sure to get our 3 tickets because this was the day that Heather and Ange were finally coming to meet me!  They got in around 4 in the afternoon.  We did our tour of the Twin Towers and then went to a famous area in KL known for markets and of course more street food.  We left the city of KL around 11 to get a taxi back to our hotel which was about 45 min away from the city.  Needless to say our 45 min taxi ride turned into more of a 2 and a half 3 hour taxi ride driving in circles near our hotel.  Our taxi driver had no idea where he was going, we went past the same McDonald's probably about 4 times and even past the back of our hotel 2.  He went in reverse down the highway and at one point stopped in the back of our hotel to have us walk through the ditch!!!  At around 2:00am we finally got into our room just to be woken up an hour later to head to the airport!

No dating on the bus

top of one of the towers

Looking up at the Towers

Street food

Street Food

The next day we flew to Brunei.  Its a tiny little country down in Borneo.   We only spent about 24 hours there, but it was one amazing little country.  They are a very wealthy country, everything was beautiful, and the people were extremely friendly.  We went to the large famous Mosque there, did a water village taxi tour, and then drove past the King's Palace.  We stayed in the nicest hotel in Brunei and it was actually among some of the best hotels in 2012!  The place was amazing and we made sure to get good use out of it.  We got back to our hotel around 6 sat in our bath robes and watched crap TV all night.

Mosque

Palace 

Water Village

Palace

Empire Hotel

Empire Hotel

Enjoying our crap TV , fruit, and bathrobes!

The next few days after Brunei were some of my favorite.  This is when we were in Borneo (Malaysia).  We went to Sandakan and went to the orangutan rehabilitation center, did a river cruise, and stayed in this hostel with this amazing little lady that fed us some even more amazing food.  She 'taught' us how to eat with our hands, so we sat on the floor of this hostel eating rice and squash with our hands.  We also went to this little island called Mabul.  We went there so Heather could dive.  But turns out this is my favorite part of my trip.  We stayed at Scuba Jeff's, which was a little shack on stilts above the water.  We only had electric from 6pm-6am and didn't have wifi.  We met a few people from Malaysia, a few from Indonesia, and then hung out with Jeff and his staff.  All these people here were amazing and some of the most friendly and laid back people I've ever met in my life.  Our last night there Jeff wanted to make sure us girls had a good time...I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into when he said he wanted to spend the evening drinking.  7 people 15 bottles of rum and a bottle of vodka later...we weren't having the greatest morning the next morning.  We sure did have a good time though!  The guys spent the evening singing some amazing songs and we spent the other time dancing around the deck like idiots and telling stories.  Meeting Jeff and these other guys just make me want to get my living license so that we can all go diving together and do it all over again.  15 bottles of rum and all!!!

orangutan 

Hev, Ange and me on the river cruise

monkey on the river cruise

Local kids...they were adorable!

sketchy walkway to Jeff's

The guys singing

Singing

Local looking for money and/or food

 After our crazy week of flights, ferries, freezing cold buses (the air was blasting and we made sure to bring multiple layers for our rides), and boats, we were pretty exhausted and ready to just relax.  What better way to relax then head to the beaches of Thailand?! So that is where we headed to next.  On up to Thailand to spend some relaxing time on Railey Beach...or so we thought.  We got plenty of quality time with the beaches, lots of sun, and some amazing massages (for just $9!), but we also spent some time climbing over rocks at low tide, trekking through the jungle in bikinis, drinking buckets of some kind of alcohol, and watching all the others drink their 'happy shake'.  What is a happy shake you ask.  Let me tell you, it is a shake that was made at pretty much every bar on our part of the beach and they put mushrooms in them.  It was great sitting at a bar and watching everyone go from excited to extremely chilled out staring happily at things hanging from the ceiling, the rocks on the mountain, or the leaves on the trees.

Thailand also brought on some illness.  Not for me luckily! The first one was a guy that we met on the bus and spent most of our time with, the next was that same night and some random girl came pounding on the door to our bungalow telling us she was dying.  We think she was just really drunk, but we aren't totally sure.  We tried to take care of her and help her out but there was really nothing we could do at 4 in the morning at low tide so boats couldn't get out.  The next night it was Ange's turn and the following morning it hit Heather.  I'm pretty glad that I didn't get hit with this because everyone looked pretty miserable and I felt really bad that there was nothing I could do to help any of them.

Bungalow 

Low Tide

Hanging out at the bar 

Cutest little boy ever!

Monkey and her baby

Trekking through the jungle

Climbing through the rocks at low tide

Drinking our buckets and watching people drink the happy shakes

sunset

Thailand!

I had an amazing time traveling and I was really sad to have to leave and come back to the cold weather of Korea.  In the matter of about 12 hours I went from laying on a beach to having to wear multiple layers of clothing.  I do have to say though that being back in Korea is not kind of a comfortable feeling.  Hearing people speak Korea is comforting and even all the things that drive me crazy about Korea and Koreans is something that I was happy to be back to.

"Oh Katie!  You are black like African person!"  oh how I missed Korea!

This opportunity to travel is something that I will forever be grateful for.  I get to see these amazingly beautiful places and meet all kinds of different people.  Even if these people are people that I don't keep in touch with they are people that I will remember because we shared an amazing adventure together.  It is really nice getting to meet all these other people that are traveling around.  I feel like I meet them and there is just this automatic bond that is formed.  These are the people that are the only people that truly understand what happened during your adventures and the only ones that really understand what you are talking about when you tell stories.

My next trip comes just this Saturday, so after only spending a week and a half back in Korea I will be taking the journey back up to Incheon Airport, but this time I will be jumping on a plane that will be taking me back home.  It has been almost a year since I have been home.  As weird as it sounds I'm a little nervous to go home.  Don't get me wrong I'm extremely excited but I'm a little nervous.  I feel like home is going to feel strange to me.  I know that it is a feeling that will pass quickly but at first I feel like it's going to seem strange.  I know I'm not perfect at it, but I have gotten pretty use to the Korean culture and the Korean ways.  My next post will be to update you on how it goes at home though....