Adventures in Traveling the World
On Wednesday, August 20 we catch a bus to Rantau Panjang, a Malaysian town and major foot border crossing to Thailand. Our bus is fully air-conditioned and gives us much relief on this sunny, 90+ degree day. We arrive Rantau Panjang and walk to the border at 10:30 am and by 11:30 am with paperwork completed we’re walking into Sungai Golok, Thailand. Our first...
It’s time to pack our backpacks and go to Thailand. Andy goes for one more swim, before we embark our 11 am water taxi to sadly leave the beautiful Pulau Perhentian Island. Our small boat delivers us to a 32-passenger boat that takes us to Kuala Besut jetty where we were, just four days ago. Andy is always figuring out what’s next and I...
After breakfast of fried egg on toast at the Lemon Grass restaurant, we’re heading out for six hours of snorkeling. We have six people from France and four people from Australia on the boat with us. No one seems particularly friendly. I’ll strike up a conversation but it becomes very one-sided and seems to be an interrogation. I give up. We lather up with...
How is it, you can wake up sweating and it’s only 8:30 am? Oh yes, our oscillating fan goes off automatically at 8 am. Today is our first day to snorkel. We find a place not far up the beach from us that has an all-day trip for 40 ringgits ($11). The masks and snorkels are laying on the ground and we’re told to...
“I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series...
Finally, leaving the beautiful city of Kuala Lumpur on a full bus to Kota Bharu. We’re in the back of the bus with the a/c barely working. Hot, dripping with sweat, it’s no wonder no one smiles. It’s too hot and too much work. We all seem to be staring ahead waiting, waiting, waiting to get off the bus and be able to breathe...