Week 9 - Phuket to Penang

Thailand and Malaysia

Greetings, friends, and welcome to another weekly recap! Thanks for all the comments last week, especially the podcast recommendations! We listened to an episode of “The Zoo of Us” and a couple “Greeking Out” and both were hits. We have Vinyl Cafe lined up next.

Since we last talked we finished off our time in Krabi. On the last day, Steve, Theo, and I went scuba diving back in the Phi Phi islands and had a great time swimming with some cool sea life. Our favourites were the incredible school of yellow snapper surrounding us, the Hawsbill turtle that Theo almost stepped on (he’s still working on buoyancy control), a seahorse that I totally missed though we were apparently looking at it for five minutes, giant moray eels, and our favourite parrot fish, banner fish, and the other colourful tropical fishies that our instructor considers a dime a dozen. Our boat was very comfortable which made the slow two hours out and back comfortable. I sat on the top deck watching the big pink jellyfish float by. I don’t have an underwater camera so we will all just have to imagine what it was like.

Meanwhile, the others enjoyed a visit with elephants, followed by some time spent cooling off in the villa pool. It was 40 degrees with humidity that day. I have complained about heat before, but this heat is KILLER.

It was really fun having a villa to ourselves while staying with Alan and Adele. Lulu woke up every morning and went straight to their room for morning snuggles, and Theo spent special moments at bedtime each night chatting and watching videos with them. We will miss them when they leave us this coming week!

On Tuesday we packed up everything (again! It’s a lot of work to pack time after time!) and took a scenic drive to Phuket. And if we’ve learned anything, we now know that travel days = drama! Before I go on, I’ll rewind and say that ahead of this trip we chatted briefly about getting an international driver’s license. To do that, you have to go to a CAA office in person in Toronto. We never got around to doing that, so Steve purchased one online when he rented the car. We were driving along, enjoying our podcast about the Asian elephant, when we came upon a police check-point. When we rolled down the window, the young cop in braces asked to see Steve’s international driver’s license. The digital version was insufficient, so we were asked to follow another officer on a motorcycle to the police station. What?! As we drove along, I quickly googled to see if this is legit. Is it legit? At the station, Steve went in while the rest of us waited in the car. A few minutes later he sent this text to our group Whatsapp: Help. Call the embassy

What the hell? I immediately jumped into action (kind of… it’s not like I got out of the air conditioned car to save him or anything!) and frantically searched for and called the Canadian embassy. A couple of minutes later, Steve sauntered out of the station smiling and laughing like nothing had happened. How could I forget about my husband’s unique sense of humour! He totally got me. How would you have responded?

In the end we were asked to pay a fine of $1000 baht which is equivalent to $37.78 CAD. For anyone’s future reference, get a hard copy of your international license before you travel. Note that the embassy does not pick up the line for emergency phone calls.

We continued along on our road trip, stopping at an incredible viewpoint called Samet Nangshe a few minutes out of the way. You cannot drive yourself up the hill because it is very steep and treacherous, so you must take a pick-up truck ride that had us squealing with fear-laughter all the way up, gripping the bars so tight to avoid falling out. Kudos to my in-laws for that one. At the top we enjoyed the views and lunch at an impossibly slow restaurant. Overall - worth it.

There were so many gimmicky photo ops on this hilltop. I admit that I enjoy taking and sharing lots of photos, but I can’t help rolling my eyes and judging these people who spend obscene lengths of time taking pictures in the same spot from every possible angle, totally oblivious to any other people who may like to take a look at the scenery or snap a pic or two. I can’t even begin to imagine what their camera rolls look like. No offence if you’re one of these people, and I’m sure your hair over your shoulder from the back looks very beautiful in each of those 718 pictures.

After shockingly slow island traffic across Phuket, we finally arrived at our hotel. For this leg of the journey, we had selected the Hyatt hotel, planning on a short stint of ultimate comfort. We had a beautiful room with a separate bedroom for the kids, and Alan and Adele had their own room nearby. There was a kid’s club our kids really enjoyed, several restaurants, a glorious pool, and a gym. Every morning we feasted at a gorgeous breakfast buffet. Steve ordered eggs of all kinds, the young kids ate donuts and waffles doused in chocolate sauce and sprinkles, and cucumber maki on the side, and I loved trying the noodle soups and Indian and Thai food they served.

Despite how beautiful the hotel and grounds were, the highlights of our short visit to Phuket were when we left the hotel and visited nearby Kamala beach. One night we had a deliciously authentic dinner at a parking lot hut restaurant called Ro Ro’s. For seven people we ordered:

• two papaya salads

• three corn on the cob

• two pepper beef dishes

• one cashew nut chicken

• one panang chicken

• one holy basil beef

• one beer

• four small waters

• three roti pancakes

And that whole dinner cost us about $55 canadian dollars. The owner Ro Ro was so friendly and sweet, which made the experience just wonderful. He hit it off with Raffi whose nickname was Ra Ra when he was a baby. So Ro Ro and Ra Ra had a bonding moment and we all left bursting with authentic Thai experience joy.

Another day we drove ourselves back to Kamala beach where we rented six beach chairs for the day, swam in the beautiful sea, walked the soft white sand, and ordered smoothies and lunch directly to our chairs. We had seen parasailing there the night before, but the wind wasn’t right for that so Theo arranged for a family banana boat ride instead. Alan and Adele opted out. It was great fun until we fell in the water at which point Lulu was not impressed.

The grandparents also took us all to see a Thai cultural show with dancing and re-enactments of some of Thai history. It was a cute show and we enjoyed seeing all the beautiful costumes and trying to figure out what was going on. We didn’t find ourselves too many opportunities to learn Thai history unfortunately, during these 42 days here. Otherwise, the terrible traffic in Phuket meant that we didn’t go too much further afield.

And so we arrive at our next travel day, this time leaving Thailand and heading to Penang, Malaysia. We got a notice earlier in the day that our flight time on a discount asian airline (Firefly) had changed from 5:45 to 7pm. Fine. We adjusted our plans, hung out by the pool, and showered at the spa before driving to the airport. We went separately from the grandparents in order to drop off our car at the rental counter. My father in law texted us as we were arriving at the airport to say that the flight was delayed until midnight, and we’d all have to transfer to a hotel for the meantime. Ha ha ha, nice try. Another family jokester.

It turned out to be true. We were herded into vans and transferred to a hotel 45 minutes away from the airport where we were all assigned rooms. Why would they transfer us and put us up only to send us back to the airport a few hours later? We assumed we were there for the night, and we were right. After the worst buffet dinner of all time, the staff announced that the flight time was changed to the next morning, with a pickup time set for 4am to return to the airport. Nothing like a 3:30am wake-up call to start the day off right!

After that, everything went smoothly (aside from some sleepy kids) and we arrived safe and sound here in Malaysia! So far we’ve had a day and a half here and I’ve been amazed at how very, very different it is from Thailand despite their close proximity. On first impression, it is diverse, modern, clean, and safe. The people seem so friendly and maybe more comfortable speaking with us because everyone knows English here. That’s my impression, anyway. When we were driving into Georgetown from the aiport, Lulu said “it looks the same as Thailand. Everything is broken.” We’ve had an excellent start to this next leg of the journey and can’t wait to see more. I’ll tell you all about it next week. Here are a couple of pictures from our first day in Penang to tide you over.

A food tour our first evening - with Lulu asleep in my arms after the challenging travel day.

Coming up for us is a sad goodbye to my in-laws on Tuesday, and a quick transfer for us via Kuala Lumpur before we meet our longtime friends for a joint trip of a lifetime (within a trip of a lifetime) to the island of BORNEO! We hope to see orangutans, sun bears, proboscis monkeys and more. Stay tuned!

Jess