Penang and Ko Pan-Ngan

The little that we saw of Malaysia was beautiful. George town in Penang is a beautiful colonial town know for the delicious mix of Chinese, Malay, and Indian food. We followed the historical walk that makes George town a Unesco World Heritage Site, checked out some cool Hindu and Buddhist temples, even tried betel nut (a lot of spices rolled up in a leaf that you chew up till it gets mushy and you store in your lip to get a buzz...interesting taste and it makes your spit bright red). To get a full view of the city we took a trolley 800 meters up Penang hill. Little did we know that this excursion would involve holding a Malaysian squirrel at the menagerie and refusing to hold the large snake directly afterword. Though the little ground keeper reassured us the snake wouldn't bite by pressing the snakes mouth against his cheek, we were a little nervous as our hands reeked of snake food (i.e. squirrel).

After a couple days of wondering the city and eating everything in sight, we caught a bus back to Thailand. We were prepared for a relatively uneventful journey until a very drunk (maybe high) kid plopped himself into our mivivan. He was the entertainment for the journey to the boarder as he continued to chug beers (he even gave one to Leon as collateral for borrowing an ipod so he could dance in his seat). He would holler out the window at the Thais vending at stop lights. They would come up to the window to try and sell him something and he would quickly embrace the tiny surprised man and hold him close till it became obvious that the man wanted to get away. There was a period of about five minutes in which he held onto my hand clearly wanting to share his enjoyment of the music in his head phones with someone. When it was time to switch buses, he stumbled out and we never saw him again. Jacque Neils was only in our lives for about 5 hours, but we will never forget him.

The rest of our journey was long and uneventful. For whatever reason, when you want to get from one location to another in Thailand, you will be shuffled into anywhere between 3-5 mini vans and buses, lingering briefly (for no apparent reason) at little offices until your next van shows up to take you about 3 blocks away to wait again. Our final destination made the 14 hours of travel worth it.

We checked into a little bungalow on Ko Pan-Ngan. For 12 dollars a night we had a nice room with a front porch complete with a hammock overlooking the sea. There was a sweet swimming pool and a bar just a few steps away. We ended up relaxing for almost a full week. Sun bathing, swimming, reading, and exploring dried up waterfalls by motor bike. Life is very easy when you have nothing to do. We had to pry ourselves away from this beautiful place as it began to fill up with full moon party people (once a month there is a huge full moon party which means all the quiet little resorts fill up with 18 year old sloppy drunks and the prices sky rocket). We took the most luxurious over night bus back to Bangkok to catch a plane for Cambodia. More is soon to come!