Ao Nang, Krabi

 Well we were sad to leave one of our favorite spots Koh Lanta but knew we would have some fun things to do in Ao Nang, Railey, and the surrounding areas in Krabi.  The 2 hour boat ride turned into at least 4 by the time you arrive where you need to be.  The boats run at low speed, the tourist with huge roller luggage and the minimal directions for new comers to Thailand is the reason why this probably occurs.  We made it, they have a new pier here which is not near the main town, so we get carted of by bus for free to the main part of Ao Nang as we do not have a place to stay yet.
 We head down the main street and see a very significant change since our trip here in '07.  Starbucks, Burger King, Baskin Robbins, and 3 times the hotels and restaurants.  This place has become a very busy tourist area, but that is what it is known for.  One thing Ray and I have noticed  this time is that the main tourists are European and come with big families.  Last time we were here it was low season and mainly couples and backpackers.  We find a place to crash for one night, then spend the evening scooting around to  find a new place to stay for the remainder of time, we thought we would spend a bit extra for xmas and New Years.  A present to ourselves!
 All checked in the next day we start to explore. We do and old scooter trip we did last time and it was fun again.  Except the sore ass for like 24 hours after.  We find some good restaurants, Italian is big here, and Western food, but only some of it is good.  The Thai food is good but the Indian was just ok.  There are some really good places to eat and some really crappy places to eat so we choose wisely each night.
 We book our first climbing trip through Ao Nang Climbers, really nice people, met a nice couple of guys from Malaysia who were hanging out there, we hope to meet up again with along our travels.  We leave bright and early the next day, to Railey, at the 1 2 3 wall.  Which is very popular for all climbing companies.  It almost seems unsafe at times with so many people around who don't understand climbing etiquette.  We did the full day trip from 8 am to 6pm which in the end was too much for our first time in months climbing.  I have never been so tired as I was that night, xmas eve I was asleep by 8:30 pm.   The guides were funny and helpful, and met some nice people on our tour.
 Railey is beautiful but full of people, plus it costs more to stay there so we stay in Ao Nang.  We want to do more climbing but realized the next day we pushed it a bit and our arms and hands may not work quite yet.  So we relax a bit, did a yoga class, and some swimming at the beach.  Then Ray wants to go Deep water soloing, so we talk to our climber friends at Ao Nang Climbers and they set up a group with another company.  We head out later in the day as we need a high tide to do this, around 9am or 10am each day is different.   We board a bigger boat and head out to a small island off of the mainland.  As we make the corner around the back we see some people climbing with another company.  Looks like fun!  I did not pay for the climbing so I am a little jealous now but enjoy watching and taking pictures, I did swim and snorkel to pass time.  We have only ever seen it on you tube and videos so it's so cool to see it live.  One guy from Singapore in our group is a very good climber he does really well and climbs quite high.  Again the people from Singapore are so great, funny and really easy going.  Ray said the climbing is not too bad, but the ladder at the bottom is harder than the climbing.  He said it's weird swimming in climbing shoes, I bet!  The day is hot so being in the water is nice.  The first spot is easy, the second spot was a bit harder and only a few people try.  So all in all most people only climbed 4 times the whole 5 hours.  Ray said the mental ability is different when you have to jump down, seems way higher from up even 10 feet.  Hey Ray, did you see the big Jelly fish! AH!
 We decide to stay here till after the New Year, so we book our hotel longer.  It was definitely weird being here for xmas but a nice change from the craziness of it at home.  Missed the nieces and nephews at this time of year as they are fun to watch.  Now we are planning to move onto Ko Tao a top choice of ours since our last trip to Thailand.

Koh Lanta

On Koh Lanta we hit up our old favorite bungalow "Seapearl" and they were even better than we remembered. With a new owner they had added beach platforms for dining and a new restaurant, and menu. We stayed on the island 5 days and only ate at Thai cat (attached to sea pearl) food was awesome each and every time. We did alot of nothing on Lanta, relaxed and took some time to just chill in one place. We did do a scooter tour one day  and went to Old Lanta town, a place we missed on the '07 trip but we made time for it this time around, it was pretty cool old trade town we took a few snaps and had a coffee, before heading back to our bungalow.

 "A" had read about an Animal shelter who always needed volunteers so we stopped by one afternoon to check it out and see if we could give a hand, as you all know we are animal lovers. After a quick tour of the place, we each got hooked up with 2 dogs, "A" walked Punk and Sara, and I was walking Sorry and Chili. things started off with a bit of excitement, about 30 feet from the driveway we passed another lady who was on her way back from walking one of the other shelter dogs. well apparently Sorry didn't get along with this dog and went after him, she slipped her collar and there was fur and growling going in ever direction. Having some smarts I didn't want to use my travel insurance for a rabies shot just yet, I grabbed Sorry from the hind quarters and pulled her off the other dog, meanwhile poor chili was getting dragged along behind me as me and the other walker lady were trying to separate the two dogs. After a few minutes of excitement we manged to get the dogs apart and settled down, after a quick check for damage my flip flop was the only casualty.
With a new collar and no other dogs to get upset over the six of us (me, A, and 4 dogs) went off for our walk with no more excitement just a nice walk in the tropics with some really nice dogs who could use a good home.
We felt pretty good for helping out, it wasn't much but some fun, exercise and play time was had.

Malaysia

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur in the evening around 11 pm  and would not make the train or monorail times so we took a taxi from our Tune Hotel.  Pricey way to do it seeing as the airport is like an hour or so away with no traffic.  The hotel was kinda crap and would not use that chain again, but it was cheap so......
We were so tired the next day we slept in a bit and did some laundry while we tried to figure out where to go around the area.  We woke up the next day early  to go up in the Petronas Towers, which is a beautiful building and maybe the only nice one in the whole city.  We waited hours in line and to just walk on the bridge, seems like a waste of money really.  The area around the towers is actually nicer to visit in our mind.  Ray had seen an ad at the airport for a car show and we were sold when it said Bumblebee and The Batmobile were there.  We hopped on the monorail, I felt a little dizzy, maybe dehydrated or just tired so we sat in some big chairs for awhile while I drank an isotonic drink to feel better.  Then we made our way in to the show.
The music was thumping, the girls in cheesy skimpy outfits were present, and the asian men were everywhere.  It had  4 sections of a huge building and Ray was really enjoying the cars, I was just waiting for the good ones.  Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, and my favorite the Austin Martin like the bond car.  I had a good laugh at some of the outfits on the girls, I asked Ray what does a nurse have to do with cars?  He just laughed!  The expensive cars, or classy companies they wore suits and were very pretty.  Then I saw him, "16 ft. Bumblebee", how awesome is that?  My first thought was Mikey, he would have loved this.  Well after the car show we made our way back to the hotel.
If anyone knows us they know we love Malaysian cuisine, and we heard the food here was fantastic.  I searched and searched for a true authentic restaruant and all I came up with was Chinese, Indian, and more Indian restarurants.  This continues on all through Malaysia, but we did find some good food eventually.
We left after 4 days to Penang by luxury bus which is really only like &20 canadian so why not, why ride in some shit bus for 5 hours right!  The bus  was great, movies, big seats, aircon, and free coffee and tea ect....good ride.  We booked a hostel there called The Red Inn, on Love Lane, or as I would call it backpackers Lane.  It was in Georgetown, cute little place, with a huge Chinatown and Little India of course.  The architechture here is very colonial.  The hostel thing sucked once again, it's just not us anymore we decieded.  Kids up at 3 am chatting, watching movies and dirty bathrooms.  The room was clean and private but I hate using earplugs every night.  We decided after 4 nights, after getting our Visas for Thailand which you have to do before unless you only want 15 days on arrival, we decided to do it before and get 60 days.  We love Thailand so....
We found some really good, probably the best East Indian restarurant we have ever been to called " Woodlands", it ws a vegetarian restauarant and it was so amazing, the taste was so good.  We ate there twice it was that good.  I felt like we had become vegetarians in our quest for good food in Malaysia.  I realize soya milk in milkshakes is good and tofu chicken is not that bad.  After our time here we broke up the trip to Thailand, with a stop in Langkawi, a small island off Malaysia,there is nothing for us here, we did not like it and I think we were just kinda done with Malaysia now so we stayed 2 nights and a ferry out of  there to Satun Thailand where we made our way to Trang then onto the island of Koh Lanta, one of our favorites from last time we were here.
All in all Malaysia is suppose to be the new Thailand, a lot of people use it like a visa run stop. Like Thailand was before the tourist buzz. I still like Thailand better, and the beaches were not very hospitable in Malaysia, it had jellyfish and they were really hard to find.  Malay food is hard to find and the people were not as helpful as we have had in Thailand.
We are so happy to be in Thailand again, the beach beautiful, the food excellent, and the people are amazing again.  We are staying at the same place which has a new owner now and it is even better than befor.  We have a scooter and I have already spent a bunch of money on jewellery.  Ray has been like a little kid again, he is always smiling and so am I now.  He has a bit of a cold which is weird but all in all we are very glad to be here again....

$ingapore $ling, $hopping, and Bling.....

These things are pretty much what $ignapore is about, lots of people with money and spending money.  The $ingapore $ling was like $15 or $16 dollars so that didn't happen, I'll make one when I get home.
Arrival day was pretty good, we arrived in the afternoon for a change, not early am or late pm.  The airport is huge and terminal 3 or T3 called here is the new wing and it is gigantic.  Lots of space, new hotel, with shopping and movies on the depature area past immigration.  We asked information how to get to the hotel which she did and gave us lots of information on the area too with a smile.  As we walk we easily find our way to our last MRT stop, where our hotel " The Saff" short for Saffron( the spice) is.  We took about 10 minutes to leave the covered train station as it was downpouring and thundering/lightning pretty good. 2 blocks up and around the corner our cute orange hotel sits in the Chinatown area.  Little bit of India in Chinatown, made us laugh, but a very cute place.  We had no window which as we looked at hotels here many do not have them anyways, and this was no big deal since our room was quiet and new, and I better note we never slept better because it was so quiet and dark.
The first adventure out was to the local food market to eat dinner.   We had no idea what to eat, there was food stall after food stall, from chinese, Malay, indian to Thai and more....we chose some fruit drinks and some rice and basil chicken dish from a friendly looking Thai gentleman.  We are sometimes a little leary of vendor stalls but this was really good, cheep and no bad outcomes.  Back to the room to chill and get ready for some $ignapore exploring in the am.
We headed out on the MRT again to Sentosa Island, a huge tourist area but a must see here.  We took the Jewel Gondola across so we could get a good view of the city, it was a very nice view.  We got situated then headed to the Luge track for some fast fun (gravety go karts).  We bought the combo 3 turns pass, "once is never enough" is the slogan so......Ray like doubled my time for sure, I also saw the hugest rat I have ever seen, like a small cat eewwww....
It was very hot so we got some slushies and chilled in the shade for a bit, then continued on to the Aquarium for some A/C. It was so packed and it is not very big so kinda crazy, you can feed and pet manta rays, sharks and watch shows with seals and dolphins....which I cannot watch so we opted to leave at that point, wildlife in the wild is where everyone should really see them.  We took the free bus transport on the island to the Resort World area.  Big fancy hotels, artwork, restaruants, casino, sweets everywhere and Universal studios.  We ate, drank a way too expensive beer ($12), ate some samples of sweets, and did the look see only admission to Universal Studios, way too expensive of a day coming to an end.  And thank god, my body is hurting after all the walking and fun!
We went to Little India the next day after sleeping in too much, which was ok, felt a little like what we might think India might be.  Lots of people, dirty and stalls lining the streets, kinda not our thing, so we went to Orchard Road which did not alleviate that feeling at all..holy crowds...Saturday afternoon...befor Christmas...befor the big marathon on Sunday.  We did find some food and walked through the mall after mall after mall after mall after mall.  If you like high fashion you will find every designer here, I thought it was cool, Ray not so much.  After hours of walking wewent back to the hotel to rest up for more walking. From the Fullerton Hotel to the Harbour, saw the oldest bridge in Singapore, oldest hotel, the Sands Hotel ( looks like a  modern boat), let's just say there was lots of sites along the walk, it was a nice walk again very busy with tourists.  After that more mall down at the harbour then home. Ouch....my feet!
 Next day in the late afternoon out to Orchard Road to eat then off to the Night Zoo, which opens late in the day and you view nocturnal animals and see some shows with some local little guys.  We walked the zoo, saw the show and took the tram around the  ground then made the long trek back to the hotel as we leave the next day for Malaysia.
Noon checkout and the longest day ever we are landed saftley in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Checked in at 1am.