Thailand at last and the Bangkok Hilton!!
Finally said a sad farewell and left Pangkor Laut to make the trip to Thailand. We ended up having to get another taxi back to Kuala Lumpur airport. We ended up in a nice Mercedez with a mad driver called mr Rajhmal, who had a great handlebar moustach! He was a mad driver because he would literally drive up right behind the car in front and I swear he actually nudged a few, and when he then overtook, he would pull alongside stare them out for 5 seconds and then shoot off!! I had to tip him as I was scared what he would do if I didnt!!
We made the 4 hour trip on only 3 hours, thanks to Mr Rajhmal, and had a 4 hour wait for our flight. I must say that KLIA is a really nice, clean and efficient airport. It took us only 10 minutes to get through to departure side. We spent our time waiting by pootling around on the net and watching movies. Eventually we got on our flight and flew to Phuket.
When we arrived, we made it through passport control fine, picked up our bags and proceeded to go and meet our driver. As we were going through customs, we were selected to put our bags through the scanner. This is where I thought they were packing us off to the Bangkok Hilton! As Ju's bag went through the scanner, the female official started squealing and asked Ju to open it and empty it. She did and the customs bint pointed to something that Ju had bought of a beach seller in Bali. It was a solid frame, about 1 inch thick and about 10x6 in size. On the middle of it were 3 floating metal Buddah heads. She said it was bad, and I am immediately thinking, "oh shit, is it packed with drugs??!"
It turns out that it is forbidden to remove from the country of Thailand, any images or figures of Buddah. What made ours worse is that it was just the head, which is sacrilegious!! We were worried as to what they were going to do, but at least it was not drugs!! We were taken to the supervisor, who looked a lot like Kim-Il Jong, and he tried to explain, in minimal Engrish, that it was illegal to transport Buddah, especially the head, but he would let us off and then tried to fasten some sort of bathplug chain around the gift with a customs stamp! Much bizarreness!
We eventually made it outside, to find our driver to drive us the 2 hours round to Krabi. Except, the hotel we had booked, which said it was in Krabi, was Not in Krabi- it was 30km past Krabi, on the beach, in the middle of nowhere!! And our driver did not know the way!! He stopped twice to ask for directions, and then picked up a woman with her kid to take us there! Farcical stuff!
When we eventually got there, there was no-one on the open air reception, as it was their day off! Eventually, someone arrived and checked us in. We were both too tired to care at this point, so we both just had a (cold) shower and crashed for the night. Also, let's be honest, anywhere we stay after Pangkor Laut was bound to be a bit of a comedown!!
This morning, we got up, went to have breakfast overlooking the beach, only to discover that the beach was black sand and there was literally nothing around us! We both decided that we would check out today, 2 days early and head to Koh Phi Phi. I sort of felt bad, as it looks like it is a family fun spa hotel and they really try and make an effort and were so nice, but it is just so isolated! So we paid for 2 days and scarpered! We are now sat on the overloaded sweatbox of a ferry to Koh Phi Phi for a week. Looking forward to doing a PADI diving course, and having a bit of a fecking party!!
Am writing this on my notes app on iPhone and will cut and paste when I can! Might even add some more by then, but for now, time to snooze on the ferry!!
G & J
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