Author Archive for steven

Koh Tao to Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.

Published on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 in Koh Tao and Kuala Lumpur. 0 Comments

After a few more days on Koh Tao, with no diving on the last few, we boarded a ferry to take us to Koh Samui, where we were to transfer to the airport and be whisked to Kuala Lumpur. Life’s easy for the modern traveller. Our flight was slightly delayed, and about fifteen people boarder the rickety forty seat aircraft for the hour and a half flight.

Our flight was aboard a Dash 7, operated by Berjaya Air, flying from Koh Samui Airport to Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport. It wasn’t as dodgy as it sounds, and we arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur and after painless immigration and customs formalities we were in two taxis to down town Kuala Lumpur.

I’d booked a few rooms at the Classic Inn, and was pleasantly surprised. It’s a very clean, friendly, well priced, and well located place. That night we had a curry from nearby, watched the end of the Singapore Formula 1 race, and got to bed quite late.

The morning brought a catastrophe: I was sick. Really, really, really sick. Think running to the bathroom every five minutes sick. So sick that I stayed in bed for three days feeling miserable. I’m not sure what caused it. We’d all eaten the same food at Koh Samui airport, the same curry in KL, and the same samosas that morning on Koh Tao. The only thing I did differently was drink a glass of lemon juice in the departure lounge. Anyway, everyone else met up with Kelvin and Abu and much merriment was had. Our Irish friend Brian even joined us after a day or two.

Kuala Lumpur is a bit of a blur, but after a few days I’d recovered and was ravenous. I found my way to KLCC, and to a food court contained within, and then found myself ordering two serves of nasi lemak in near perfect Malaysian. I’m more than just a pretty face!

Kelvin took us to the Batu Caves, and wisely waited down the bottom smoking cigarettes whilst we trudged to the top, dodging evil monkeys and runaway children charging down the stairs. It was hot, but well worthwhile. It’s a very spectacular place.

Finally, we were due to depart Kuala Lumpur and travel to Singapore by bus. We could have flown, but it costs the same and takes the same amount of time and is far less convenient. So, we booked a five hour passage with Transtar and left early in the morning. It was a nice bus – Wifi on board, computer games, TV, reclining seats, and so on. We even had a somewhat edible food service!

Underwater Life.

Published on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 in Koh Tao. 0 Comments

I love this place.

We’ve all quickly taken to our various dive courses, spending the days learning and diving and talking and eating and enjoying the beautiful scenery, both above and below the surface. Nights have been spent at a variety of beach bars and restaurants, with an eclectic group of people of all ages, backgrounds, and origins. It’s a lot of fun. The big group of us doesn’t scare people away, and in fact it seems to attract a lot of people traveling by themselves.

Yesterday was the final day of my SSI Advanced Adventurer course. I can now dive to 30m, at night, and use a dive computer to help me plan the dive… it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot of fun and well worth the effort. We haven’t seen a whale shark, which isn’t so awesome, but I have swum with barracudas and giant groupers and a myriad of other sea dwelling creatures. It’s strange how much I like diving: I hate the beach, I’m not a fan of swimming in the ocean, and the sand shits me to tears. Somehow, this is different.

Last night we celebrated our various levels of qualification certification with a few drinks… this got a little messy and I suspect there were a few sore heads around today!

Koh Tao.

Published on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 in Koh Tao. 0 Comments

It’s been a fun filled few days… apologies for the bad typing: I’m using a Thai keyboard and the keys are half broken.

After emerging from three hours of sleep on Friday night, we left our hostel for the bus to Chumporn and the ferry from Chumporn to Koh Tao. The bus was intolerably hot and I wasn’t sure if I was dying or falling asleep. The air conditioner had broken and even the Thai dudes on the bus were hating life nearly as much as we were. It was six hours of absolute misery, and disembarking from the bus to the sweltering heat of a Thai noon was a welcome relief from the glasshouse.

We met a few cool people on the fery and we’ve been hanging out ever since, along with a few cool people spread between the various dive courses and refresher courses we’re doing. Our group of eight has swollen to a group of between five and fifteen. Last night we spent the evening eating on the beach, watching fireworks and getting to know our new German, Canadian, Dutch, American, English, and Kiwi friends. Good times… though better for others. Filer and Mark showed up at the hotel at 4am. I was home by 1, and up at 8… those guys haven’t emerged. Yet.

It’s hot. Really hot. The weather has been perfect: warm sunny days, and slightly cooler evenings with a nice breeze and thunderstorms on the horizon. Evenings are beer and food filled, with tales of the day spent diving. It’s awesome. Photos to come when I can be bothered… life here is all about maximum relax, minimum stress. Life is good.

Bangkok.

Published on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 in Bangkok. 0 Comments

After a long but fairly comfortable Jetstar flight from Melbourne to Bangkok, we breezed through customs and immigration an were unleashed on Thailand. Kind of.

We’re all here, having met over the past few days. It’s hot, humid, and crazy. We’re just far enough from the tourist ghetto to be relatively quiet and close enough to be convenient.

I don’t have any photos yet… Bangkok is merely a meeting poin for the rest of the adventure.

We leave for Koh Tao at 6am tomorrow… ouch!

Tomorrow: Adelaide to Melbourne, Melbourne to Bangkok.

Published on Monday, September 14th, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

In just 12 hours, I fly from Adelaide to Melbourne where I will meet with two friends before boarding our flight to Bangkok. We are expected to arrive in Bangkok late in the evening… which is meant to be relatively cool!

Over the coming days, we will all meet in Bangkok. Early on Friday morning, we depart Bangkok for Koh Tao.

The trip wouldn’t be complete without a little drama, and it’s happened before we’ve left. An enormous plastics fire sent a plume of smoke over the Adelaide skyline earlier this evening:

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A new look… kind of.

Published on Monday, August 24th, 2009 in Uncategorized. 3 Comments

Steven Travels now looks a little different. I took the header image a few months ago but only just got around to post processing it – crop,  adjust colours, rotate, done!

I’ve also added some countdown timers to the right, and various other minor tweaks have taken place, too.

September’s Adventure.

Published on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 in Pre Departure. 1 Comment

After nearly six months of plotting, the final details of the September trip have been sorted out. Our group of two has swollen to a group of eight at the largest, but only five for most of the journey. We leave Australia on September 15 and return around October 7.

We’re meeting in Bangkok, and on September 18 we travel by bus and boat to Koh Tao, where I’ll once again join Big Blue for a week and a bit of underwater (and above water) fun.

Following Koh Tao, we hopefully (I say hopefully because the ticketing process is a little convoluted) fly from Koh Samui to Kuala Lumpur, where we stay for four days and five nights. After Kuala Lumpur, we’re got another four days and five nights in Singapore before heading home.

I’m not sure how the five-to-eight person adventure will work, but I’m hoping it will be OK.

Fortunate Timing.

Published on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 in Pre Departure. 0 Comments

I think I have swine flu. If not swine flu, some other miserable kind of flu. I feel terrible. I slept most of the day yesterday, and of course couldn’t sleep last night. At 3am, or thereabouts, I happened to visit the Air Asia website and found an incredible sale fare:

Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur return, free plus taxes and charges. The base price of the return fare was $120, but with extras such as checked in bags, food, choosing my own seat (none of those stinky middle seats for me, please), a bus to and from the low cost terminal at Kuala Lumpur, the total price worked out to be $208.54. Return. Insane.

I’m going with a friend from university. She has family in KL, and we’re going to visit a friend of ours in Macau. We leave on February 14 2010 and return on March 4. I’m thinking a few days in Kuala Lumpur, then Melaka to Penang to Macau to Taipei to Kuala Lumpur to home!

And again…

Published on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 in Pre Departure. 0 Comments

Today, courtesy of a giant Jetstar sale, I booked a flight from Melbourne to Bangkok on September 15 for $verycheap. A friend and I are going diving on Koh Tao for nine days, then flying to Kuala Lumpur and then on to Singapore. Total adventure time: 23 days.

Can’t wait!

Singapore and beyond.

Published on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 in Singapore. 0 Comments

Well, I’m back in Adelaide.

Koh Tao to Singapore: 3pm ferry to Koh Samui. Cheap room at a relatively deserted Best Western hotel. Hot shower, shave, sleep. Awake at 4am, hotel shuttle bus to airport. Check in, wait, fly. Several hours transit in Bangkok. Delayed flight. Arrive at my hostel in Singapore late Wednesday afternoon.

Ah, Singapore. Strangely familiar yet so completely foreign. I ate a cheap vegetarian curry from some place nearby and it’s surprisingly good for something devoid of animal flesh. After dinner I wandered around Serangoon Road and side streets between Little India and Farrer park MRT stations. It was a seething sea of humanity – throngs of people wandering, shopping, eating, selling, buying. It’s fascinating, pungent, and delicious.

Later, I relaxed at the garden bar near the hostel with a book and a few cheeky beers and read a book for a while… a good end to a busy day.

Thursday morning is golf time – the first round of the 2008 Singapore Open. The weather didn’t look very nice. I made my way to the tournament on Sentosa Island and arrive just in time to be in a position to follow Adam Scott around. There was a 3 hour rain delay after six holes. Scott wasn’t playing well, and thinking that I was jinxing him I checked out some other groups. Phil Mickelson was busily signing autographs, and I commented on his recent appearance on Entourage. He grinned, shook my hand, and said thanks. I wish him well. He finishes 9th. Adam Scott doesn’t make the cut.

On Thursday night I met up with Matt and Marissa, whom I had met at Akinabalu Hostel in Kota Kinabalu. We met on Clarke Quay at Brewerkz, and discovered that as well as lots of delicious beer they also did some pretty good food. Their stories are pretty entertaining and they’re living the dream – lots more travel is planned. It was good to see them again. Following a beer rendezvous, they headed to some night club, and I went to back to the hotel, to bed.

The weather on Friday was no good at all so rather than see the golf (which was mostly rained out anyway) I spent the morning around the hostel, where I met three English girls. We talked for a while and they went out, but I had planned to do boring stuff – like all the laundry I had left over from Koh Tao. Laundry took a while, and when it was done I wandered to Orchard Road and had a brief investigation of a few enormous shopping malls. Eventually, I made my way to Chinatown to start another walking tour through Chinatown and the seedy underbelly of Singapore’s past. Emma, one of the English girls to whom I had mentioned the walk, was there too.

After a very interesting tour we headed back to the hostel to find the other two girls, but they weren’t about so we went to the Price of Wales for a few beers and some curry and some live music. It turns out that this girl was house sitting in Singapore, got bored, and checked in to a hostel to meet people. What a life! We made plans to recruit a group of people to visit the Night Safari the following night.

The recruitment didn’t go all that well and the four of us made our way to the Night Safari on Saturday night, learning along the way that public transport in Singapore is really very easy and more versatile than I knew from my experience with only the MRT. The proximity card ticket thing for the MRT works on busses, and there’s a bus from one MRT station right to the Night Safari. We found our way there easily enough.

To be honest, the Night Safari was a little lame. It’s clearly designed for kids, but we had a good time anyway. The setting was great and gives a real sense of being in the jungle… despite the scripted, practised, repeated hundreds of times each night speech from the person who tells us what we should be seeing. The little tram things are quite cool, though… and the banana split from the ice cream shop is enormous. All in all, a good night.

Sunday brought a big decision. I hadn’t intended to head home so early, but I was still suffering from the cold and feeling quite average. The political situation in Thailand was becoming more and more unstable and there were signs of more nastiness to come. Additionally, Tropical Storm Maysak had ruined parts of Vietnam and had made life unpleasant with lots of rain and misery to be found. I wanted to go to Laos, but to get there meant transiting through Thailand (risky) or Vietnam (flooded). Frustrated with paying money to be sick away from home, I went to the Singapore Airlines office to change my ticket and return to Australia earlier.

I locked in a return to Adelaide on Wednesday, November 19 – coincidentally my sister’s birthday. She was due to arrive in Adelaide only a few hours after me. The flight was overnight, so I was scheduled to depart Singapore on Tuesday night.

Sunday night brought another meeting with my mate Tim. We went to Maxwell Food Centre, home to the famed Tian Tian chicken rice. Tian Tian was closed, but Tim prefers another chicken rice stall and it was open. We feasted on chicken rice  and other assorted delicacies, and washed it all down with a couple of long necks of Tiger. Total cost was $cheap. The food is something I could definitely get used to in Singapore… I love it, especially the hawker/food centres.

Monday was spent wandering around again and finding a gift for my sister’s birthday. Antiques are expensive! I eventually settled for a still stupidly expensive Buddha head – four faces showing different expressions. I was probably ripped off. On Tuesday I had to leave the hostel early so I left my bag there and tried to keep inside air conditioning – so I saw the new Bond film at a nearby cinema, looked around some shopping malls and bought some new ear buds, and eventually made my way to the airport.

Changi airport is pretty sweet, especially the Terminal 3 departures area. There’s a brewery… in the airport! I had a pint of airport brewed beer (OK, it probably wasn’t actually brewed there) and a burger, and took advantage of the free wifi and a place to plug my laptop in to charge.

Leaving Singapore wasn’t as easy as entering: the plane I was due to leave on was broken. Flights were departing to all over the world, but we were stuck in Singapore for two hours until a replacement plane arrived.

After a long and uncomfortable overnight flight, I arrived home… and promptly managed to somehow delete most of the photographs I took during my second visit to Singapore!