Singapore to Thailand - Holidays, Lanterns, and Rock Climbing

Happy New Year 2010!

After Bali, we jumped a plane to Singapore. We were blessed to have a contact (a friend of my sister) living there that was opening up her home to us for Christmas. It was a culture shock for us to be in Bali and then after a quick flight, land in a huge, modern, very clean city. The cars still drive on the wrong side of the rode but everyone obeyed traffic laws. The city was full of Christmas decorations and I must admit that up until then, it hadn't felt like the Christmas season at all for me.

I was suddenly very excited to see the larger than life ornaments, snowmen, and santas lining the streets. Oh and of course the reported 60,000 people that were doing the last minute shopping at the same block we were walking also reminded us that it truly was Christmas.

For Christmas dinner, Eli and I took a bus then the train to reach one of Singapore's infamous Hawker Centers. Hawker Centers are all about FOOD! This center in particular had over 80 vendors to choose from with food ranging from fresh seafood, fried chickens, Chinese, Thai, and Indian food...and much more. Since it was just late afternoon, less than a dozen of them were actually open as the peak hours for the centers start late into the evening and through the morning.

We were still overwhelmed with which one to choose but luckily, the vendors sought us out by waving their menus at us.

After making our way around the circle, we settled on the most persistent vendor and we let him pick out our dish. We ate Ayam Martabak, an Indian dish, or as I like to call it, a casserole of chicken, egg, bread, onion, and curry deliciousness.

It was not the traditional Christmas meal but it was the best Indian food we have ever eaten. We often talk about it longingly. The chef bragged to us and pointed at the hanging award he received for this dish.

We ended up staying longer than intended in Singapore as our original plan to buy train tickets to Phuket, Thailand didn't work out. We waited too long and since it was around the holidays, the train was booked full. We took this in stride and welcomed the extra few days of rest in Singapore. In the end, we ended up flying to Phuket.

We stayed in Phuket only one night as we wanted to get to another area we heard of by New Year's Eve. While in Phuket, we stayed at a beach bungalow that was straight out of a postcard. It sat on a long white sandy beach with hammocks and chairs. It was remote and quiet unlike most of Phuket which from what we hear, can be very busy and touristy. The area we went to next was Ton Sai. The journey there involved a ride from the friendly beach hut owner to a police checkpoint which doubled as a bus stop along the main road from Phuket. After the police flagged down the correct bus (we are having a hard time learning to read thai), we then boarded a bus full of locals which of course was full so we stood in the isles swaying back in forth with the curves for about an hour until some people got off and we took the empty seats.

Another hour and a half later we arrived in Krabi, grabbed some food and then took a 'taxi' (a pickup truck with no bed and instead a makeshift platform with seats) to the boat docks. There we boarded a longtail boat which looks like a really big canoe with a car engine strapped to the back connected to a long propeller. As we rode along in the noisy boat the scenery became stunning. Huge limestone cliffs jutted out of the ocean hundreds of feet tall. There were many islands around all of which had these towering cliffs.

We got off the boat in East Rai Ley which was a bay that contained a huge mud flat since it was low tide. We jumped out of the boat into about a foot and a half of water since there was no dock and walked up to the beach. Once here we walked for about 10 minutes across a small isthmus past lots of resorts and restaurants.

We were amazed at how developed this area was considering it was only accessible by boat.

When we crossed the isthmus to the other beach, we boarded another longtail to take us to our final destination, Ton Sai.

Ton Sai is known to cater to rockclimbers and when we rode up on the boat, we could immediately see the line of climbers scaling it's massive cliffs towering above the beach. We could hardly contain our excitement. We quickly found ourselves a little bamboo bungalow about a hundred yards off of the beach. We were a little nervous that we would not find anywhere to stay since it was so close to New Years but we were delighted at the 200 baht/night price, which is about $6 US, our cheapest to date. Given, these weren't the nicest digs, and we were pretty sure we could have pushed the place over if we wanted to, but it had a bed, a mosquito net, a fan and a light. The only catch was they only had electricity from 6pm to 6am. Needless to say, we have become much less discriminatory with our accommodation.

We really liked Ton Sai, it has been one of our favorite places to date. It was chock full of climbers and backpackers which made it feel a lot less touristy than other places we have been.

The best part about it was how accessible the climbing was, many of the rock faces were right on the beach next to bars and restaurants.

It was like a climber's heaven. On New Years Eve day, we rented some climbing equipment from one of the local shops and struck out to find us a suitable climb. As with everywhere else, each established climbing route was rated according to its difficulty, so we flipped through our guidebook and found one of the easier ones since the area contained mostly harder routes. We soon found out we were a little out of our league and struggled with the climb, but we enjoyed it and had a good time watching in awe as some of the better climbers defied the laws of gravity. That evening we watched the the sky catch fire as the sun set while we ate some fresh barracuda and tuna off of the grill.

We didn't know what to expect for the New Year celebration, but we found a wide range of entertainment. From a cobra snake show to fire twirling, we were thoroughly entertained. Our favorite part of the night was lighting our very own paper lantern and releasing it into the air as we watched it slowly float away.

We could see dozens of other lanterns sailing through the air which was very mesmerizing. As midnight approached the fireworks started going off at our beach and another one nearby which made for some great reflexions on the water and loud echoes off of the cliffs. It was a very magical New Years.

The next day we wandered around watching more climbers and checking out the other nearby beaches and sea cliffs. The cliffs in the area all looked like the inside of a cave. There were tons of stalactites hanging off of them which made them look almost as if they were melting. After an arduous hunt for an ATM we made our plans to leave the next day for a Island further south called Koh Lanta. We opted for the slightly more expensive but much more convenient direct boat ride instead of a slightly cheaper boat, walk, boat, taxi, bus, ferry route we could have taken. Two hours later we arrived in Koh Lanta at the ever more familiar site of a sea of tourists pouring into the welcoming hands of taxi drivers, hotel touts and shuttle bus drivers holding signs. After negotiating the taxi driver down, we found ourselves in the back of another pickup heading towards the beach we had in mind. We settled on the third place we checked out, and found a small room with a fan for a decent price. The place was more of a bar/restaurant than a hotel, with only three rooms, but it is right on the beach and has a great area to lounge around in hammocks and read. We have managed to squeeze some reading into our hectic schedules, we have each read five or six books since we left. We have found quite a few cheap used bookstores along the way and have also traded some books in hostel's 'take one leave one' shelves. We have recently read "The Beach" by Alex Garland which tells of a backpacker who is traveling in Thailand in search of some real adventure and finds a secret beach community on a secluded island. It seemed fitting.

Tomorrow we leave for bustling Bangkok on an overnight train where we will stay for a few days while we get our Vietnam visas, then into Cambodia.