Final moments

Wooh, it feels weird but I'm also really excited since I'm going back to Finland soon. I've been away 13months now and I'm really keen feeling the proper Finnish winter again. It's around 35 degrees here in Kuala Lumpur and -20 in my home town so the climate difference will be around 55 degrees. Nothing to a sauna-toughened body.

I met an Australian guy Chris here in the hostel. He's from Noosa where I've also done some surfing during my stay in Australia. The weirdest thing is that he's going to UK and we have the same flight to Vienna with Austrian Airlines. Atleast now I can share the taxi cost to the airport. The whole journey from here to my hometown will take whopping 24hours in total with all the waiting at the airports...24hours.

Madam Kwan's Nasi Lemak

The feeling of backpacking life came back pretty fast after lifting my 20kg+ rucksack on my back. It was time to head to Kuala Lumpur again, the 4th time. Neighbourhood was becoming familiar. I had booked dorm for three nights from the Red Palm hostel which is ranked in the top10 hostels in the World. This was the hostel I stayed also year ago last January so it felt like coming back to the roots. My journey was gonna end where it pretty much was starting.

I was warmly welcomed to the hostel and this time I didn't have any touristy plans. I had enough sightseeing during my last stays and now I just wanted to relax, read a good book and think about going back to Finland. I went to buy a book but ended up buying three from the discount. Well atleast now I've heaps to read, I finished one book already.

I did some research about surfing in Malaysia and it turned out that you can actually surf here in Kuala Lumpur. The sunway mall has a artificial surfing beach, where you can catch waves during the weekend afternoons. Would be good to try some local surfing, but it's not a weekend.

I'm really getting into local foods and I wanted to try the local speciality Nasi Lemak in proper restaurant. There's a good place called Madame Kwan's, which I found by the recommendation of the local friend Florence. We went there together and I was really happy to see that the portion was a good size and it tasted really good. You can get much cheaper Nasi Lemak from the food stalls but I still enjoyed this clean option a lot. I still would like to try to Beef Rendang which everybody recommends but I think I'm running out of time and I just can't eat all the time.

Genting Highlands, Malaysia

We took a pleasant Airasia flight from Phuket to KL and headed again to our accomodation in China town inn. Double room for 20euros. It was already my third time in Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia so I was getting a little bit more familiar with places. Our plan was to have a good sleep before heading to Genting highlands with it's casinos. I bought a genuine Versace belt from the Chinatown market to wear with my suit.

Getting to Genting highlands from KL is really easy. There are shuttle buses driving there hourly from KL central and it costs only a bit over 1 euro for a bus+skyrail. Skyrail is a gondola which takes you around 700meters up to 2000meters and where all the hotels and casinos are. We had booked the most expensive World club room from the World's largest hotel: The first world hotel. It has incredible 6118 rooms, I don't know if any hotel already beats this?

We were pretty excited to enter the first world plaza and see all the theme parks, casinos, statue of liberty, eiffel tower, venice with gondolas and much else. When we finally had found our way to the lobby of our hotel the place resembled me of a busy trainstation: Announcements, heaps of people queuing for the checkins and big big lobby with lots of signs. Well backpacker won't queue and we hit straight to the Worldclub special check-in where there was not any queue whatsoever. Man behind the counter first told us to go to register, or do some kind of other checkin but when we showed him that we really had booked the World Club room things started to go better. We got our room keys and were told to take the lift to the most highest, 24th floor, in the 1st tower. This accomodation was a little bit of contrast to our previous accomodations, for example in Koh Lanta we had a bungalow with cockroaches, flies and outside-toilet without flush.

Well without going too much into details we had good time in the firstworld plaza. The place itself is huge and we spent the afternoon just by wandering around, checking all the rides available and also visited the Mr. Ripley's believe or not museum. Good fun. We went to look through some of the menus since we were planning to have a good big dinner but didn't got always the best service. We decided to go back to the room, put on our new cashmere suits and see what would happen. Well the effect was pretty good, since we were pretty much the only Westerns in the plaza and now looked like the genuine businessmen would. We were called "sir" all the time and we got much more space in the crowd than before. We ended up having a Asian buffet with heaps of different food varieties, but unfortunately not many of them were really good for our western taste. Well we picked couple of our favourite foods and got our stomachs full.

With big tummies, we tried to make our way to the other side of the massive complex. We had bought tickets to the evening show, the Carneval. We paid a bit more from the tickets and were immediately led to the front row when arriving to the arena. The show itself was really good with East European dancers, chinese acrobatics and the mad amazon woman with her crossbows.

After the show was time to check out the casinos. One of the interesting thing was that in the casino there was nobody drinking alcohol. Apparently muslims here are having their kicks from gambling and other stuff. Well to be honest it looked like the casino was full of chinese cigarette addicts and we wondered around for a while trying to find a texas hold'em table. Well no luck, since there was no texas in any of three casinos but we decided to check out the blackjack instead. It took a while to understand that the 'blackjack' is called 'pontoon' here. I played for a while and lost my money with serenity. Pete was lucky and made some profit. Well anyway it was getting so late that we went to sleep already. Pete had 4 hours time to sleep before he had to take a taxi to the airport for his flight back to Finland. When Pete was sitting in the plane towards Europe I enjoyed the nice breakfast in the special World Club lounge with businessmen and their laptops. The image of backpacking was further fading...

Koh Phi Phi

We took a morning ferry to Phi Phi island and wished to find some accomodation. It was a peak-season and we had heard that pretty much all the accomodation is full. Luckily we arrived there in the morning and found great room from Ton Sai at a guesthouse called P.P.Dreams. On our way to Phi Phi we met a German guy Stefan who also got a room from the same house. Later we saw people wondering around with their backpacks on. Poor guys had taken the afternoon ferry and couldn't find accomodation anymore.

Koh Phi Phi seemed to be much busier than Koh Lanta and you could hear Swedish everywhere. Most of the people around were tourists but on the contrary to families in Ao Nang, you could mostly see young travellers here. After arriving to the island, you'll soon realize that there's something wrong with the streets. You can't hear the all-around honking and smell the fumes since there's no cars or motorbikes on the whole island whatsoever. It's pretty amazing since Koh Phi Phi was totally destroyed by the tsunami and now you can still see lots of construction sites around. Since there are no motored vehicles around, people are moving bags of cement with wooden carts. There's no cranes, so you can see men pulling ropes to lift up heavy stuff to the roofs. All this brings quite a relaxed and unique atmosphere to the life at the whole island.

When the dark comes, the relaxed atmosphere turns into booming nightlife. It's still nothing compared to the party island Koh Phangan but there's atleast some kind of fiesta every night. We used to go to great Thai dinners with our new German friend Stefan and after that check out the happenings at the nightclubs. I asked around for the diving options at Hin Daeng and Hin Muang but the visibility hadn't got much better. The prices from Koh Phi Phi to these sites were also 1000 bahts higher than from Koh Lanta.

We were really keen to do some activities so we booked a boat/kayaking/snorkelling trip from P.P.Sunset tour. It was a half day trip which started 3pm. I was surprised to see that there was only 10 people on the whole trip and we had a big boat capable of taking around 30-50 passengers. When the tour started we first stopped to do some kayaking and snorkelling. With my previous kayaking experience in New Zealand and Australia, I steered our double kayak through big swells to tight, dark caves. Pete was afraid of bats and thought crabs are gonna fall on him from the ceiling so we didn't hang around in the caves for long. Well not seriously, but it was our time to do some snorkelling. I was expecting to see some dead corals again since there was other tourists already doing their snorkelling. I can't describe how shocked I was after entering the water and realizing that the visibility was alright and there was already quite a big school of fish surrounding me. After the snorkelling session we had seen some beautiful corals, clams, fish and a seasnake. One of the best snorkelling I've ever had. The last stop on the tour was the Maya Bay which is seen on the movie "The beach". Not very special beach since it was a low tide but the limestone cliffs around the bay were really spectacular. We played some beach soccer with the local guides and Pete made a nice goal from my accurate pass. Hurrayh Finland. The tour ended by having a good dinner and watching the beautiful sunset onboard. Whole trip was 9 euros each and well worth it!

Even when people say Phi Phi has changed I still think it's a great place for young people to go for a holiday. We said goodbyes to our German friend Stefan and headed towards Phuket airport for our journey to Kuala Lumpur and Genting highlands.

Koh Lanta

Koh Lanta is located just South of Krabi. It's pretty laid back island compared to the nearby Koh Phi Phi. You can get a ferry to Koh Lanta from Phi Phi or from Krabi. We took a minivan from Krabi straight to Lanta, ticket included 2 ferry trips.

We had looked beforehand that there should be some fair-priced accomodation in NW-part at the Lanta at Kaw Kwang beach. When we finally arrived there we realized how much this place must have changed since the publish of the latest Lonely Planet travel guidebook. The bungalows had been transformed to big resorts and we were offered orange juice by resort workers when we walked to the reception. The cheapest room available was 3500bahts(70euros) so we had our orange juices and left saying that we were looking a little bit cheaper option. It was quite late already and we were pretty fed up by long day travelling. The only "fair" option at the NW area was a resort which offered us a basic double room with 1200bahts(24euros). We took it and decided to look cheaper accomodation for the next days.

It turned out that all the budget accomodation is located in the Southern part of the island. Lots of backpackers stay at the Kantiang bay where you might find some nightlife but we headed further South. We got a bungalow close to a nice beach for 12euros a night. We spent there few nights just relaxing since there wasn't much of a nightlife going on. 95% of the island population are muslims which means there wasn't too much alcohol-filled parties around. I think it's a good thing and helps to keep up the island's relaxed atmosphere without pumping techno-music and shouting tourists. We checked the island with scooters and went to trek to a small waterfall. There was elephant trekking available and caving options as well. We also went to the four islands tour with a longtail boat but weren't really impressed by tons of tourists and destroyed corals.
If you're into diving, Koh Lanta is the best spot to arrange diving trips to nearby Hin Daeng and Hin Muang for around 3900 bahts(80euros). They say there's regular manta rays and you could even see whale shark around. I was considering of doing a diving trip but it turned out that the visibility in the area wasn't very good at the moment. Some were blaming el nino but nobody was sure why it wasn't as good as usual. I decided to try my luck later from Koh Phi Phi.

Ao Nang and around

Ok we ordered the suits and got them as well. Cashmere with stripes. Business look at the best!

We rented 125cc scooters for 4euros/day each with Andy and Pete and went around Ao Nang. We drove to Buddha footsteps at the nearby temple Wat Tham Seua(or tigercave) and climbed all the 1237 steep steps up to the mountain. It was hard work in the scorching sun and definitely good for your bum and thighs. We were respecting the culture by wearing long trousers and shirts even though there was many western farangs pretty much in beachwear. I think we got much more out of it with the proper suffering.

After that we drove around the countryside, trying to find a beach, and kept on waving to all the local people and children which were waving back to us. We felt like local celebrities since in every house there was someone giving us the wave and directions. We went to dinner for a local restaurant without anyone speaking English and ordered some Pad Thai, which is fried noodles and came with some seafood. The old owner lady of the place called her sister and we had to tell in the phone if we wanted any more food and if we were satisfied with the spices. The sister could speak a little bit english and therefore worked as a interpreter between us and the kitchen. In the end, we got really good portions and the food cost us only 25 bahts(~50eurocents) each. Finally we found the beach we were looking for and were surprised to see that there was still lots of uncleaned garbage from the tsunami and no tourists or locals whatsoever. At this point the time was running quite late and we had to head back to Ao Nang. We were very delighted by the pouring rain which hit us on the way back. Heck of an experience driving through traffic with slicks-like tires, wet roads and toy helmets. We ended up soaked but finally made it back to the accomodation and well earned cold Chang-beer.

At the end of my stay, we had some nice local parties back in Ao nang. After one bigger night out, we headed to nearby Railey Beach just to lay on the beach. The beach is pretty popular and was quite full. Nice views and great rock climbing oppoturnities but still missing the key point, the surf. Well you can't always get everything you wish for. We were scammed on our way back since we had bought a 2-way ticket to the Railey beach but it was valid until 6pm only. We had to pay 1 euro for the new ticket. What a rip-off!

We also met a girl from my home university in Finland and she was staying in Ao Nang with her sister. After big farewell party I had to say second goodbyes to my good friend Andy. He was heading to Northern Thailand and Chiang Mai and was planning to do some meditation there. Crazy guy.
We left to Koh Lanta with Pete and ended up having good, relaxing, days there at the Southern part of the island.

Ao Nang

From touristy Patong beach we took a local bus to Krabi and watched the great Waterworld movie on the way. It was good to watch Kevin Costner speaking thai. From Krabi we headed to nearby Ao Nang which is another beach resort area. We have been going out couple of times and I was also happy to meet my good old travel mate Andy from Germany. I was complaining about hearing too much German in Australia but on the other hand there's so many Finnish people here in Ao Nang that you'd propably copy by speaking only Finnish. Not very cultural experience.
Today we went to the local tailor with Pete and ordered us some business suit. Kashmir, yes please.

We probably head to nearby tiger cave with scooters tomorrow or perhaps do some kayaking around Railey beach.


Andy from Germany

In Kuala Lumpur again

Yeah we spent 4 nights in Kuala Lumpur with Pete. Went to Poppys club, thai club and met some people. Had a hotel in chinatown and ate some nice local food. We then took a plane to Phuket in Thailand and that's where we're now. Leaving to Krabi and Railey beach tomorrow, too much tourists here... Longer updates to come.

Leaving Australia

It's now constantly in my mind. The thought that I've already spend 11 months here in Australia and I have to leave tomorrow. It's not the thing that I wouldn't like to go back to Finland but it's the shitty thing that you have to say farewells to all the people you've attached into and not to be sure if you will see them again. It's like a switch from life to the other and I'm sure nothing has really changed that much when I finally arrive back home. I need to make a big posting about all this philosophical nonsense on the better time with a glass of red wine.

But, alas, to avoid the total culture shock of coming from "holiday" to the life full of commitments, I'm going to Asia for 23 days starting tomorrow. I'll first fly to Kuala Lumpur where I'm gonna meet my good friend Pete who is arriving there on the next morning. (You can see Pete as himself on the picture.) We are then gonna travel together for three weeks in Thailand. Besides Kuala Lumpur we're probably heading to Koh Phi Phi, Krabi and Phuket.

I'm sure there's many new stories to come.

Sydney New Year's Eve

Over 3000kg of fireworks worth $4 million, 11000 shells and another 10 000 comets, 75th birthday of the Harbour bridge and over 1 million people. That's just something which makes up the New Year's event which is considered the best in the World. To combine this with the facts, that I had a sleeping place in the walking distance from the lookout point, I was about to spend the New Year with my good friends and I didn't have to wear the winter coat on to copy with -20degrees weather, I thought this was going to be one of the biggest nights in my life so far.

Well to boost the things up a little bit we drove through the local alcohol store, liquorland to get some of the necessary supplies. We wanted to be on the lookout early to get a spot and we arrived there around 11:30am to find out that there was already heaps of people crowding the lawns around the river. Well we reserved ourselves a quite big spot because we were expecting around 15-20 people to join our group. It was hard time for four of us to keep all the greedy latecomers to stay away from the space which we reserved with our widespread blankets.

The officialities started with the cannon of fort denison at 1pm and there was always something going on at every hour. Most of this were plane flyovers, including tiger moth and the spits special. We had some chicken with rolls and always poshy crackers with cheese for snack while waiting the big bangs to come. The girls had made some shopping as well and had bought 12 bottles of passion pop which they used in the huge punch they made in one of the iceboxes. The amazing thing was that even though there was masses of people everywhere I couldn't see a single fight or angry looking people whatsoever. Everybody seemed to be really happy and even the security which was all around seemed to be really understanding for all the things that started to happen when evening went further and people got a bit more relaxed. One of the most funniest thing was Alex, a guy from UK who tried to sit on one of the iceboxes just to find out that it isn't strong enough for sitting and crashed right through. His balance wasn't perfect at that point anymore and it took him quite a while to get up and find his pants wet from icy water. At this point some of the families around our spot started to move away a little bit.

The fireworks started to kick in around 9pm when the children's firework was held. This lonely was really beautiful and could beat any fireworks I had seen so far. It was soon over though and I was looking forward for the big one to come in at midnight. It finally came and it was huge, lots of fireworks in three different shooting spots and the whole harbour bridge lit of shiny explosions. Hard to describe here anything but it was big, colourful, loud and on the contrary to my previous solo-travels I was happy to share this moment with someone. Happy new year everyone.

Family life

My good pal Andy from Germany arrived also in the Mel's house on the Christmas eve. It was so great to see the old travel mate again. He came straight from New Zealand and had been hitchiking around for a month. That's the way to travel and he told that he'd really fell in love with the whole country, which is easy to imagine with this nature-loving guy.

After Christmas the days were pretty lazy around the house. Relaxing, good times. Going out with the new friends and waiting for the big night at the New Years eve. Having dinners with the family, playing with the dog, swimming in the pool, waking up to the incredible sound of laughing kookaburras and screaming cockatoos and having morning coffee with the people who had become so close just by travelling. Generally I had good times, but one sad occasion happened when the neighbour's dog, "the snake killer", who was famous of killing snakes got bitten by the red belly black snake. The snake is really venomous and dangerous to human as well. The dog was found lifeless on the backyard laying next to the dead snake. Bloody snakie couldn't espace the last blow from the brave dog. Can't imagine the shock for the owners who made the dead snake as an example for others by nailing it to the tree.

Mel's sister Jackie has an apartment just on the Northern side of the Harbour bridge, with actual view to the awesome bridge, and she promised us to stay there over the New year. Well, it's hard to describe here the feelings all this raised in me but I knew it was going to be one of the biggest nights in my life so far.

I'm dreaming of the white Christmas

Well actually I was pretty happy to spend a different Christmas here in Southern hemisphere. Unlike the Finns, the Australians have their Christmas on the Christmas day, not on the Eve. On the Christmas Eve I helped Mel's father to build up the rain/sun cover and set up the christmas lights on their backyard. We were lucky since as soon as we had put the tab up it started to rain. When it rains in Sydney, water really comes pouring down. The nearby ocean gives a good boost to the storms. We ended the evening with a nice barbeque in aussie style with beer.

The next day was the Christmas day and time to open the presents. Mel's mother had made some awesome food for all the party guests which summed up nearly to 20 people in total. Again everybody was really friendly and were pretty interested to know what do I think about Australia, what is the best place where I've been and how do we spend Christmas in Finland. I tried to answer as good as I can but some things just aren't very clear to myself either. The temperature was pretty ok around 25 degrees and the pool was in constant use. We also played table tennis, sang singstar with playstation and had drinks of course. I had really merry christmas.

The beginning of the end in Australia

I managed to sell my surfboard through Ebay and promised to deliver it to the buyer here in Sydney. It wasn't the easiest task to travel with the train with a 8,6" minimal and a 20kg rucksack, but with the help of locals I managed to move my stuff around. One funny situation happened when I tried to get through the ticket-gates at the trainstation. I was carrying too much and got literally stuck between the narrow gates. Workers saw my struggle and let me through the big gate which was meant for people with "restricted mobility".

I wanted to see the Dutch teacher Eva before moving out from the central Sydney and I went to see her in the Bondi. She had an apartment just few hundred meters from the Bondi beach, which is maybe the most familiar (and crowded) beach in the Australia. I used to travel for a while with Eva from Cairns to Normanton so it was good to see her again. She was living with a Dutch surfer who was also a good dude and promised to lend me his surfboard if I ever wanted to go surfing.

It was time for me to move to the Mel's place and I took a train again to Epping where I got picked up. I got very well welcomed by Mel's family and got an own room to live in. I got stunned by all the hospitality which kept coming from all directions. We went out couple of times before the Christmas and I got to meet many of Mel's great friends. Mel also took us to the Blue mountains and could show us some incredible places since she had been living in the area for a while. This is the time I felt the most like being home during my stay away from Finland. The first time I got really struck by the thought that I was soon about to leave everything here behind...