We’ve just come back from a day-long cooking course which was definitely a trip highlight, although I’m almost hallucinating through excessive chilli and garlic intake and I weigh about three stones more than I did this morning.

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Another day, another bad-tempered border guard, another medical disclaimer signed to assure the authorities we don’t have swine flu. I’m so bored of this global health paranoia that I thought about following James’ advice and writing ‘Mexican pig farmer’ under the occupation section of my Laos visa form, just for shits and giggles. But I came to my senses and wrote ‘unemployed pork lover’ instead, so we had a smooth crossing from Thailand to Laos, arriving by truck in Vientiane for our first peek at the Mekong River.

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For most people of our generation, Thailand’s Koh Phangan is known for it’s full moon party – where 10,000 revelers descend on the silky silver beaches for an evening of hedonistic escapism.  Now, my dear readers, I’m sure you know that Jeannie and I are not ones to break tradition, and given that we happened to be passing through peninsular Thailand during a full moon we thought it rude not to pop over to the aforementioned island and teach these kids a thing or two about how to p-a-r-t-y.  Oh yes, we’d packed our gladrags and couldn’t wait to give them a jolly good airing.

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James dragged himself away from the technological delights of Singapore last Sunday and we took a short 6 hour bus ride back to Kuala Lumpur – what a great city. It’s bigger and grubbier than Singapore, efficient but not in a scary way, scattered with mosques, towering high-rises, temples, food halls, shrines, markets and museums, with a bit of rain forest stuck right in the middle like a really big lung for the city’s large, multi-cultural population.

We spent four days wandering around and stuffing ourselves with Chinese filth, the highlights being (apart from the food) the National Museum of Islamic Art, the city butterfly sanctuary and a surreal visit to the KL telecoms tower. The museum was showing an excellent photography exhibition – images of Islamic integration in Britain (there was one of an elderly Muslim man tending his London allotment, which is practically on a tube line, who was the first volunteer rescuer to rush down the tunnel and help victims of 7/7) – and a whole load of exhibits demystifying Islamic practises and laws. We should have a museum like that in the UK and everybody should be forced to visit at an impressionable age.

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A funny thing happened last night: we were on a night bus from Kota Bharu to Singapore and James was asleep while I was awake. This almost never happens, since I am narcoleptic (NOT lazy) and James is a night owl, plus I could have slept through the Titanic going down whereas James is a more delicate flower and needs gentler conditions. As I tossed and turned and cursed James for being in the land of nod I suddenly identified the problem: I was too comfortable.

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Hello…sorry about the brief radio silence, we’ve been electricity-shy for a week or two.

We left Phi Phi about 10 days ago and spent one night in Patong, a beach resort in Phuket which seems to be the spring retreat for all the fat, drunk European oafs who haunt the Canary Islands during summer. Quite frankly it was horrific and we spent the night playing Thai bride bingo and counting the go-go bars (12 in one street) between drinks. Despite Thailand’s many virtues the sex industry is really, really unsavoury, and it was with a Patong flavoured bad taste in our mouths that we decided to have a little detour to Malaysia, which is proving to to be a very good decision: it’s very relaxed with a friendly multi-cultural population and an abundance of natural resources – less hectic than India but more unpredictable than Thailand.

We’ve spent the last 5 days on Pulau Perhentian, a little speck of jungle covered rock in the South China Sea with the most sublime, postcard perfect beaches I have ever seen. I know we droned on about pretty islands on the last post but in my book the Perhentians kicked Phi-Phi’s arse: hardly any development at all, perfect sea water, daily volleyball matches, incredible wildlife both in thre jungle and in the sea, and a lovely bunch of Malaysians and ex-pats running the handful of beach bars and dive shops. There’s really nothing else there – no ATMs, no speedboats in the bay, no electricity during daylight, no shops full of tat, no touts.

Annoyingly, James signed up to a PADI course and is now a qualified open water diver, while I achieved nothing beyond swimming, eating and playing volleyball badly. I was very kindly adopted by a group of English boys who, being on their gap year, were right on my maturity wavelength: had a great day with them snorkelling and jumping off lighthouses into the sea. Our snorkelling inventory: black tip sharks, barracudas, angel fish, clown fish, stingrays, sea turtles, snappers, about a million other fishies and more coral than you can shake a stick at.

We’re back to the mainland today and planning to shoot down to Singapore for a bit of sand-free civilisation before we head into the Malaysian rainforest to swing on some ropes or something (before we do that we will be collecting a large tree sloth from Kuala Lumpur airport in order to return it to its natural habitat).

 

They say pictures can paint a thousand words, so how’s this:
After the chaos of Mother India, we decided we needed a long-overdue holiday (yes folks, it’s pretty hard going this traveling malarkey). Welcome to Koh Phi Phi, a simply stunning island we’ve been calling home for the last few days.

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Exactly 7 weeks after we touched down in Delhi we’ve abandoned the sub-continent but, just to remind us who’s boss, India still seems to be having a karmic laugh at our expense: we spent nearly 2 months there trying to avoid the shits (I failed, James succeeded) and not be ripped off by Indian holy men…and within 24 hours of stepping off the plane in Bangkok, James has the shits and I have been ripped off by an Indian holy man. Not only that, but one of the reasons we shipped out was to avoid the potential unrest generated by the imminent Indian elections – and we’ve walked straight into the middle of a political rally attempting to oust the Thai Prime Minister.

Same same but different, as the locals say.

Having said all that, Bangkok feels to be a world away from India in many ways. Buddhist icononography and architecture has replaced Hindu, the electricity hasn’t failed yet, the tourist population has exploded, there’s a lot of female flesh on display, and I didn’t feel as though I was going to die once on the bus from the airport (it was strangley dissapointing).

We arrived yesterday morning with James in a bad way due to sleep deprivation and the first flutterings of his stomach bug. The overnight bus journey from Siliguri to Calcutta was filthy (James woke up at 3am with a cockroach playing in his hair), terrifying  and incredibly loud thanks to the presence of a tinny speaker system that played Alllll the Bollywood Hits allll night long. We spent the day in Calcutta, flew at 2am, arrived at 6am and were fit for very little yesterday except sleep-walking around the Khao San Road, which is exactly as I remember it: still full of tat, tourists and touts, and still able to ellicit, in equal parts, complete adoration and utter loathing for the backpacker scene.

Today has been more productive: we took a trip to see an enormous reclining Buddha, wandered around the city, cruised back home on a river boat and ate our body weight in Pad Thai. James is now back in quarantine and I am indulging in my filthy little secret hobby (watching a replay of the Champions League games at an Irish bar). We have one more day to explore this enormous city before we head south for some bech therapy but I suspect we might be back before long…lots to see.

It’s nice to be somewhere completely different and to be relieved of some of the more challenging aspects of travelling in India, but the sub-continent is still dominating my thoughts and, despite us both swearing at least once that we would never go there again, I suspect we’ll be back before long - there’s too much too see and too many contradictions to unravel in one little trip.

 I’ve done a lot of reading on India and there are about a million explanations relating to it’s strange, unrelenting appeal, but they’re all to lyrical for my liking…the best analogy I can come up with is that India is a really itchy, unidentifiable rash: causes severe and often continuous irritation, especially upon early discovery, and relief can only be found by scratching deep into the surface - or surrendering to the fact that you can’t understand it properly and just letting it get under your skin.

Here’s a short video from our descent on Darjeeling’s Toy Train:

We decided to stay in the Darjeeling Planters Club – a remnant from the colonial hey-day.  Our hotel was somewhat unchanged over the last 90 years or so – the curved concrete facade and wooden balconies wouldn’t look out of place on a Victorian sea-front.  The drafty club was packed to the rafters with all kinds of curious- a WW1 machine gun, oxygen tanks from Everest ascents, stuffed animals, heads of bears, tigers and deer – an entire leopard hung above the open fire in the bar.  Our bedroom was up the wide, creaky wooden staircase and situated on the first floor balcony.  The room was huge, and full of character – this place seems unchanged since in opened in the late 19th century.  It’s easy to imagine tea planters gathering here of an evening discussing tea and hunting whilst whaff-whaffing over a G&T.  Splendid my dear boy.

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