Vasta poissa olen viimein perillä: Beach life and big cities

We packed some take away momos from our favorite restaurant (yes, Hello Kitty) in Kathmandu and then hopped in an Air Asia flight to the great city of Kuala Lumpur.

Getting out of the plane in South East Asia is always an exhilarating experience: the air is hot and so humid it’s almost like a splash in the face. Especially after the dry and dusty air of Kathmandu.

It was late and even later when we arrived at our hostel Mingle in Chinatown. It seemed to take forever to get out of the new fancy Klia2 airport (/shopping mall) and the bus to town was a snail. But we weren’t in a hurry.

In KL we didn’t plan to do much: go climbing and eat a lot! We did both. The food in Malaysia is great: you can get everything and they have some pretty unique fusion stuff mixing chinese and indian and everything around. Chinatown was an especially good base camp for culinary explorations. Chris found his old favorite roti chanai place (leafy fried bread you eat with a bit of veggie curry) and I found my mangoes. Happiness.

We also found a climbing gym, Camp 5. Located in a big ass shopping mall it also boasted being Asia’s largest climbing hall. I have my doubts but I might be wrong. However, it was not a bad place at all. Very tidy and modern with plenty to climb, ok quality problems and good mats etc. Just Chris and I were a bit lacking quality: Chris’ toes were quite painful and I was still feeling under the weather. We had fun and despite the little drawbacks it felt extraordinarily great to be bouldering. Afterwards we hung out in the mall like the two teenagers we are (krhm…), ate at the food court and drank our sweet Teh Tarik drinks from horrible plastic take away cups. It was only the beginning for those: Thailand was the promiseland for them.

Chinatown

Camp5

Chris doing the moves

Nice gym

Waiting for the boat with the biggest ice coffee ever

One happy ice coffee drinker

Instead of taxi we were recommended to use Uber and what a great choice it was. We met on both rides two very interesting drivers who would share us their knowledge of the city and Malaysia in all. Also it was a lot cheaper. And no hassle with money.

Next morning we bussed our way back to Klia2 and flew to Surat Thani in Thailand. From ST we took a minivan to Ranong and spend a night there eating at the nicest little night market and a local dessert bar with no English menus or English skilled personnel, ordering blindly but getting excellent food. Oh Thailand. I know I just praised Malaysia but come on, Thai kitchen is just great.

As you might know, the beloved King of Thailand passed away a month ago and the whole country is in mourning. You can really tell. The whole population is dressed in black, the billboards are filled with memorial pictures and you find small altars with flowers and candles everywhere. Parties like those crazy fullmoon parties of Koh Phangan are cancelled too. This didn’t really affect our plans at all since a fullmoon party would be the last place I’d go :D

Next day we took a slowboat of two hours to the island of Koh Phayam of which I had heard many good things about. Still supposedly not extremely touristy but chilled out and pretty, Koh Phayam had many fans that would return year after year.

There are two main areas of accommodation on the island: the main beach Aow Yai and the Buffalo bay Aow Khai Kwai. We took the motocycle taxis from the pier to the main beach first and found a great bungalow overlooking the sea for 500 baht a night (12-13e) from the first place, modestly named King Paradise. We did shop around a bit but KP was by far the best. And Fää (???), the young lady running the joint, was so genuinely welcoming that we were happy to be there.

Aow Yai

Setting up a second hammock

nap time

We spent the first two nights in KP and then moved to the Buffalo beach for two more nights to a fancy but similarly priced bungalow at the Starlight resort (unfortunately not on the beach). The beaches of Koh Phayam are many - there’s quite a few smaller ones around the island and most are quite beautiful but have their problems too. The main beach is a looong stretch of yellow sand and even surfable waves but unfortunately the beach was very trashy and hence a bit uninviting.

The Buffalo bay is cut in a few stretches by big rocks in between but it somehow pleased my eye more. It had no trash but no waves either. And occasionally the water was full of sealice which are the annoying stinging microscopic creatures that make swimming impossible. The water is not very clear and apparently the corals are dead so snorkeling is a joke. We didn’t try though. The other small beaches were differing: some were nice while some were rocky and smelly during the lowtide. Perhaps high tide would make them more presentable.

Cool hermit!

This one too

Blooming tree and blooming Chris

Boat bar

Reading reading reading

Beach explorations

Funky bungalows made of stuff washed ashore

Toes are diggin the heat

Sunset ♡

Chris always finds the kittens

Hornbill!

Aow Pheephaaöö..Aow something else

If not kittens, then dogs

Tourists!

Little crab working hard on his sandballs

The whole island seemed somehow quite dead. The high season was only beginning and many places hadn’t yet opened or were just about to. It looked like many of the resorts and restaurants had just been left unattended for the low season and were now dirty, broken and rotten. There were some tourists and we could find quite a few open restaurants but somehow it felt like we were there in the wrong time. It was awesome of course to have the beaches mostly empty and no loud partymusic anywhere to disturb your sleep but something was off, I thought. And then Chris put it quite nicely: he said he prefers a place that is naturally quiet and not like abandoned and hence quiet, like Koh Phayam now felt to us.

Of course it wasn't all that bad. On the contrary. We didn’t do awfully a lot but relaxed and enjoyed the warmth. We swam (aka played with the waves), had a few massages (not exceptionally good ones - in Kathmandu we actually had one very good after the trek!), read and read and read, chilled in a hammock, had a hangboard session by the beach and ate beautiful thai dishes and drank fresh coconut and other fruit juices. We also saw a few cool animals: hornbills with huuuge beaks the size of biig bananas, huuge butterflies that were the size of small birds, huuuge bats that were the size of big birds, smaaall birds (hummingbirds) that were the size of butterflies...and very normal sized other things like monkeys and crabs and things.

Hangboard sesh

Not the silliest place to hang

Happy hubby with ice coffee in a bag

We also booked our tickets to Bangkok (where we got by a night train from Chumpon! An absolutely fantastic option over the horrid nightbuses) and to Burma where we’d go a few days later. So after four nights we had had enough and left to Bangkok to meet our friends Aku and Taika whom were on a holiday there!

There’s something about Bangkok in the early morning. I love it. When the the city is still waking up, the people are having their breakfast in the delicate morning light out in the little food stalls, setting up their own stalls and cleaning up their street corners. It’s not yet hot nor busy but it’s in the air, another day in mighty Bangkok is starting. It’s good to be back.