VIDEO - Langkawi, Malaysia -Cable cars and sky bridge

Click here to see the video here

Langkawi - Malaysia

As soon as we stepped off the boat in Langkawi we knew we'd made the right choice.

We both felt instantly excited to explore and see what Malaysia had to offer. Reaching this first island in a new country we already could feel a massive difference to Thailand and we were buzzing.

We grabbed a taxi to our accommodation where we had booked to stay for one night and then went straight out to find some food - No more masaman, fried rice or Thai green curry for us!

We went to the local street food vendors which were just outside the hostel. We had to order based only on the photographs of the food as we had absolutely no idea what anything was! 

Whilst we sat waiting for our food we got chatting with an English couple from Birmingham, Laura and Tom who were staying at the same hostel as us.

They'd been in Malaysia a little already so where able to give some good tips and advise on what to see on our way to Kuala Lumpur.

We got chatting about the things what we wanted to see in Langkawi and decided that we would hire a car together and do some exploring in the coming days. 

Our first night we where back in a dorm  room this time only four beds. We'd stayed up a little bit later than we had planned drinking with Tom and Laura and we where a little worried about disturbing our roommates. However when we got back to the room one bed was empty and in the other was a French chap who was quite happy awake and watching Netflix. We got chatting with him and he gave even more top tips about where to go and what to see. Our other roomie didnt return back till gone half six and was lets just say worse for wear! He'd clearly had a great night!

Langkawi had so much to offer so we decided rto extend our stay and spent the follwoing days visiting waterfalls you could slide down, pristine beaches and our main highlight the Langkawi Cable cars which we already posted a video of.

Views from the top of Severn Wells Waterfalls

Views from the bottom of Seven wells Waterfalls

Wout, Tom, Laura and Klaas sliding about!

Crazy local guy rock jumping

Pantai Tangung Rhu Beach (no swimming allowed due to under current)

Road trip to the pier with Tom and Laura

Koh Lipe - Bye then Thailand and onto Malaysia

Once our parcel had been delivered we went straight to the tour office to book our boat south to Koh Lipe. We'd read a lot about this island being a tiny paradise and despite the many reviews saying that there were too many tourist for such a small island we chose to book two nights stay there. This also meant we could break the trip over to Malaysia which would have been 7 hours in a small speed boat if we'd have gone there directly.

We left for the boat at 7am and waited by the pier for our speed boat to arrive. The amount of people waiting with us was a little overwhelming and we weren't sure how we would all fit! We did though and off we set - full throttle for Koh Lipe:

Once we arrived to Koh Lipe, all a little rattled from the VERY bumpy journey our first impression of the place was that the reviews were right and that this place was way too packed with tourist. The beautiful white sandy beach was over run with travellers queuing to pay their entry fee for coming onto the island. The fee was compulsory and was said to be charged due to this area being a national park. However after only a couple of hours there it was clear that there was nothing preserved or protected on Koh Lipe itself, the whole place was a wash with resorts and restaurants, bars and backpacker hostels.

The stunningly beautiful shores of Koh Lipe (before you get close enough to set the sea of crowds)

We has chosen to stay in a 10 bed dormitory hostel to save some money but quickly regretted our decision. The room was sweltering hot and full of mosquito's and our beds were capsule beds - the best way i can describe these capsule beds is they are like over sized coffins stacked on top of one another with a curtain on one end for privacy - like this:

 The resturants and bars were also superly over priced here and after one night of very little sleep (due to cooking in our coffins) and the worst free breakfast ever (stale white bread and the worlds most sugary jam) we went out in search of some snorkelling spots, unfortunatly the waters around the island were swamped with jelly fish and therefore inaccessible.

We decided enough was enough and made the decision to check out a day early, lose our money for the 2nd nights accommodation and book a boat to Malaysia!

We rushed back to the hostel, packed our bags and we were ready to board the afternoon ferry boat to Langkawi. Because we would be crossing into a new country and crossing a boarder we were required to hand over our passports to customs (a little tini hut on the beach) so that they could process us and book us out of the country. It felt strange just handed over my passport but everyone else who was due to board the boat was doing it so we just went along.

Sat waiting for the boat to arrive

2 hours later we were off again speeding across the waters to our next destination...............

BYE THEN THAILAND!!

Koh Lanta - sunbathing, swimming and basically doing nothing all day-everyday!

Our main reason for going to Koh Lanta was to visit our friend Marc who we first met by chance during this trip when we were in Chitwan in Nepal. Marc and his friend Erin were celebrating Erin's 40th Birthday and we invited them to join us for a beer.

Marc is a ‘digital nomad’ and has lived in Koh Lanta for 3 months of the year for the past couple years. He’d really talked the place up and we'd agreed to visit him whilst in Thailand so we decided we'd to go to see for ourselves and we weren’t disappointed. 

One of the best things about this part of Thailand is that it’s big enough to not feel overwhelmed by the tourism but there are also enough nice resorts and restaurants to be able to visit a different spot everyday. Koh Lanta also has lush jungle aswell as plenty of gorgeous beaches.

We however found our few favourite places and for two weeks we just sunbathed, swam in the pool, swam in the sea and in the evenings enjoyed the daily sunsets over the ocean from our two fav beach bars - Lyms and Ozone.

 

Sunsets from Lyms Beach Bar

                                      

The lovely lights at Ozone beach bar (this place played the best live sunset techno sets we've found anywhere on our travels so far)

We made friends with a lady called Aoy who is the manager at Lyms, and so each time we visited the bar it was like we were going to visit our mate!

Marc and Aoy

She also came on a day trip with us to the national park where we went in search of monkeys, monitor lizards and a waterfall. We found them all:

Yes that is Wout all the way up there and you'll be pleased to know he didn't jump!

Whilst we were here we were waiting for the delivery of a parcel from Mum and Dad.

We also got the news whilst we were here that our friends from the Netherlands were planning to visit the Philippines in Feb before heading over to Australia so we decided to change around our itinerary and join them in The Philippines before we headed to Vietnam. (originally we were going to do Vietnam then Philippines).

We were all set for booking our flights to Manilla in the Philippines when the news came of the Taal Volcano erupting 😕
The first we heard about it was via a Philippines backpacker group we'd joined and these images (although amazing as they are)  definitely made us want to delay booking our flights!

Based on this we decided to delay booking our flights and wait to see how things went over the coming days.

Each day we would check the news for Volcano updates and also check to see if our parcel had been delivered. When our parcel finally arrived we decided to bite the bullet and head further south into Malaysia to spend some time and keep check on the volcano before booking our flights from Kuala Lumpur to The Philippines.

The parcel finally came!

Koh Lanta was definitely the perfect place to enjoy being still for a while and just relaxing. 

This is Wout's friend who he rescued from drowning in the pool and then couldn't get him to leave him alone.
For about two hours this little guy sat on Wout's shoulder and each time Wout put him down he would jump back onto Wout and go right back to sit on his shoulder - very cute!
We finally found a leaf which he approved of and were able to 'break the bond' and return him to the wild!

16 cities 3 countries 2687 miles in 38 days!

So the past few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind of new destinations, various modes of transport and lots and lots of sight seeing! 

After spending two weeks relaxing in Koh Lanta, South Thailand and awaiting the arrival of a package of toiletries from England we decided to change our original plan which was to travel to North Thailand and instead decided to travel further south and onto Malaysia and then making our way over to The Philippines to meet our friends who were due to fly there from The Netherlands.

After a slight set back due to the Taal Volcano in Manilla erupting we managed to find a new route.

We have seen and done so much.... the combination of constantly moving and often being without reliable internet has meant that the blog has been neglected 😩 

However I am now back in the connected land of mobile internet and thus back to tell you all about what we’ve been up to....

We travelled over 2,000 km in approx 10 days and much further since arriving in Philippines where we have already been to 4 different islands and have taken almost every mode of transport possible:

• Planes
• Speed boats
• Long tail boats
• Bangka Boats
• Car ferries
• Chain ferries
• Speed ferries 
• Taxis
• Mini vans
• Tuktuks and tricycles
• Hire cars
• Mopeds
• Cable cars 
• Trains
• Buses
• Coaches
• And even hitch hiked in a police van! 

Its been alot fun but also completely exhausting.

Individual posts to follow with more about what we have seen and done in each place (if I can actually remember!)😊😊