Far East 2012

Yesterday evening we briefly checked the nightlife of the island, and seems like the divers can also party. There were nice looking parties in the beach restaurants, but as we had to leave to our dive trip 07:30 in the morning we couldn't stay there for long. Tomorrow our dive trip will start after midday, so today we are not so much in hurry to bed.

In the morning we boarded a longtail boat which took us to our dive ship, Drag Queen. Yes, that's exactly how a Finnish dive company names their ship in Thailand.. One hour boat drive and we arrived to the dive site where we did two dives. First a 30 meter deep dive to acquire our certification for that depth, and then a longer fun dive at 25m depth.

The first dive was a bit short, just 12min as we pretty quickly emptied our air tanks, mostly due to insufficient weights.. I don't know if it was the more saltier water, different equipment or something else but obviously the same 4kg weights which worked fine around Labuan were not enough here, both of us had serious problems getting to bottom, just floated way too well. Adding more lead to 6kg helped a lot and the next dive went much better with half an hour of bottom time.

Now it's a bit over midday here, so I guess we will rent scooters and explore the island or something after having something for lunch.

In the morning we collected our stuff and took a ferry to Koh Tao. The island surprised us pretty nicely, it seems to be a perfect tropical paradise reminding me of Caye Caulker last year. Everything on the island is based around diving, and it seems to be a nice and laid-back place, nothing like the tourist traps of Koh Samui. Nice. :)

After arriving to the island we searched our dive operator, a Finnish diving company Koh Tao Divers and signed ourself to dive tomorrow. We will be doing the 30m depth certification dive and then just some fun diving later during the day. It's nice to get to dive with a Finnish company, speaking native language makes learning much easier than with the broken English of most diving operators around here..

We wanted to see a bit more of Koh Samui and not just the quiet area we are living at the moment, so we took a taxi to Lamai beach area. Lamai is one of the bigger tourist destinations on the island, a bit more quieter than the worst tourist-trap Chaweng. On the way we passed through Chaweng also, and we are pretty happy we didn't take a hostel in there. That was a bit too much touristic looking place.. :)

Lamai was pretty nice, commercial in tolerable limits and not that crowded. Walked around there for a while, ate and took a taxi back to our area, Bang Rak.

And the same continues, we don't do anything. Except lay around somewhere or swim a bit. :)

Tomorrow we will leave Koh Samui and take a ferry to Koh Tao for diving.

I seem to be having a bit of bad luck on this trip. Last night I almost managed to cause myself second hospital visit or worse.. Timo had his laptop charger cord going through the room and I tripped on it in darkness. The cord was connected to the socket by a cheap chinese-made adapter which broke, revealing the connectors inside the adapter. I was going to put the cord back to the wall outlet and stick my fingers directly to the connectors.. Nothing wakes you up like 230V on your fingertips. Luckily it only caused some tingling on my hand for 15 minutes.

Not much anything has been happening here. Yesterday we went to the hostel bar, obviously got slightly drunk and today we have been healing our hangover.. And doing nothing else.

I guess we are staying one more day on Koh Samui, just to actually see something tomorrow.

Koh Samui reached. The first minibus ride was around 4 hours, then half an hour of waiting, 1.5 hours on another minibus and waiting one hour for the ferry to Koh Samui. After two hours ferry trip we arrived to Koh Samui and took a taxi to our hostel. Or, we thought we did.. The taxi driver was half blind, half deaf and didn't speak any language decently.. And had no idea of the location of the hostel or any of the other mentioned landmarks. Took an hour more to finally find the hostel after cruising through half the island.. Well, at least our beach bungalow is pretty comfortable.

At first, today I'm feeling way better, almost healthy. No more blood coughing and no more fever, seems like the antibiotics worked.

We left KL yesterday evening by a night train and arrived in the morning to Hat Yai in Thailand. The night train was a confortable ride, as we had own curtained sleeping beds. After the train we continued our journey by a minibus towards Koh Samui, now having a break somewhere in the countryside.

Yesterday morning started ok, I went to shower in the morning and enjoyed the hot steamy shower after the cold shower of our previous hostel. After washing my teeth I noticed blood in the sink and soon realized it was not related to teeth but coming from my lungs or throat. And there was pretty much of it coming when I coughed.. Not a nice thing to realize on another side of the world.

The blood stopped coming after a while, and we ended up thinking it would be some salt water mixed with blood left in the sinuses after diving and being released by the steamy shower. We walked around the city for a few hours without any signs of the problem anymore, until.. when coming back close to our hostel I coughed and realized my hand was covered by blood again.

In the hostel I measured my temperature and noticed a fastly raising fever. Wasn't a difficult choice to quickly look up the nearest 24h hospital recommended by my travel insurance company and take a taxi there.

The hospital turned out to be pretty nice and modern and after waiting for a while I got examined by a doctor who sent me to lung x-ray imaging. As I had thought, the x-ray images revealed some lung tissue inflammation and I got a bunch of drugs for that, including antibiotics. Kinda happy that it was nothing worse, even if still serious. Antibiotics should take care of it.

Not a nice experience, but today I'm already much better. Feeling better, not coughing blood anymore but still having slight fever. Seems like the antibiotics are working well. Later in the evening we should change country to Thailand by a night train, but we have beds on the train so that shouldn't be very stressing even if I'm still far from healthy.

After extensive use of our feet, taxis, ferries, airplanes and a bus we finally reached Kuala Lumpur and our hostel, Reggae Mansion. The hostel seems to be great, I have stayed in many worse hotels than this hostel.. Their nice roof bar is a well appreciated change after the caves of Labuan and they also seem to organize a lot of nice looking day trips around Kuala Lumpur.

Kuala Lumpur also looks totally different than what we came from. It is a beautiful high-technology huge metropolis, instead of the small jungle cities. Hard to find anything to complain about having clear view of the beautiful Petronas twin towers from your hostel roof bar. The only complaint is that Timo once again was faster and got the lower bed, I got a slightly difficult to climb upper bed.. :p

Tomorrow we should try to visit the twin towers, at least.. and maybe party a bit in the evening as we are finally in a civilized and social place. :)

Kota Kinabalu now, on our way to KL. We took the same speedboat from Labuan to KK which we used earlier the other way around. This time the boat was almost empty, so we got a chance to actually enjoy the fully-reclining seats and slept most of the journey. The boat was just as cold as last time, though..

In KK downtown we ate a quick hamburger set in a restaurant and took a taxi to the airport, now waiting for our flight to KL.