Moving Out and Moving On

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Life in Southern Thailand has become quite hectic now that we are finished teaching. Two weeks ago, after Pat turned in his final grades, we headed to our favorite island, Koh Lanta, for some relaxation and sun. From Wednesday until Monday, we spent plenty of time reading, enjoying the sun and sleeping. Our friend Niamh joined us for a couple of nights, and she was heavily pursued by two of the Thai hotel staff fighting for her attention and heart with tropical drinks decorated with heart-shaped pineapple pieces and conversations of broken English. She broke both of their hearts when she left with us Monday morning. One of her pursuers left a hand-written, hand-drawn note with Pat which we later passed on to Niamh. Monday morning was the Carolina v. Duke game. We intentionally stayed longer at the beach because a friend of ours on the staff allowed us to borrow the keys to the internet room to watch the game. We stayed up until 3:00am and watched the game on the glowing computer screen in the dark internet room, Pat pounding his fists in the air and jumping up with shouts. Luckily Carolina won and we were able to sleep well at 5:30am. Go HEELS!!


We spent a couple of days in Trang packing our suitcases in preparation of our move March 18th, hanging out with friends and eating at our favorite restaurants. Last Wednesday we took the 5 hour bus to Phuket in order to catch a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday. We arrived in Phuket Town after dark and found a guesthouse within walking distance of the bus station that had everything we needed: air conditioning, hot water, cable TV (with English chanels) and an inexpensive price (around $15). Thursday morning we caught a shuttle to the airport and flew to Kuala Lumpur to meet one of Pat's high school friends for a long weekend. We were on a budget so we decided to take the bus from the airport to our hotel in the city, which ended up taking 2 hours!! Towards the end of the ride when everyone else on the bus had been dropped off, Pat's boredom got the best of him and he spent the rest of the ride messing with me as I tried to read.


Our hotel was in an area known as Chow Kit (known for its market), which ended up not being touristy at all. We saw maybe one other tourist in the area the whole time, which is kind of nice. The hotel was okay, but we ended up moving to the hotel nextdoor, which was much nicer and only a few dollars more a night (and we could see the Petronas Towers from our window and they were filming a movie in the lobby and on our floor). Our first night in KL we tried walking the 5km to the Petronas Towers (the tallest towers in the world until 2004), but ended up at a dead end at an elevated highway. We took the subway the remaining distance and found ourselves in a massive and nice shopping mall that is between the towers (where we spent a lot of our long weekend.) On Friday we slept late and ate lunch at a Curry House near our hotel and enjoyed the Indian influence on Malay food. There are a couple of main influences of Malaysian culture. There are Indian Malays, Chinese Malays and Malaysia Malays. So we found that the food includes a lot of Indian and Chinese foods. Malaysia is predominantly Muslim (we could hear the call to prayer from our hotel) and it was a British colony, so a lot of people speak extremely good English.


On Friday we went back to the shopping mall to watch "Watchmen," which Pat had been anticipating since it came out on March 8th. We explored China Town, which resembled the knock-off markets that we have found in Thailand with pushy vendors and lots of bootleg DVDs and fake Channel handbags. We tried to find Little India, but we headed back at the Curry House for a dinner of fresh naan and curried chicken. Saturday morning we switched hotels and waited for Pat's friend, Becca, to arrive from the airport. After catching up over lunch at the Curry House, the three of us headed to the Lake Gardens and then to the Kuala Lumpur Tower to look over the city from the observation deck. We spent time in the shopping mall at the Petronas Towers chatting over coffee at Starbucks. We avoided the afternoon rain in our hotel and then watched the Liverpool soccer game at a bar in China Town. On Sunday we woke up to Pat's computer not working so we spent the morning trying to fix it and then we took a taxi to Little India for an amazing lunch. Little India was a bit disappointing as all of the shops were selling tacky silk fabrics, headscarves and carpets, but our lunch was well worth the trip. Becca had to catch her plane Sunday evening and our flight was not until Monday morning. Pat and I enjoyed a trip up to the Sky Bridge on the 40th floor of the Petronas Towers as the sun started to set. We had a good weekend and enjoyed seeing and hanging out with Becca, but there is not a whole lot to do in KL.


Lessons learned from Kuala Lumpur:

-Always insist on taxi drivers using the meter. All the taxis have meters in Kuala Lumpur, but for some reason a majority refuse to use it. Often you tell the driver where you want to go and they name a price between 10 and 20 ringit. If you want you can try to bargain the price. On one ride we bargained for 10 ringit to go from the Kuala Lumpur Tower to the Petronas Towers. The driver had left the meter on and when we arrived at the Petronas Towers we saw that it should have cost no more than 2 ringit. From that point on we asked all the drivers if they had a meter. Most of the time they said they did not have a meter even though one was clearly in sight or they said it did not work. A couple of times we would ask nearly 10 drivers before we found one willing to use his meter.


-Do not take the blue taxis (especially if you are on a budget). On a very rainy afternoon we found a driver willing to use his meter to take us from the Petronas Towers to our hotel (about 5 km). As soon as we got in the driver informed us that his meter started at 6 ringit. We had already asked several drivers about using their meter and it was raining a lot, so we stayed in the taxi. As we drove through the rain and traffic, the price on the meter quickly rose much faster than most taxis. We learned that our taxi was a blue taxi which is an "executive" taxi and therefore cost more and went at a quicker rate. The ride was very pricey and the driver took us to the wrong hotel.


-Make sure your alarm is set to the local time. Our flight was at 7:10 on Monday morning, so we set our alarm for 4:30am and had the hotel call a taxi for us for 5am. Early in the morning our phone rang and the voice informed me that our taxi was waiting. I tried to explain that it was 4:20am and that we did not need a taxi until 5am. The voice corrected me said that it was already 5:20am. Our cell phone was still on Thailand time and we had oversleeped!! We rushed to pack our bags and were in the taxi by 5:35am. The ride ended up taking a full hour even though there was absolutely no traffic. The airport was surprisingly busy! We begged to have our bags checked and we fidgeted in the line for passport control before asking to get in front of eveyone since our flight was leaving in 20 minutes. We ran to the gate and pleaded to be let on the flight only to find that the flight to Phuket had not boarded. We caught our flight and our bags made it to Phuket and by 1pm on Monday we were back in Trang.



Yesterday and today, Pat and I have been trying to pack, clean and get everything ready to move out tomorrow. We head to Bangkok by train tomorrow evening where we will meet Rod, Pat's older brother. This morning we sold our washing machine (which we used only twice) and our fridge for quite a deal for the buyers (because we were getting a little desperate). In the afternoon we sold our motorbike back to the dealership for less than they had promised. We are slowly packing everything up and cleaning out our apartment. It is surprising that we have already spent close to 5 months in Thailand. We are excited about traveling in Southeast Asia, but at the same time we are a bit sad to leave Trang and our friends here. It is very strange to be packing our bags.