The gods were not looking favourably on us, probably for having dropped to such a serious geo-political commentary in our last few entries, and our ride to Bangkok proved the opposite journey to that two travellers in dire need of sleep were hoping for. With stops every hour or so for a whole host of reasons and non-reasons, and a walk through border crossing in 35 degree heat, we arrived in a fairly bedraggled state to Bangkok in the early evening of Day 26, to be confronted by what must be East Asia's most bustling and tourist driven cities, and according to Will, very different from when he was young.
A quick night tour ended with street food for me (Will was still going strong from his Burger King earlier in the evening), and both passing out in our overpriced windowless room, but for us any bed that isn't moving and doesn't have a 5am alarm set next to it seems like paradise. Day 27 saw us tuk-tuking around Bangkok's centre in our new form of lazy tourism, and a few temple pictures later sat on our next train; a comfy sleeper south to Malaysia.
With AC conspiring with a lack of sleep to leave me with a cold, and both pretty tired, this train journey provided some much needed rest as we sailed past some very picturesque Thai countryside worthy of a real trip at some point in the future. Fed and rested we looked respectable enough to pass the Thai Hippy regulations at the border, and mustered the mental energy to find a bus from the alarmingly English sounding Butterworth up to the Cameron Highlands for a day of temperate strawberry growing climate, mock Tudor architecture, scones and tea.
Over-complacency after 28 days of problem free stomachs was brought to an abrupt end by a combination of Thai shakes and Malay street food, however undeterred Day 29 saw us on a luxury (a real luxury one this time) bus down the worst road for sufferers of travel sickness down to Kuala Lumpur. Slightly disorientated by the comfort we didn't sleep much, but did decide I should stop trying to buy dried and preserved fruit after my Butterworth effort also proved a categorical failure.
Having realised how tight our time is to reach Sydney by Friday 8th July, KL suffered a similar fate as many of our stop off points so far with our whistle-stop tourism giving us four hours to scoot up the tallest tower in the city, then head to China Town for more market food and a sleeper to Singapore to gain us one valuable day for our Indonesia leg of the trip; time to prepare for potentially the lengthiest and most difficult section of the whole challenge.
Bangkok - Cameron Highlands: 22 train + 4 bus hours / 1,350 km
Cameron Highlands - Kuala Lumpur: 4 bus hours / 220 km
Kuala Lumpur - Singapore: 10 train hours / 325 km
TOTAL TO DATE: 15,300 km
FUND RAISING TOTAL: GBP 3,250 including Gift Aid - please keep these Doctors of the World donations coming!
No comments:
Post a Comment