Penang, Ao Nang, Islands

Penang
Penang is an island off the coast of Northwestern Malaysia. We only stayed in Penang for about 24 hours, so there’s not much to say about. There were some cool historic buildings and lots of white people, and I broke my Nikon for the 2nd time so I was unable to use it for the rest of my trip.

The Beaches
The next phase of our trip was the relaxing, beach phase. After visiting some very big and busy cities, we wanted to relax, sleep, and get really freakin tan. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan this part of the trip as well so we were left scrambling trying to figure out how we were going to get from the Phuket airport to a beach area that was on the other side of the bay. Boats and cars were not an option, so we were forced to take a 4 hour bus ride to our destination of Krabitown. Buses in Asia for the most part have been and awesome, cheap and convenient means of transportation. Our 4 hour bus ride to Krabitown was the exception to that rule. I don’t know any other way to describe it except that it was the bus ride from hell. It all started out okay. Seth and I got the last two seats in the back of the bus that were unfortunately next to the smelly bathroom. But a smelly bathroom is tolerable. Then the Thai techno music started playing. It wasn’t your low volume background kind of music either…the music was BLASTING and to top it off, the big mystery box behind our two seats turned out to be a gigantic base that thumped along with the techno music. What really surprised me was the no one else on the bus seemed at all phased by this. I was beginning to think this party bus must be the standard in Thai buses. While we’re complaining about the rave that has apparently started on our bus, the bus keeps stopping along the road and picking up more and more people off the side of the road. When Seth and I got on the bus to begin with, the seats were all completely full, so the new passengers all had to stand in the aisle. Eventually, after many, many stops, the bus was so full you could barely move. A woman and her daughter were sitting on top of the base that was still booming behind us. Another older women ended up sitting on the base right next to Seth and puking in a bag. After 4 hours of this, we eventually made it to our station (mind you, it’s about 9pm right now and we’d been traveling since around 11am) and then had to figure out how to get the beach area called Ao Nang, where we wanted to stay the night. Luckily for us, there were two English-speaking Russian guys about our age who happened to get off the stop with us and were heading to Ao Nang as well. We shared a ride in the back of an open-air van/truck thing and ended up bonding with the two guys. One was a stock-broker (picture Arnold Swartzeneger saying it) and the other sold internet lines to other countries (or something like that). We ended up going out with the guys for dinner and drinks once we got to Ao Nang and had a really great time talking to them about Moscow, where they both live, and talking about places we’ve traveled to so far. Unfortunately, we didn’t end up running into them again.
Ao Nang ended up being a super-touristy town with lots of shopping and decent restaurants, but a pretty shitty beach. We decided to only stay the night in Ao Nang and instead take a long tail boat the next day to a nearby beach called Ton Sai. I had heard about Ton Sai before my trip from a friend who had visited there before. It ended up being a really neat place to stay. The beach wasn’t outstanding at all, but the atmosphere of the place and the little bungalows and huts that people stayed in made it worthwhile visiting. The best way to describe the beach is a hippie haven. There were lots of outdoor bars with mats and hammocks to hang out on, Bob Marley and Dylan music playing, some “magic cookies” advertised at one place, and lots of dudes with dredlocks. We stayed in a little hut for two nights there, and probably would have stayed another if I hadn’t had a cockroach crawl on me in bed during the second night.
One day, we paid only the equivalent of $15 each to take an all-day, long tail boat tour of 4 islands around Ao Nang. We spent an hour or two at each of the four islands, and went snorkeling at two of them. The first set of islands we went to were our favorite. The water was crystal clear and the sand was white. The first islands were unique because during low tide you could walk between the three of them on a sand bar. There was also awesome snorkeling all around the islands and we were able to see some beautiful fish and coral. Later in the week we went back to the first set of islands and spent the whole afternoon there.
The rest of the time in Ao Nang was kind of ruined because I got sun poisoning and some sort of stomach bug at the same time. I spent a day laying in the hotel room doing nothing and couldn’t eat a real meal for like two days. But it passed right in time to go to Lao Liang.
Lao Liang was the part of our trip that I was most looking forward to, and it lived up to all my expectations. Lao Liang is a little island in the middle of nowhere that is uninhabited except by this company that runs a little sort of mini tent resort. The tent resort is set on a kind of small white sandy beach surrounded by high limestone cliffs and facing crystal clear, blue water. Getting to the island was kind of a pain in the ass, but it was well worth it. Besides the workers, there were only maybe 10-15 other people on the island with us. We stayed in this large two room tents facing the ocean that had actual mattresses in them. All of our meals were taken care of for us, and the bathrooms were actually really nice. Almost everything on the island is made from natural materials found on the island. There are hammocks and mats all over the place for people to lounge on. They had snorkeling gear and kayaks that you could rent as well. The first night we had a delicious seafood BBQ and drinks on the beach while looking at stars. Since we’re in the middle of nowhere, the number of stars we saw were stunning. I don’t think I would ever want to go back to any of the places I’ve already visited, but this island was one place I could definitely see myself going back to.