Kathrine Breivik

Singapore, must be the nicest city that I have been to in Southeast Asia, being the cleanest and most modern city. I definitely had a lot of ‘wow’ moments when I was here, the buildings are massive and modern and there was even a man made river inside one of the shopping centers, where you could take a gondola ride! John and I both agreed this was a city that we could  easily live in, it was just fantastic.

In the evening we went to The Singapore Flyer; which is the worlds largest giant observation wheel. It took us 165 meters above the city,and the views were just amazing, especially all the lights glowing on the sky scrapers.

In some ways it felt like Singapore has taken inspiration from a lot of other cities and capitals, and then just done it a little bit better.

Afterwards, we had some food at the Singapore Food Trial nearby. We tried some food from Singapore, called Fried Kway Teow, which was interesting. I really liked the spicy kick to it.

It is still Chinese New Year, so the decorations in Chinatown and elsewhere in Singapore was incredible. I also found out that it is the year of the dragon, which was also the year of 1988, my year, which was pretty cool.

To celebrate I got a dragon shaped lolly, made out of burned sugar. The man made it in front of me, he made it look very easy (in my experience hot melted sugar is not easy to work with).

Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia, was different to any other big cities that I have been to. It was a loud, dusty and very busy city at the same time as being modern and organised.

We went to the Petronas Towers, the were really big and beautiful, especially when they lit up at night.

We went to a few markets. We stayed in Chinatown and there was a big market every night right outside our door step. We also went to Little India where there was a night market at the weekend. It was really busy and big, but I did not end up buying anything as there were a lot of the same things.

After 1 hour in a taxi and 1 hour on a boat, we arrived on Koh Ngai Island. Imagine when people explain how they need a holiday on a ‘desert’ island with palm trees and clear blue water and you have got Koh Ngai.

We had our first ever Thai massage here. I have to say it is very different to the massages that I have had before. But, extremely good for our muscles, especially after the long hours travelling.

We went on a walk to the other side of the island (30 minutes walk),to another quieter beach. The snorkeling was better at this side of the island.

At night the whole place lit up with fairy-lights, a very cozy place to sit and relax by the beach.

It all started very nicely with a mini bus trip from Khao Sok to Krabi where we had a change over.  However, after hours of waiting we ended up getting transported to another minibus from the back of a pick up van (an open back), was pretty hilarious as 5 of us squeezed on, holding on to our bags and dear life. The next minibus was extremely hot. This should really be the end of our transport adventure. However, there were no taxis or even ‘tuk tuks’ around the bus stations, and we were told they only do transported by scooters. So after waiting around for a while hoping to spot a taxi we decided we just had to go on the back of the scooters with all our bags! It was very entertaining indeed. When we finally managed to get to our hostel in Trang it was evening. But we were very positively surprised by Trang. I thought it was really nice.

We went to a night market, which turned out to be great!

It is Chinese New Year at the moment (if you did not know), so there are decorations everywhere, they just love fairy lights over here.

We have both been really excited about going to Khao Sok National Park as it is a large rainforest, even older and more diverse than the Amazon Rainforest. We stayed in a tree house just by the national park entrance, it was basic but still really nice. The couple who owned the tree huts were so nice and the wife cooked us all the meals making them extra spicy for us, she was a great cook. We also had our own guard dog ‘Mac’ (who lived there), he looked after us and ran after anything that made too much noise, I wanted to take him home with me.  The first evening it rained A LOT (apparently it rains a lot in rainforests, hehe) so we just relaxed and did some reading and more travel plans.

The next morning we went on a day trip to to the ‘lake’, which is the Rechabrapha dam. The lake was just incredible, as you see some 200 meter high limestone cliffs around it.

After 1 hour on a longtail boat we arrived at some floating bamboo raft houses.

The setting for the floating houses was amazing, and we went for a swim in the lake which was so relaxing and nice.

After lunch we went on a 1 hour walk to the Namtaloo Cave. We walked through the rainforest, climbed up waterfalls and crossed the river at least 10 times. We saw a poisonous snake in the river as we were walking by. I came to realise that this was obviously the same river that i walked into waist high, a little scary.

When we arrived at the cave we all got our torches out and got ready for some darkness. We spent about half an hour walking into the cave, but because it rained a lot the night before it was very deep at some places, even deeper than me and we had to swim. One again in the darkness and cold water this was a little scary but also very fun. And the walls inside the caves were just wonderful to look at.

Overall this was an amazing visit to another rainforest. We hoped to see the Bua Phut flower, which is the largest type of flower in the world, but sadly we missed the chance to see one as after only 1 week it dies and we were 2 days too late. Anyways, Rainforests have definitely won a big part of my heart, I just love being that close to nature.

We spent a whole day on Ko Phi Phi, which is only a 2 hour boat trip away from Phuket. Ko Phi Phi is surrounded by beautiful limestone cliffs and fine white sand.

When we arrived we decided to rent our own long-tail boat for a few hours, where a local long-tail boat driver took us around a few places for some snorkeling, swimming and sightseeing.

We went by the Viking Cove and went for a swim nearby, the water was crystal clear and amazing to take a dip in. Then we headed for Loh Samah Bay where we did a little snorkeling. I saw lots of types of fish that I have never seen before.

We stopped briefly at Maya Bay (where the film The Beach was filmed), however, decided to move on shortly after as it was packed with tourists (being high season it was very busy).

Our last stop was at Monkey Bay, where we saw some monkeys. The Monkeys obviously knew that tourists came and fed them there as they just stood there waiting for us. We decided not to feed them, however other people did and I have to say that these monkeys were quite aggressive and would fight for the food and even chase people to get some. The funniest part was when the son of our long-tail boat driver who came with us annoyed the monkeys a little and they all chased him by the beach (he was laughing, I think he came on the trip just for this).

THAILAND! We arrived in Bangkok late at night. However, we only stayed one night by the airport in Bangkok and jumped on a plane the next morning and headed for Phuket. We are staying in Patong in Phuket, next to the beach and the ‘main street’ called Bangla Road which is one of the loudest and craziest street I have ever seen. There are bars everywhere, women dancing on tables by the street, loud music, people trying to sell you everything, just crazy. But, it is also very entertaining in moderation.

But we are very lucky and are staying in an amazing hotel, with our own spa in our room, amazing.

Back in Sydney again, to see and do a few of the things we did not get time to do last time. As well as being in the city center we also took a day trip to Bondi Beach, which was really beautiful. However, the beach was very busy with people which ruined the scenery a little, but overall a very good day out.

We stayed at some of my friends flat from Derby, which was really fun as I have missed them all a lot! And we went out for dinner and a few drinks after, was a very fun night!

Cairns! We did not know what to expect when we got here as we had heard a lot of different things from other travellers on our way up here. There is no beach here, but there is a big nice lagoon. However, this does not really matter as Cairns is not far from The Great Barrier Reef. So we booked on a boat to go out on a day-trip to explore the Reef, and the only way to explain it is AMAZING! The pictures really do not do the reef and the fish any justice, the colours were incredible. Please also excuse me looking like a large blue smurf, but it is stinger season so I had to wear a full body singer suit, lovely.

The fish below is a barracuda (left) and  was about 1.5 meters in length and had huge teeth. The other one (right) is a Maori Wrasse, which was bigger than me! I think it was just under 2 meters long and very fat. He came right up to us and let us stroke him on the back. The people working on the boat called him Wolly, he was cool.

John has been practising his filming under water, and I showed him a Nemo (Clownfish) family.

Mission Beach is where we did our SKYDIVE! It was the best location as we got to see some spectacular views and land on the beach! I was extremely nervous, but I am so glad that I managed to do it. It was a perfect way to celebrate John’s birthday.

The rest of the time we chilled on the beach. We were also lucky to see a cassowary and some wallabies.