On the move again

After a few days in the Gili Islands and a coastal road trip we're not quite ready to say goodbye to Bali.  The Gili Islands were absolutely beautiful, relaxing, and quiet.  There are three of them and we spent our time on Gili Meno at Meno Dream where the roof of our bungalow opened up so you could see all the stars at night!  It's known as the quieter island and is often referred to as deserted, which it is most defiantly not.  There were plenty of restaurants on the beach to eat at and overall the food was pretty good. It is easy to walk the full circumference of the island and especially a good idea if you stay on the side with the pier which was considerably more expensive than the side facing Gili Tra. I do not however recommend staying on Gili T where we had a short visit while waiting for our ferry back to the mainland.  Gili Tra was noisy, crowded, and reminded me of the party islands in Thailand except they have lots of horses instead of motorbikes.

There are only two dive shops on Gili Meno and we chose to dive with Divine Divers.  I would definitely recommend this shop, we did five dives with them and saw quite a few octopus and turtles! There are a lot of people getting their divemaster certification of the islands, who wouldn't want to spend a month in paradise diving everyday?

Next, we are headed to Malaysia for a few more days of relaxation before I head to Sri Lanka and Orlando to LA and Vegas!

A weekend in Malaysia

I recently had to do a "visa run".  Which means leave the country and come back to automatically extend my visa for another 60 days.  At first, I saw this as a big inconvenience, but now I realize this is actually a blessing in disguise.  Who wouldn't want a unexpected weekend at the beach?!  This is the first time I've had to do this, because last time I already had plans to go home for Christmas.  I had been putting off booking my flight because I didn't really know where I wanted to go and wasn't excited about paying for airfare.  I ended up in Kota Kinabalu (the cheapest place Air Asia flies from Taipei).

Malaysia has the best sunsets I've seen anywhere in the world

My long weekend turned out better than expected. I found a cheap place to stay (about $10/night) and started reading about KK so I could figure out the best way to spend my 3 days there.  It turns out there is a collection of islands just off the coast that make up a national park.  You can catch a ferry in the morning to the island of your choice and swim, snorkel, and hike during the day.  I wish I had more time to get to some of the places outside of the city, but I can always go back sometime in the future.

Relaxing on the beach I discovered... no tourists here!

Things have not slowed down at all since Chinese New Year.  My roommate pirated a copy of the Rosetta Stone so we've both been trying to do it every day.  Initially I had hoped to learn Chinese, but I have lost motivation a bit because it's so difficult.  I'm still doing a weekly language exchange, but I'm probably learning more about Taiwanese culture from my language partner than actually learning the language.  I have been using the Rosetta Stone to keep up with my Spanish however!

One of my friends here owns an art gallery and this weekend I started a drawing and painting class there.  I've taken some art courses at home, but they tend to be expensive and I've decided to take advantage of as many classes as I can while I'm here because they're much cheaper.  In the winter I took a French class at the association where my roommate teaches, and I'm thinking of enrolling in one of their summer courses as well.

I also started playing soccer this past weekend with a group of expats in a league, finally!  I was on the fence about bringing my soccer stuff to Taiwan and I'm really glad I did.  I've been playing on and off when I've been home but I really miss playing competitively on a team.  The day after the first practice just sitting down was a challenge but I haven't forgotten how quickly sore muscles recover.  They practice twice a week and I would need to be selected to play in the league, but regardless of whether I end up playing in the official games or not I'm happy just to be kicking a ball around again!

Island Hopping

Kathryn and I have been travelling for about one week now, and we are having a great time!  We flew from Taipei to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last Sunday.  Our flight wasn't bad, and I didnt run into any problems leaving Taiwan, although I did have to pay a fine for overstaying my 30 day visa.  We decided that we were tired of the big cities and so we didn't stay in KL.  Instead we took the train to Butterworth (in Malaysia) were we continued onto the island of Pinang by ferry.  It was a long journey, we were travelling for about 24 hours (Taipei-Pinang) but it was definitely worth it!

Waiting for the ferry in Malaysia

The island was beautiful, and there were not many tourists there.  We stayed in a nice little hotel that cost about $3.50 a night each. :)  We also had a somewhat scary encounter with the monkeys in the national park.  It was our last day and we decided it would be fun to do some hiking in the jungle there.  We had a great day until we got to the last trail of the day heading towards monkey beach.  I've had a lot of experience with monkeys in South America and up until this point considered them pretty harmless although they can be quite mischievous.  Kathryn didn't get a chance to hike monkey mountain while she was visiting us in Kaohsiung so she was anxious to see some wildlife as well.

We were walking down the trail when we heard the tell tale sound of monkeys in the trees and saw one right above us.  Before we could even think of getting out our cameras it came right down to the ground (very unusual for wild monkeys) and sat on a rock about 2 feet away starting at us.  I was a little confused (and concerned) by it's behavior but was completely shocked when it jumped onto my backpack and literally started hissing at me and showing it's teeth!  We both pretty much freaked out at this point and I started screaming at the money (in an attempt to scare it) while Kathryn looked around (unsuccessfully) for a stick or some other object to scare it away.  I dropped my backpack (camera, money, and everything else inside) while the monkey actually tried to drag it away into the jungle!  Luckily my bag was too heavy for the monkey to run off with it but anytime I approached the either the monkey or the bag it hissed at me like it was going to attack us.

Kathryn managed to find a granola bar in her bag and hoping to distract the monkey I took it, which didnt really work because it practically grabbed the bar out of my hand before I got a chance to throw it far enough away.  Even with the food in hand it continued to defend its place in between me and the backpack.  Finally it retreated into a tree above my bag to eat the bar and I managed to grab my backpack and we literally ran as fast as we could all the way back down the trail to the entrance of the park.  To say the least, we are avoiding all trails or attractions involving monkeys for the rest of our trip.

Our trip has been pleasantly uneventful since then, and we crossed the border to Thailand on Wednesday.  We made our way to the coast where we took a ferry from Trang to Ko Lanta where we are currently staying.  Right now we are on the Andaman Coast, which is the western coast of Thailand.  Ko Lanta has a more relaxed reputation compared to some of the more developed islands.  It is one of the largest islands and we practically have the whole place to ourselves because it is low season here and many tourists avoid the islands because of the occasional rain.  The weather hasnt been bad, except for the occasional shower and we are enjoying the discounted prices due to the lack of tourists.  Our beachfront bungalow is costing us $4 per night each (and we are staying at one of the more expensive resorts on the island).

The boats between islands aren't running regularly, but we ran into a couple on their honeymoon at the dock who is heading to Ko Phi Phi tomorrow so we are going to try to negotiate with one of the longboat drivers to take the four of us there.  If there aren't any boats we will have to go to Krabi (on the mainland) and then take a ferry from there to Ko Phi Phi.  The beaches on Ko Phi Phi are often referred to as the most beautiful beaches in the world so we are really excited! We have a Thai cooking class at our hotel in a little bit, and I cant wait to learn how to make Thai food at home :)