KL, Phuket, and Chiang Mai

Here's a quick update because it's been two weeks since I've written anything and it could be a while before I have time to write anything more.

Kuala Lumpur

I flew from Langkawi back to KL for a few days to take care of some errands, the most important of which was getting a 60-day tourist visa for Thailand. I slightly fouled up the application process my first time at the Thai embassy - I didn't have a photocopy of my passport - and the embassy was closed the following day because of a national holiday, so I stayed in Malaysia for a couple days longer than I had intended. I ended up doing a little shopping and enjoying the nightlife a bit more to fill the time, including a pretty fun rap and hip-hop party called "Ghetto Heaven" that happens every Tuesday night at Zouk. Tough life, I know.

I thought I needed a second Japanese Encephalitis shot, since that's what I was told when I received the first shot a month ago. However, after some confusion, paper rustling, and a phone call to who knows, the doctor at the clinic informed me that the shot I had already received was of the 1-shot variety, not the 2-shot variety, so I didn't need a second shot. I'm still a bit concerned that there was so much uncertainty regarding what shot I had actually received. On the outside, I was nodding and listening, but on the inside, I was wondering: "What the hell did you inject me with lady?!"

Also, given that I had some free time and access to an extremely fast and stable Internet connection (a rarity in these parts), I overhauled my online photo portfolio. I pruned the collection a bit, added the online-worthy photos that I've taken on this Asia trip, re-edited some of the older photos now that my Lightroom skills are a bit better, and, most importantly, migrated everything to a proper 500px account. I feel like a real photographer now!

Here's the link: https://500px.com/kylegetz

Phuket

Upon flying to Phuket, I met up with Omar, a friend from San Francisco, who is on holiday in Southeast Asia. We spent the weekend in Patong, mostly to enjoy the city's world-famous (read: infamous) nightlife. I'm not going to transcribe anything that happened that weekend; you'll just have to use your imagination.

After the weekend in Patong, we took a boat to Koh Yao, a pair of small islands about halfway between Phuket and Krabi that are known for being very quiet and peaceful. It's a good thing this was the plan all along because I came down with some kind of illness and spent the next three days almost entirely in bed with a high fever. Koh Yao is a great place to do nothing though, so while I'm bummed that I didn't get to go cycling or kayaking or see James Bond Island, I'm grateful I had the time to rest before Chiang Mai. I may try to make it back to Koh Yao at some point for a do-over.

Chiang Mai

Some backstory is necessary for the Chiang Mai trip. For some time now, I've been planning to go to Chiang Mai in November to experience the two lantern festivals, so I also started researching volunteer opportunities there (of which there are many). I settled on a volunteer organization called Friends For Asia, which runs volunteer projects in several countries, including Thailand. They have a lot of great projects and I applied to a few, eventually getting accepted to be an intern at Citylife, the premiere English-language magazine of northern Thailand. My job responsibilities may include web design, graphic design, photography, layout, and writing.

Seeking out an unpaid internship in the middle of a holiday may seem borderline crazy, but I have my reasons:

• After a few months of very free-form, unscheduled living, I was craving some structure/routine.
• Some of the job responsibilities (i.e. web development) match up with my professional experience and some (i.e. photography) match up with my personal interests.
• This is a perfect opportunity to try a different and more creative career without actually committing to it. I can extend the internship on a week-by-week basis if I want; otherwise, it's over after one month, which is enough time to develop an opinion on whether this kind of work could pan out long-term.
• This is also a perfect chance to get some insights and exposure to a foreign culture that wouldn't normally be available to a tourist. I will have a commute, coworkers, a boss, meetings, business lunches, happy hours, and all the other normal things that working folks around the world have. I'm really interested in the prospect of having those things in a foreign culture.

I'm actually writing all of this at my desk on my first day here since there isn't much for me to do yet, which goes to show that first days everywhere are sort of the same. I'm heading out tomorrow to take photos of a new art gallery and a new shopping mall for a couple spreads in the next issue of the magazine, so I think that things will be ramping up very quickly.

The orientation activities for all the new volunteers this past weekend included a tour of a couple temples in the city, so in the interest of not having a picture-less post, I'll include some photos:


More on the lantern festivals later.

Full photo album: Wat Chedi Luang

Langkawi

On a hot and bright Monday morning in Penang, I caught the 8:30 Langkawi "fast ferry", a simpler alternative to flying or taking the bus. As I learned that morning, the term "fast ferry" is a euphemism for "massive speedboat". A bit before 9:00, about a hundred travelers boarded the boat and as we left the dock, everyone was in high spirits, looking out the windows, pointing, laughing, smiling, and taking lots of photos. However, the overall mood of the boat's occupants was about to change very quickly.

As we left Penang and accelerated to full speed, the bluish skies turned a dark, ominous grey and storm clouds extended in every direction as far as the eye could see. The sea, though still a very pretty shade of teal, grew choppy and the waves increased in size, replacing the smooth ride out of the dock with rolling, swaying, bucking, and jumping, for lack of proper nautical terms. Within twenty minutes, everyone's good spirits and smiles had faded into pale, sweaty expressions of worry as the gentle, sleep-inducing rocking we experienced at the outset transitioned into a stomach-churning aquatic roller coaster. The giggling of tourists snapping photos of the harbor turned into barely-stifled screams as the boat repeatedly launched off the waves and violently slammed back into the water.

Did I mention this ride is three hours? Yup, and that's on a good weather day.

The captain kept the boat moving forward as fast as it would go and the crew seemed unfazed by it all, which isn't a surprise since they probably make this trip a dozen times a week. The crewmembers tried to smile and joke and generally lighten the mood as they offered some kind of menthol-smelling chest rub to those passengers already feeling queasy. This rub was used in vain by an increasing number of folks until they started grabbing at the barf bags hand over fist. At about this time, I popped my earbuds in and cranked up some recently downloaded Moby tunes as loud as I could to block out the symphony of hacking, dry heaving, and vomiting that was playing in glorious surround sound in the cabin.

Did I mention this particular ferry ride is known as the "vomit comet"? Yup, and this ride wasn't even during monsoon season.

I have to hand it to my stomach; it did very, very well for me that day. I was more anxious than anything else as recollections of news stories of Southeast Asian ferry disasters bubbled up through my thoughts and my imagination constructed a chaotic, terror-filled drowning scenario set to a beautiful and moving Moby score. Maybe I shouldn't have had that coffee just before getting on the boat; I blame the caffeine for my anxiety. In the end, I closed my eyes and practiced my yoga breathing for three hours and made it through just fine. But holy shit, what a way to start the trip to Langkawi! I'm very happy that my next transportation adventure will be a flight to Thailand rather than a boat ride.

Once in Pantai Cenang, the main beach on the island, I walked around for a while to get the lay of the land (after the rain stopped, of course). The area has a really nice feel to it, like a small tourist town with a sprinkling of beach culture, though this feeling is admittedly a bit diluted because of the ominous clouds that appear on the horizon every day. Daily rain is pretty much guaranteed; sometimes it's a drizzle, sometimes it's a violent storm. Looking at the weather forecast for this part of the world is a waste of time as it always says "chance of thunderstorms" for every hour of every day. But when it's not raining, the weather here is really pleasant: perfect ambient temperature, sunny, and partly cloudy. The "partly cloudy" part isn't great for sunbathing, but it's perfect for outdoor activities in a place where you break a sweat simply getting out of the taxi.

Being an increasingly popular tourist destination, there is the usual smattering of restaurants, bars, shops, massage places, and tour agencies. If you can believe it, the diversity in Langkawi is even greater than the rest of Malaysia, as there are more European and Middle Eastern tourists than elsewhere in the country. Clearly catering to the latter, there are quite a few Arabic/Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/Iranian restaurants, which brings the overall restaurant variety up to a fairly impressive level. I will need to be incredibly active here just to make sure I don't gain any weight from all the delicious food I will be shoving into my face. The food options here definitely rival George Town. And since Langkawi is duty-free, alcohol is significantly cheaper here than the rest of the country. Beers at some of the beach bars are less than $2.

Sidebar about the international tourists: After traveling to many Malaysian tourist destinations over the last month, I've noticed that every group of Asian tourists falls into one of these categories: a couple, a group of couples, a group of girls, or the occasional family. I've never seen a solo Asian traveler, which I don't find that unusual, but I've also never seen a group of guys, which I find really odd. Don't Asian guys ever get together with their buddies and plan a trip? I have no explanation or theory for this; it's just an observation. Feel free to educate me in the comments section.

After a day of rest and research, I booked a few activities through Dev's Adventure Tours: a kayaking tour through the mangrove forest, a cycling tour through the countryside, and a guided trek through the rainforest.

Though I had never been in a kayak before (just canoes and rowboats), the kayaking tour was really spectacular and easily my favorite activity of the three. For about three or four hours, we rowed the river and carefully navigated the tributaries snaking through the mangrove forest. Once we entered the tributaries from the main river, our surroundings became very quiet; the only sounds were our paddles in the water. The water, forest, and limestone cliffs were beautiful and we saw a variety of birds, monkeys (including one that fell out of a tree and into the water), and even a viper coiled on a tree branch. The coolest moment by far though was watching some of the boat operators feed Brahminy Kites (very similar to eagles) by throwing chicken and chicken fat out into the water from the boats. After the boats left and a gentle drizzle started coming down, I slowly rowed up to the feeding area and floated for a while, watching the kites circle overhead, swoop down, skim the water, and grab at the food with their talons. Some of them were coming down maybe only fifteen or twenty feet away; it was a really cool, peaceful moment, especially with the sounds of the rain on the river.

After finishing the kayaking tour, we all went back to the dock at the floating restaurant, had a Thai-style lunch, and briefly visited the fish farm, where they breed some massive, aggressive fish. The real highlight was petting the sting rays, which I didn't realize are actually docile, curious creatures. Their tops are a little rough, almost like a cat's tongue, but their undersides are silky smooth.

Both the cycling tour and the jungle tour were the next day and, like the kayaking tour, had an emphasis on discovering the local flora and fauna while being moderately active. Unlike the cycling tour I went on in Bali, which was all downhill, this cycling tour required actual effort, though still not as much as I would have preferred. The tour took us through the countryside and small villages, including stops at a rubber tree farm, a buffalo park, where we ate buffalo ice cream and buffalo mozzarella, and a local market where we bought some fruit (but nothing very exotic).

The jungle tour was in the evening and included sea cucumbers, bats, various trees (and their culinary or medicinal properties), and the occasional "Move quickly up here, there are black termites everywhere!" warning from our tour guide. We saw a lot of black termites (which can sting you with their acid) and decent-sized termite mounds. After emerging from the jungle a bit after twilight, we walked around the neighboring resort, watching flying squirrels and flying lemurs climb and glide from tree to tree, including one that flew right over all our heads. If those animals weren't cool enough, check this: they don't have eyelids (which means their eyes are always open to watch for predators), so they clean their eyes by licking them with their tongues. How cool is that?

After a day of rest and a day of rain, I ventured out to two of the more popular sites on the island: Panorama Langkawi (a.k.a. the cable car) and Telaga Tujuh, a series of connected pools at the top of a waterfall. Telaga Tujuh was significantly less crowded, probably because of the 300-step climb that is enough of an obstacle for out-of-shape tourists. The views were really nice and the pools were pretty peaceful, which was certainly not the case at Panorama Langkawi, as I learned later. The cable car is part of the "Oriental Village", a sort of mini-Disneyland with lots of annoying rides and shops and other methods to separate tourists from their money. Large coaches came through constantly and the place was overrun with Muslim schoolchildren. Just my luck that I picked the same day to go as schools in the area, though I have a suspicion that it's like that everyday there. The cable car ride was fun and there are great views of the mountains and valleys below, but once I made it to the top and snapped a few photos (none of which I even kept), I wanted out as quickly as possible. In hindsight, I should have spent twice as much time at the falls and avoided the cable car altogether. On the plus side, the absence of people at Telaga Tujuh offered me the opportunity to start messing around with HDR photography.


The following day I rented a bike from the hotel across the street and went for a 20-mile ride around the southwestern part of the island. I might have gone further had my bike not been a rusty heap with gears that slipped and barely worked to begin with. I was so drenched in sweat after cycling in the heat and the humidity that when my shorts dried later in the afternoon, they were covered in white salt stains. (Yeah, yeah, insert crude joke here.)

I think this photo sums up the internal part of the island very well: bright green rice paddies and massive storm clouds.


The next morning was a four-hour, island-hopping jet ski tour around a popular portion of the Langkawi archipelago. It should go without saying that four hours of jet skiing around tropical islands is nothing short of incredible and awesome and every other positive adjective you can think of. As I posted on Facebook immediately after I got home, that $200 expense was one of the most sound financial decisions I've ever made.

It was a bit of an off-week for the company, so I was the only one on the tour. My guide, Isha, and I cruised around the islands, drifted under limestone cliff overhangs, watched eagles feed, shouted at the "fjords" to hear the echo, swam and snorkeled at an empty beach, and enjoyed some 40-mph "play time" on the open water with no boats around. In some places, the water was so calm and the surface was so glassy and smooth that it felt like we were flying across a massive mirror. The waters were pretty tame for most of the tour, but we encountered just enough choppiness towards the end to launch off the waves and get some airtime. This was actually my first time on a jet ski and now I totally get it. Those things are fucking fun!


After a couple more days of beach time and cycling and eating, my last adventure was a short ride on a powered parachute (another first for me) above Cenang. To call this thing an "aircraft" is a bit generous and probably offensive to actual aircraft. I believe the official term for this type of conveyance is a "contraption". I mean, come on, look at this thing:


To complete the look, it really should have a motorized umbrella pumping up and down. And maybe one of those old-school horns that goes aaahhh-wooo-gaaa!!!

To address all of your safety concerns, I will say this: I was wearing a helmet, a life vest, and a parachute. If I had been wearing a condom too, I would have been invincible!

The flight was actually very smooth, very enjoyable, and very safe. Come to think of it, the only scary part was how docile I was with the whole experience. I'm very comfortable with heights, but I don't think my heartrate even went up at all when we took off. Either I'm developing a tolerance to adventures (I better not be!) or, rather, that speaks volumes for how effortless and smooth a powered parachute ride is when it's done correctly.

After about two weeks - wow, was I really there that long? - it was time to move on. Langkawi is a spectacular tourist destination and it's no wonder that it's gotten so popular in recent years. There's something for everyone here: beach laziness, swimming/snorkeling/diving, duty-free shopping, eating, drinking, nature tours, culture tours, and outdoor activities. One of the benefits of staying in Pantai Cenang is the location on the western coast of the island: sunsets every day. In fact, Langkawi has some of the most consistently beautiful sunsets I've ever seen; the sky lights up tangerine, pink, and eventually a fiery red every night. The ever-present smattering of clouds gives the waning light a medium to play off of, enhancing the whole scene.


Speaking of the clouds, I've actually enjoyed them a lot. Partly cloudy (bordering on overcast) is my favorite weather and its especially nice here since you'll get a real beating from the sun without anything to block it. The rains have been nice too: they defuse the humidity, provide some variety to the weather, and force me to go inside for some Internet/blogging/photo editing time, which I need anyway. The storms are rarely full-day or even half-day affairs, so once the rain is done you can go right back outside.

In hindsight, I ended up accidentally picking the best time of the year to come to Langkawi: the weather is improving every day as the monsoon season winds down and the peak tourist season doesn't start for another few weeks. I wish I could claim 20/20 foresight and careful planning, but it was really just dumb luck.

Up next: back to KL for a few days to take care of a lot of nagging errands and Internet tasks, get my last vaccination (finally!), and get a tourist visa for Thailand. After that, off to Phuket!

Full photo album: Langkawi