get on the boat.

It's come to that stage in the travel game where I have absolutely no idea what day it is, what the date is, or what a real shower feels like. To be fair, I have loved it all.

When we arrived back in Bangkok, we met up with the new people for our journey...all girls. 3 girls from North Ireland (which means they're technically British...I never knew!), and one girl from England, another girl from Scotland..leaving me to be the only non British person. Sometimes in places we've been where people ask where we're all from, I tell them in my blatantly American accent that I'm from Ireland. I just feel kind of left out. We also met our new tour leader, Rachel, who's from Sydney, so at least she and I have some common ground.

From Bangkok we traveled south to Khao Sok National Park on a night train that wasn't nearly as nice as the previous two. It was essentially the same setup, but with no air conditioning and lots of bugs. We all woke up sweating. Cute. At the national park we stayed in little bungalows and went tubing down the river in big black tubes, which had some funny moments with people getting hit by tree branches and getting stuck between various rocks. After that we fed monkeys at a temple, which was funny and scary at the same time...I remembered in India when my friend Erin had a bag of chips, and a monkey came up to her making scary noises. She wound up just throwing the chips on the ground and running...which seemed like the logical choice at the time.

From the park we traveled across to Krabi province for some beach time. Our hotel was right next to the beach, which was beautiful, but we couldn't go in the water...apparently there's jellyfish. The boxed kind. We did go swimming in a different area...we saw other people in the water not getting stung, and the water was so inviting, we decided to take our chances. It was well worth it. The following day, myself and a few of the other girls headed for Kho Phi Phi (pronounced "Pee Pee") on a ferry to spend a day and a night on the main island. The day we arrived, the weather was beautiful, we spent the whole day at the beach. We stayed in the cheapest hotel possible, which, appeared passable at a glance, if you didn't look too closely at the sheets. And I'm pretty sure they bought the beds at a prison garage sale...solid as rocks. We all went out to a bar called Hippie Bar that night and watched a fire show, did some dancing...at one point I decided it was a good idea to go swimming with my clothes on (I blame the rum). The next day it rained and rained until our ferry at 3, then rained some more. That was disappointing, but at least we got some beach time in. The thing about beach hotels, though, it most of them only have cold showers. Which wasn't very nice when you're cold from having been rained on all day.

After returning to Krabi, we had dinner with the rest of the girls, and the next day headed off to Penang, Malaysia. It was a long travel day consisting of being in vans for 10 hours, but they were very nice, and the day went very quickly. Crossing the border was kind of funny...we got our passports stamped as we departed Thailand...then had to walk about 100 metres before getting stamped as having arrived in Malaysia...so for those 100 metres, where were we? Malaysia is an interesting country...it's a fusion of Indian, Chinese, and Malay cultures, and is predominantly Muslim, so we have to have our shoulders and knees covered. Except at the beach. We were excited to be able to wear bikinis at the beach the next day...we spent most of the day there, a few of us went on a banana boat, jetskiing, parasailing...I'm a bit sore today! In the morning we had taken a tour of the city, our guide Steven was very informative and took us to the city's larger temples. Next to our hotel was a Muslim mosque, which means that every morning at 5:30, they ring bells and play a recording of a prayer...very loudly. We left Penang this morning and got on the dirtiest bus I've ever been on...it was a coach bus, but it was old, outdated, had a crazy driver, and little cockroaches everywhere. Apparently that's the worst of it, according to Rachel. For here on, the buses are much nicer. Now we're in the Cameron Highlands, it's raining (surprise!), cool (yippie!), and tomorrow we're going to a tea plantation. Tomorrow afternoon we're off to Kuala Lumpur, then Melaka, then it's over! Then I'm off to Sydney, which I'm really looking forward to! A bunch of my family is coming from the Gold Coast to see me off, so I'm very grateful that I'm getting such a big send off.