The Twelve Days of Christmas (part 2)

On the first day of Christmas...we left Sabah in search of the Thai border in order to renew our visas. We left Sandakan at 8am and by midnight we were still travelling North, having flown to Kuala Lumpur and found a coach to take us to Aloe Setar where we hoped to catch a connecting bus to Thailand. We filled the time between arrival and departure on the bus by playing snakes and ladders and chess in Starbucks. A lady on the plane requested my orange peel, which she sniffed until we landed in KL.

On the second day of Christmas...we were still travelling. At 4am we were dumped in Aloe Setar where it became apparent that no connecting buses to Thailand existed. It was here that we joined up with two students from Singapore on a similar mission and caught a taxi to the top of Malaysia, walked across the border and managed to find a minibus that would take Malaysian Ringgitts to get us to Hatyai.

On the third day of Christmas... we lleft Hatyai and moved to the island of Koh Lipe. Conveniently we find a room at the 'Monkey Bar'.

On the fourth day of Christmas... we were offered a kitten in a cafe made from bamboo. Chloe was very tempted but pointing out that crocodiles probably eat cats seemed to do the trick. In her defence it was a very cute kitten. We also met a French man with a handbag who was extremely odd and apparently owns several clothing factories in Bangkok, a middle-aged man from Portsmouth and a group of New Zealanders who were all very interesting characters.

On the fifth day of Christmas...we realised we'd accidentally stolen all of the New Zealanders' money after being asked to look after it, so spent the morning trying to locate them in order to return it. It was thirsty work so we had to buy a fruit juice on the way.

On the sixth day of Christmas... we snorkelled in the rain and swam in the sun! I saw a family of 'Nemo' clown fish before they all disappeared, leaving me to wonder why fish hide in the rain when they're already fairly wet. It was New Year's Eve and not only did I find a bar playing a U2 DVD and so managed to get a quick musical fix before the end of 2008, but we also found a bar with many bongo drums which I commandeered shortly after the midnight fireworks had been set off on the beach.

On the seventh day of Christmas... we woke up two minutes before the taxi boat was due to leave from the beach to get to the floating jetty to catch the speedboat. We grabbed our belongings and ran out into the baking morning sunshine, thrusting our remaining Thai Baht into the bewildered owner's hand before jumping into the first boat we could find. The taxi boat took us to the wrong jetty and by the time we'd communicated that fact the speed boat, which we had to be on in order to catch out fight later, was already in motion. For some reason I found this all quite entertaining and didn't feel at all stressed whilst jumping up and down in the tiny wooden boat, shouting 'STOP! STOP!' and waving my arms about like a lunatic. Amazingly somebody noticed and the boat waited for us to catch up with it. We clambered aboard mid-ocean and made the two hour trip back to mainland Thailand.

The minibus was caught without a hitch and I even managed to find 5 minutes to check my bank balance online after losing my card on the 27th. I only noticed on the sixth day of Christmas when I tried to get some cash out. The minibus took us back to Hatyai to catch a coach, and whilst we were waiting, I had time to ask in the hostel with regards to my card...

"So it's blue and plastic and it's a bank card, but it's no use to anyone because if you don't have it then I'll ring and cancel it straight away..."

"Ah! A Card? Like money card? Ah we no have. Maybe."

"Pardon?"

"See lady cleaner cannot read English. So maybe card in rubbish because writing not in Thai."

"Okay, so you've thrown away my debit card?"

"I do not know. Cleaner does not remember."

And that was all I was getting from the helpful receptionist. Unfortunately, said card could not be cancelled from Thailand due to a mobile phone network problem, but what's another 24 hours when it's been missing for 5 days already?

The coach journey to Kuala Lumpur was almost uneventful, but true to form something had to liven things up. The ten hours of freezing under broken air conditioning on full blast required some form of break, especially seeings as my jumper was left safely at Danau Girang, so the opportunity to stop at the Duty Free shop on the Thai-Malay border was very welcome. The coach driver (we are convinced) said that we had 35 minutes before departing again, so imagine our surprise to find the coach had left the carpark when we came back after 20!!!

We spotted it driving off towards the second border, ran across the carpark and managed to get the French couple who had been sat behind us to stop the coach. Apparently he was just going to leave us there! I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing, but at least we managed to get back onboard before it left the checkpoints!

A further communication complication meant that we didn't arrive in Kuala Lumpur at the ETA of 2200, but 0100, making it completely pointless to go to the hostel we'd previously booked when we had to check into the airport at 0500 to catch our flight back to Sabah. The train stations nearby were closed, but eventually we managed to find a taxi to take us to the central station to catch a coach to the airport! At 0430 we entered Kuala Lumpur airport completely exhausted but early for a change and were able to make a stress-free flight back to Sandakan on the eighth day of Christmas!

On the ninth day of Christmas we were in Kota Kinabalu, which is a six hour coach journey from Sandakan. Farina, our elephant friend, met us at the bus station and we stayed with her for he weekend. The tenth, eleventh and twelth day of Christmas were spent getting some satistics work done for my monkey survey as part of my second year course and exploring KK with Farina. I even found time for a haircut - exciting stuff!

And that was my Twelve Days of Christmas! x