So I'm in thailand for the weekend and it's interesting coming back 6 years later. I've been working in KL for a few weeks and was looking for an easy weekend trip...
I am travelling with a colleague from work and we ended up going to phuket as that it had the best flight times. We literally went to the airport and asked each airline when their next available flight was to anywhere. Other contenders were sri lanka, lankawi in malaysia and indonesia. I'm calling that the airport roulette game, going to an airport and taking a random flight somewhere. I was thinking we would go to the island of Phi Phi, which was one of my favourite beaches, but decided to stay in phuket as we were too tired from travelling and someone I spoke to said that Phi Phi was overrun with tourism these days. I think I will refrain from going back to phi phi and keep my nice memories of how it used to be.
Phuket is nothing special at all and there are also loads of tourists.. The main beach town is as busy as bangkok with prostitutes, bars and people. One prostitute grabbed my balls as I walked past her, which shows how aggressive sales people they are... And the minivan from the airport to town had to stop half way, get everyone off the bus, and into the tourist tours shop to "check which hotels everyone was going" (and of course try to sell you tours at the same time). The joys of thailand... However, it's been nice to overdose on proper thai food, coconut shakes and banana pancakes, I love it!
A couple of weekends ago I went to singapore for a day with the same colleague because he had not been before. It was just as boring as I remembered it and we went back to the airport early for our flight. The weekend before that I went to brunei for the day which was interesting, but not worth more than a few hours. It was surprisingly poor for one of the richest countries in the world per capita... See the photo below for a picture:
I'm a bit tired of travel right now though after the past couple months travelling between malaysia and sydney. It's been good to spend some proper time in KL though, it's a nice place to live and work. The shopping in KL is probably one of the best places in the world....my 2 colleagues overdosed on dvds, I think they bought 150 between them! KL is a fun place, with an interesting blend of modern and developing world architecture. The Petronas Towers are one of my favourite modern buildings. The culture is really interesting too, with 50% of the population being Malay, 30% Chinese and 20% Indian. That makes for some great food options!
