Week 28. Monday 22nd January - Sunday 28th January 2007

Monday to Wednesday were spent visiting the ActionAid projects on the Andaman Coast of Thailan - see seperate post.
On Thursday we left Khuraburi and drove down to Khao Sok national park, hoping to get a glimpse of the worlds largest flower - the Rafflesia Arnoldii. This parasitic plant attaches itself to a host plant to obtain water and nutrients and when in bloom, emits a repulsive odour, similar to that of rotting meat to attract pollinating insects. Unfortunately, the plant was only just beginning to bloom so we didn’t see it. We’ll have another chance when we get to Sumatra in Indonesia though. We spent the day hiking through the national park and were mightily amused when a monkey defecated on a fellow walker just ahead of us. It was a fairly long hike of 14Km and brutally sweaty. Afterwards, we drove down to Krabi and then the beach town of Ao Nang.
The next day we bummed around the beach and generally did nothing useful. On Saturday we undertook the long drive to the border town of Pedang Besar and crossed with surprising ease at 9pm. We were in Malaysia at long last! We made it to the nearest town of Kangar just in time to see Malaysia lose to Singapore in penalties before having some dinner and finding a quiet residential area to park up in for the night.
On Sunday we drove to Kuala Perlis were we parked the landy before taking the ferry over to Langkawi island. There we hired a rubbish but dirt cheap Proton car and motored around to the crocodile farm. This was pretty cool - there were hundreds of the beasties lazing around looking menacing. The theme show consisted of some handlers seemingly hypnotising a huge croc, sitting on it and sticking their hands in its mouth. Not my idea of a fun job. After this, we took the disturbingly high cable car up to one of the mountain peaks for great views of the island. We got the last ferry back and were forced to endure Home Alone 2 until we reached the mainland again. It was getting late now so we drove a few Km towards Alor Setar before finding a deserted car park to stop in for the night.
In the next few days we will make our lumbering way to George town and then on to Kuala Lumpur.
Dwyer