I´m on a Boat! - First island

On Sunday we went on a boat Tour around the (pretty) famous islands of Ko Phi Phi. They are quite a lot of them and they are all really beautiful! During our tour we had the chance to snorkel, swim in a lagoon, have lunch on a great island and do many other activities I don't want to spoil yet. In order to get to the islands we first had to travel for one until we started seeing islands like these:

The first island we arrived at was already breathtaking. They gave us one hour to snorkel around and it was amazing!! I have never seen so many fish in so many different colours. I am not kidding! I saw the entire "Finding Nemo" cast and some new and very curious fish. I tried to take some pictures with a disposable underwater camera I had but they are still being developped. Even though in my mind they look like submarine National Geographic pictures it's probably always a complete green background with half a fish in the corner and some diver's foot at the side. We'll see...

Be as it may, this is what the island looked on the outside. Urgh, right? Who would jump into that water!? Unfortunately we were forced to, so bailing out was not an option.

The beach itself was not much better...

What to do... Let's move on to the next island!

Let's go to the beach, each, let's go get a wave! ♫

You might be wondering where we ended up after cruising around half of Phuket with our bikes. We actually found the beach we were looking for (once we had gotten out of laberynth-city Pa Tong it was a pice of cake) and it looked like this:

It was a really nice beach and what I personally enjoyed a lot was the temperature of the water. Being used to the miraculously liquid water of the Atlantic Ocean this was a really nice change and I was able to run into the water Baywatch-style like my cold-receptor-lacking sister always does. 

We stayed there until the sun went down while drinking out of a coconut (they actually do that here in Singapore, too, but on that beach it is a different story. There are pictures of this, btw, and I'll show you some as soon as I get them).

How can I return to snow-covered Europe now?!

Pa Tong

During our trip to Thailand we stayed in Pa Tong, a city on the island of Phuket. Although it is the biggest city there, it only is a nice little town at the beach.

On our first day we decided to take our scooters and visit a beach that was in a neighbouring city. On our way there we got lost a couple of times which gave me the opportunity of taking some pictures of Pa Tong from the bike. I know this might not present us in the best of lights but we actually managed to get lost WITHIN the city so this is why I got so much material on this...

The city is very nice, like many smaller asian cities there are tons of cables because the electricy is not belowground. The wagon in the picture advertises the famous Thai kick boxing competitions and their fighters. Even though the city was pretty small and these events take place several days a week they are pretty expensive...

In Thailand (just like in Cambodia) the law only requires the motorbike driver to wear a helmet. The rest of the passengers (however many and old these may be) do not need such protection, of course. Ridiculous as this might sound most of the people I saw stuck to this rule!

The beach in Pa Tong is very beautiful, although a bit too turisty for my taste. It is also quite huge! It goes along the entire lenght of the city resulting in 2 km of uninterrupted beach (except for the 3 billion chairs and sunshades neatly placed along the shore).

The city at night is also very interesting. Not all the streets are tarred and there are many little shops and bars which make this a very mysterious scenario.

Here is a picture of what it looks like as soon as you leave the city. The guys on the bike further down the street are my friends, and yes, we are driving in the opposite direction of the beach on this picture.

Last but not least I wanted to show you this interesting detail that caught my attention. The Ronald McDonald figure in fron of their restaurant is actually performing the traditional greeting gesture that people use in Thailand. Well played, Ronald, well played...

What a weekend!

I know I have not posted anything in a few days, but this time I have a legitime excuse! I spend the last 2 and a half days in Phuket with some friends - and it was awesome!!

Phuket is a beautiful island in Thailand with amazing food and amazing landscapes. I think I have the next few posts covered... :)

Scratching the clouds

I finished my skybar-tour today! Remember how I wrote about the Helipad that only opens once a month?

Here we go! It is a heliport on the top of Swissotel so the view is not too bad:

Here we have the Marina Bay (I am not sure if I ever showed you pictures before apparently it is famous here...).

If you look close you can see the One Altitude bar I talked about in a previous post. It's the one in the middle with the bluish bright roof and as you can see it's pretty tall... (if you could not tell by the pictures I took from there already...)

New Asia Bar is located underneath the helipad and it's pretty fancy as well:

I am glad I made it, not many chances left until I fly back. Good night!

C

Who would have thought that I would be able to come up with all this randomness for such a long time? It's 100 posts, my friends! If that is not perseverance then I don't know what else is. And to celebrate it I am going to show you something completely regular and boring from here and sell it as the most interesting and unique fact in the world, a strategy that has work pretty well so far.

As you may know (beacuse I have told you 20 times) there are 4 official languages here. We have:

Chinese,

Malay,

Tamil,

and (thank god for me) English. So this is basically what I see everytime I look at a poster at the MRT or any other official sign. What I like the best is the fact that the symbols are different for each language except for Malay (which I don't understand the least either way...). And these are the four different ways of saying a hundred (actually they usually use numbers, but that would have been way less romantic). Celebration!!

I still have a month left. Let's see how many posts there are to come.

Fanmail!

Whohoooo! I got my first fanmail today!! I shall remember this moment when I become Queen of the world (or universe), which is now obviously a quite reachable goal. Here is the postcard:

Pretty, huh? And for you non-believers out there here are some quotes, that I will print on the back of my book if I ever publish this (as soon as I am in power this will be mandatory literature, so this is time you are saving in the future, guys...)

And so you see it's about the blog and not any of my many other incredible skills:

As you can see this compliment has not made me arrogant at all and my self-image is no dissorted in any way!

Either way, I want to send BIG hugs to my friend Mariajo in Madrid (not that I know any other person with that name, but just to keep it clear). I recently found out that she has not only been visiting my blog but also actively promoting and commenting on it on her facebook wall, which proves that she is actually putting up with whatever nonsense I come up at the end of each day. It encourages me to know that my blog is not only being visited by some north korean guy that was randomly clicking on something (no offense, north korean fans, loving your support!).

P.S. I am going to have to ask all my thousands of supporters that were thinking of sending me further famail to send it to my German adress, because I have about one month left here (!!) and chances are I won't get it in time.

Good night!