Indonesia – Banda Aceh

Banda Aceh is a city in the north of Sumatra, well known for the devastating consequence of the Tsunami that hit (mainly) Indonesia and Thailand in 2004. Before heading back to KL we hired a tuk-tuk and drove around the city to see the main “attractions” of this catastrophy. It is impressive with what openness the local people talk about what happened on that December morning, considering that with the almost 300 000 casualties, everybody there lost at least a relative or a friend. It was not hard imagining the serverness of the tsunami seeing heavy boats landing on rooftops of houses situated 5km inland 

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Indonesia- Pulau Weh

As we still had two weeks to kill until our friends from Luxembourg would visit us, we got the idea of going to Pulau Weh in Indonesia for a couple of days and dive there. Actually Beinn and Crian gave us the idea. We found affordable flights from KL and needed not to think for long to book them. A couple of days later we sat on the bus, then the plane and traded a nice tropical island for a nicer one.

On Pulau Weh we dove all the major dive sites and really liked it. Many fish, loads of octopuses and uncountable morays; wow!! We really had a positive surprise …

Malaysia- Penhentian island

Perhentian Kecil (the smaller of the two islands) has a nice sandy beach and some bungalows (some of them overlooking the sea). We dove with Turtle Bay Divers and were happy to meet the “Twin Triplets”  (Beinn and Crian) and Joo again. We had already dived with them in Sipadan (Malaysia) and were happy to do it again. We stayed on the island for a week and had fun diving and chilling on the beach. 

Thailand- A long trainride to the Malaysian border

After a quick stay in Bangkok to pick up Ron’s passport we headed south. We took the 20 hours night train to Sungai Kolok to reach the Malaysian border. Our goal was the Perhentian Island. We stayed overnight in Kota Bharu and took the boat to the island on the following morning

Thailand-Chiang Rai

No words for this breathtaking white temple called Wat Rong Khun...

Laos- Luang Nam Tha (leaving Laos)

Even though we had still so many plans in that region as it is home to many different ethnic groups, we finally decided to leave Laos, as the raining season had started, more or less from one day to the other. We'll stroll around that area again, some time... Kap joy!!!