Good evening Singapore and welcome to Sleepless in Singapore. Today is Sunday the 24th of March 2024, and I am a little proud to have made it to two digits. This is episode 10 of this podcast. There is a chance I'll make another digit in about two years. I think it's pretty certain that I won't make it to three digits, and it's absolutely impossible to make it to four. But for now, I'm just a little proud that I made it to ten.

And in this tenth episode, I want to talk about a short trip, actually not even that short a trip, a trip that I did from Singapore to all the way north of Thailand and then down La Leo in a boat on the Mekong River, almost to the border of Cambodia, and then back home by a plane. Of course, I will continue the longer story of this trip around the world I did with Philip, but I will do that another time to mix it up a bit. So for now, please make yourself comfortable, lie down and let my voice be your guide to a restful night.

This trip through Malaysia and up to Thailand I was very excited about. Not only because I was to see my good friend Hatim after quite a while again, but also because it was a trip that did not involve flying a lot. And I really like these road trips or train trips or, you know or any kind of trip that is not just sitting in a plane going to another destination and then sitting in a plane again. So for this trip, I agreed with Hatim that we travel extra light. Because that makes a lot of things very easy. You do not have to store your luggage. You also don't have to haul around your luggage. I think at that point, I had a particular reason not wanting to haul around too much luggage and that is I just came back a week or two weeks earlier from Japan, a trip I'm sure I'm going to talk about soon as well. And on that Japan trip, I not only had carry-on luggage, like a suitcase, but also my big camera backpack, which is, I think it's easily a 20-kilogram suitcase plus a 25 kilograms backpack with all the cameras and lenses and all that stuff. And while I enjoy having the camera and being able to take nice pictures and all, I really think for a road trip or train trip kind of travel where you go from destination to destination to destination it is super cumbersome to have a lot of luggage and I remember how much I hated hurling around all that stuff on my Japan trip. So for Thailand and Malaysia and Laos, we decided to go the other extreme and we put it pretty much to the extreme.

I have this little leather bike messenger backpack. I can't even tell you how many liters, but I can tell you including everything, my luggage, which was that backpack, was around 5 kg. Actually, it was below 5 kg. Actually, it was below 5 kg and that included the clothes I needed, which basically is two or three shorts and a couple of these very light merino wool t-shirts I like so much. And a couple of underwears, of course. And I think that's pretty much it for clothes. I did not bring socks because I decided to wear flip-flops like a proper Asian tourist for the whole trip and actually that worked out fine. Here's a tip on flip-flops. I got these flip-flops from well that is a terrible trip because I don't remember much. Okay, I have these leather flip flops. They are vastly overpriced for just flip flops, but they are not just flip flops. They are very nice quality leather flip flops. I have the pair I'm wearing now for more than a year now. And I did that trip and I did other trips and they are still not as good as new but but they are still perfectly fine and they are very comfortable. In fact, they are the first flip-flops I could wear for more than even just a couple of hundred meters. Ever before, I could not have flip-flops. Something that's like a thingy between the toes. I really hated it. I could not walk. It hurt immediately. So for the first time, I had these flip-flops. I also had a little like blisters and stuff, but it went away quickly. And ever since they are broken in, they are very comfortable. I really like them. And I will make sure to put up a link, Amazon link or something, in the description so you know. Another travel tip, no matter if you travel light or not so light, is packing cubes. I have these in a myriad of sizes and you can buy the very fancy Remova ones for hundreds of dollars or you can buy the $20 Amazon ones. I think they are pretty much the same. The main point is they are made from nylon to make them sturdy and they are very light. You put a couple of clothes in like t-shirts, underwear, socks, whatever and you close them up and then they have a second zipper that goes around that you can also close and that one is compressing the cloth inside and that helps to reduce your volume and thus well pack smaller or pack more. So I had that for this trip and then I have this transparent little pouch for shampoo and toothpaste and stuff like that because we were traveling low budget actually we weren't traveling low budget we were and we had like a very weird mix of five-star hotels and hostels but what I wanted to say is we went to places where you needed your own shampoo and stuff and so I have this little transparent thing. You just put your stuff. It is exactly as big as the airlines allow. It's transparent. You can just get it out for security checks and then put it back in. for security checks and then put it back in. And then I had a charger for my phone, for the watch and for the iPad and for the camera. It's like an all-in-one travel charger, 60 watts. Very practical if you travel light. You can use it as a travel adapter thing and at the same time you have a 60 watts charger built in and you have like I think three USB-C and one USB-A port so it's kind of the only thing even if you bring your MacBook or whatever and then I had a camera and as a camera I brought the Fuji X100V, which I like a lot because it's this old school dials. It's a nice camera, it's a very good quality camera, but it kind of looks like a camera from 30 years ago and you have your dials on it to change the aperture, change the shutter speed, change the ISO. It's all physical dials. You don't have to use any menus or programmed buttons or stuff. It's completely physical and that makes using it very pleasant. And then I had my iPad. Actually, I bought a new iPad because I didn't want to bring the big iPad. I bought this iPad Pro but the smaller size and a keyboard for the iPad and a pen. And I guess I could go into detail on how and what I configured and installed on the make it a replacement for my computer for a two weeks or so trip. But maybe that is also more for an IT episode instead of a travel episode. So yeah, wearing flip-flops, shorts, a t-shirt and a less than 5kg small messenger backpack with nothing but a couple of clothes in a packing cube, some cosmetic stuff in this transparent little cube, an iPad, chargers and a camera. That was enough for a trip like we had planned it. And I was very excited to travel that light because it literally meant we could do everything without ever being bothered about having too much luggage or having to carry around stuff. We met people on that trip that had heavier day packs than we had total for traveling.

There is an Instagram story on my Instagram. Last year, I think it was April the 30th, pretty much exactly one year ago, where you can check out the pictures of both Hatim and me with our luggage, if you're interested. And of course, there are also a lot of pictures of the rest of the trip. So yeah, April 30th, when Hatim arrived at the airport in the morning, I picked him up in a private hire car. I love these Toyota Wellfires they have here in Singapore for premium grabs. Grab is our Uber in Singapore or in whole Southeast Asia, I guess. I picked him up in one of these Toyota well fires. We went back to my place and dropped his luggage. And then immediately, with the driver still waiting downstairs, we grabbed two bottles of water. two bottles of water we hopped back into the car and we made our way from our home to the border and from the border to Malaysia that is we went to Malacca, which was our first stop. And in Malacca there is not that much to sightsee, but we walked around a bit, we went to the night market, and then we had dinner at, I think it was called the Curly Tail, somewhere in Temple Street. Had some nice steak, we shared some foie gras for starters. And we had a slightly strange, also not terrible pandan cheesecake. And then we went to a bar called The Old Merchant, which is kind of cool. Very nice ambiance. kind of cool. Very nice ambiance. They had live music and it's all like it's a very great mix of like Asian and Western bar. Hard to describe but I believe you will be able to tell what I mean from the pictures. I believe you will be able to tell what I mean from the pictures. And then after walking around a bit more along the river and having another drink somewhere, we made it to our hostel, which was called Ringo's Foyer and it was extremely simple. We had a shared room. There were I think six bunks or three bunk beds, but except us, nobody was in there, so it was like a half private room. But it was really extremely simple. Then again, it was also really cheap. We spent 12 dollars a night or something like that. And it was good. It was extremely simple, but it was good. We slept well, people were nice, people even were giving us tips. We didn't hang out much with anyone, but we did have a good time there and a nice sleep there. And on the next morning we got and a nice sleep there. And on the next morning we got ready for breakfast, which we had just around the corner at the Ban Keng Cafe. And we did some proper sightseeing during the morning, walking along the river, visiting the church, visiting some museum and then there's this old boat and then we walked up the hill to get a bit of a view over Malacca. And then, of course, we went to one place I always go when I'm in Malacca, which is the Laksa place at Jonker Walk or Jonker Street. They say it's the best laksa you can get anywhere. There's always a huge queue. You sometimes have to wait for half an hour or even more. I don't know if it's the best laksa but it's definitely worth it. I like it a lot. We had that for a second breakfast. We also had some ice kacang. Still for breakfast. And then our driver, same guy as the day before, same car as the day before, picked us up again. And we had a very long car ride. Hatim was sleeping off his jet lag. And we made a few stops here or there. But eventually, we ended up at a place called Tanarata, which was a little bit in the middle of nowhere, quite a bit north of Kuala Lumpur. We skipped Kuala Lumpur because we've both been there a couple of times. We've both been there a couple of times. We didn't want to do a city trip. We wanted to see a bit more of nature and local experiences. So we went to this place, Tanarata, which is in Cameron Highlands. And that was super cool. There are super cool things to do. First thing I remember is we went to a strawberry farm, a really, really, really big strawberry farm. And you can pick strawberries, you can help out on the farm, they give you a tour and they also have a little shop or kitchen or both together where they make marmalade or jam from the strawberries and you can get waffles and that was quite an experience. And then later on in the evening we went to a Thai BBQ hot pot which is called Mukata. Not the restaurant, in general that kind of dish is called Mukata. And it's this bowl with a little like metal hill in the center where you can put meat and it's hot there's a fire under so the meat will be grilled and around that hill there is a space where all the soup goes and in that soup you can do your hot pot and the fats from the meat, they drip a little in the soup, make it more flavorful. And at that place, the Wild Thai Mukata was the restaurant at Cameroon Centrum. That was very, very good. Hatim and I, we both enjoyed more than we thought we would. After that we went to a restaurant. Another restaurant, I know. The old smokehouse hotel and restaurant. Super cool building, super cool interiors, very kind of colonial. And we had some dessert there. And then we made our way back to an Airbnb, of which sadly we did not take any pictures from inside. At least I didn't. But the outside looks like a proper old stone villa. Not big, but very nice I would say. We slept well again and in the next morning we got up very early to take pictures of the sunrise at the Cameron Highlands tea plantations and like I so often say the pictures don't do it justice the Cameron Highlands tea plantations. And like I so often say, the pictures don't do it justice. You have to be there. But it was absolutely stunning. The sun coming up behind these rolling hills and everything is very green from the tea plantations. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. We also went into one tea plantation to have a bit of a viewing how the tea is made and processed and they had a little cafe and there was one not so nice experience I still want to talk about. So we went there, we had our little cameras and we also brought a GoPro. Brand new GoPro actually, the latest model. And I guess in that cafe, we must have left it on the table. And we walked back down to our car and in the car, I'm like, hey, Tim, where's the GoPro? And he's, I thought you had it and I didn't have it. And so we walk back up because the only option is it's in the cafe. And we walk around the cafe, we walk to our table and nothing is there. And at the next table, there are sitting two girls and we asked them, Hey, have you seen our GoPro? And they are like, no, no idea. It's not here. We haven't seen any GoPros. And we walk around a bit more and we cannot find it. I even look down if it fell down or it's not there. And we talked to the waiters and the waiters, they are like, I'm so sorry. Nobody handed anything over. I think somebody else must have taken it. And we walk around a bit more and we search a bit more and I almost gave up. And then I somehow remembered that in the GoPro app there are certain options to remote remote enable it. And I thought maybe I can do something with that. Maybe I can like, take a picture that gives any indication of where it is. So I turned it on. And it worked, the camera turned on, but the picture was completely black. But I knew it must be somewhere close, close enough for the Bluetooth to connect, so I was playing around in the options a bit and I figured out you can actually make the camera beep. So there is some kind of lost mode. So I made it beep and the beeping is coming out of that one girl's backpack. And I walk there and I look at it and very clearly it's coming out of that one girl's backpack. American tourists, by the way, blonde girl, probably a little bit younger than Hatim and I. Oh, actually a little bit younger than I am, maybe a little bit older than Hatim is. And I look at her and she's like red, almost purple in her face. And she's like, oh, I don't know what that is. And I tell her, yeah, I know what it is. It's my GoPro in your backpack. How did it get in your backpack? And she's opening her backpack and she's pulling out my GoPro. And she says, oh, you mean this? Oh, I didn't know. mean this? Oh, I didn't know. And I grabbed the GoPro and I didn't even know what to say or do. This is the first time I ever experienced something like that. So I don't say anything. I just grab it and I walk away. And she's stumbling some weird stuff like oh yeah I was going to give it to the waiter later I didn't know what you meant. Hadim was also just like yeah never mind. And so I got my GoPro back and we learned a lesson to take better care of it, but we were also pretty shook for the whole next two weeks. How a person, a traveler especially, someone who should know that taking someone else's GoPro is not only about losing a couple hundred dollars, but also about losing the pictures and videos you already took. We were pretty shook how somebody could be like that. And she looked like a perfectly normal girl, not like some kind of thug or anything. kind of thug or anything. Anyway, so we went on and we had a wonderful morning. We took beautiful pictures of all the tea plantations and some silly pictures of ourselves wearing, you know these like big baskets they have on their back. And then yet again with the same driver we went to Georgetown and Georgetown is super nice. Unfortunately, it was raining a lot when we arrived but when it's not raining and when you can go out, which we did later, Georgetown on Penang Island in the north of Malaysia, northwest coast of Malaysia, is absolutely beautiful, super cute, old town. I like it there a lot. So during the rain we went to see a museum. Maybe a museum doesn't paint the picture right. It was like one of these fun museums where they have everything supersized. They have supersized soup bowls you can sit in. They have supersized pasta you can pretend make. We just went there because the weather was bad. We just went there because the weather was bad, but I gotta admit we kinda had almost too much fun for two grown men taking picture with oversized food. And oh yeah, it was my birthday. So in the evening both Hatim physically and Nat remotely invited me to this very nice Japanese omakase dinner. And it was very nice indeed. The whole place was closed. It was only the two of us, no other guests. And we had the full attention of the chef. And it was a really... both it looked very nice and it also tasted very nice. And thank you again Hatem and Nat. I really liked the place. It was a Wako Sushi Omakase. What else did we do in Georgetown? Not that much. The next morning we had a very nice breakfast at also a very popular place that is the Mugshot Cafe. I had been there many many years ago. Still looks the same, still cute, still nice breakfast. And then after breakfast we made our way to the ferry to the mainland and then to the train station. And then we took the train to the northern border of Malaysia, southern border of Thailand. And what can I say? I love these train trips. I love these old trains. You can open the door and you can put your head out and they are not fast but you still get a little wind and it's just this incredible feeling of freedom and you feel like you're traveling it's not even the most comfortable or the seats are not the nicest we didn't't even go for first class. I'm not sure first class even exists. But we went for standard stuff. But I enjoy that so much. And I'm really looking forward already to do something like that again. We went to the border. The border crossing took... I don't know. First, the border wasn't open, we had to wait for the people to open it up. And then we had to wait for another two hours for the train to leave again. So we walked around a bit. And then we took another train to Surat Thani which is still like pretty south of Thailand and it's the place where all the boats are leaving the night boats for the islands, for Koh Phangan and for Koh Tao and for Koh Samui. And we just went there, we didn't have a plan, we certainly didn't have tickets, we just knew that one of the next days, ideally the next day, we wanted to be in Koh Tao but sadly the boat to Koh Tao had left so they put us on another boat I think to Koh Phangan and these boats are certainly something it's not the ferries you know it's a slow boat they are a hundred old, or at least that's how they look like. And they can carry 100 passengers. And they are not only for passengers, but also for all kinds of freight, like fruit and water, and I don't know what they need on the islands. they need on the islands. So when you walk in you walk through all the stuff they are bringing over, everything from pineapple to motorbikes, everything you'll find in the bottom part of the boat. And on the top part you have your sleeping area. And the sleeping area means there are no beds or anything, there are just mattresses on both on either side of the boat, around 50 on one side around 50 on the other side, one next to the other. So it's kind of like one giant bed everyone sleeps in. And that's what people do. Everyone is sitting there, the old guys are usually secretly smoking at the window, which is not allowed, but also nobody cares. And the families are having food, and sometimes they share with you and you kind of always meet someone you can talk to. Sadly, Hatim and I may have talked to the wrong person because there was one guy who was high as hell and he came over and gave a very long and very incoherent speech about Palestine and I was like trying not to get involved too much had him unfortunately he was hooked already by the guy so yeah we were there we shared our food he ate some of the fruit we bought outside outside of these boats there is like a big market because everyone before going on the boat for eight hours buys fresh fruit and fish and you know all kinds of snacks so we bought these snacks and we were sitting there in the boat and there was this one guy talking very weird things and then luckily later on there was another guy who i don't remember much but at least he wasn't talking nonsense all the time so we shared our food with him and then the next day after a night without too much sleep but a very very nice experience I like a lot. We arrived in Koh Phangan and I think pretty much the only thing we did there is change boats and move over to Koh Tao which made our way to the Jamahkiri diving club, where we stayed for, I think, three nights. And that was amazing. It wasn't brand new, but we had these kind of little villas that were built on rocks with a view to the sea from quite high above. And it was amazing. I really liked it. And obviously because it was a dive resort Hatim and I went diving. Actually, I think Hattim didn't go diving. I went diving. And I met an old friend, Markus, who also joined on the dive boat but also didn't go diving. And in the evening we went to another restaurant all together. Markus and his friend and Hatim and I. And we met some other travelers we talked to. Nothing was very special, but everything was very nice. And again, I like Kotao a a lot it's one of my favorite places it's great for diving it's great for just relaxing they have all kind of stores nowadays where you can get all kind of food even nice food so I'm looking forward very much to my next time on Koh Tao, which I already know when it will be, but I will tell you another time. And also another time, probably next week, I will tell you the rest of the story, how we get kotao to bangkok from bangkok to chiang mai from chiang mai to chiang rai to the border to laos and then down the mekong river before we make our way home from vien chen our way home from Vientiane. For now it's time for Tom Sawyer and I will continue somewhere in the middle of chapter 4 I think.