Trip Report - Malaysia/Thailand
Retracing steps that started our travel passion
Happy New Year, everyone!
We just returned from summertime vibes in Malaysia and Thailand to full-on winter in Porto. Brr! This week I’ll catch you up on how we spent our holidays and our first foray to SE Asia since 2019.
Let’s Thai one on!
The Plan (or Lack Thereof)
Some friends invited us to visit and spend NYE in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We jumped on the opportunity to go to SE Asia to escape the European winter. We try not to travel halfway around the world for short stays, so we tacked on 2 weeks to do some exploring on our own.
The timing for this journey wasn’t ideal - our heads have been deep in the remodel, with no spare minutes or bandwidth to plan a large, faraway trip. So we left most everything until the last minute. Our only plan was to land in KL and transfer to Langkawi, a small island in the NW corner of Malaysia.
We couldn’t help but notice how close to Thailand we were going to be - Langkawi is literally on the border. Thailand was our first big trip together as a couple, so it’s a place we are very drawn to. Bonus points - the scuba diving is world-class!
That led Hilary down a rabbit hole where she found an inexpensive, last-minute liveaboard dive boat departing out of Khao Lak for the Similan and Surin Islands National Parks. The timing worked perfectly.
All we had to do was get from Langkawi to Khao Lak…
The 13-Hour Transfer
All the flights from Langkawi to Phuket (the closest airport to Khao Lak) went back through KL and took 5-7 hours, so we decided to try the over-water route.
It’s common to use ferries and speedboats to island-hop along the Andaman coast of Thailand. We did it back in 2004 when we traveled from Phuket to Phi Phi Island and on to Krabi, and it’s still one of our travel rules: If you have a chance to get out on a boat, do it.
Turns out that the schedules on the websites haven’t evolved much since 2004! I was able to book a multi-leg, same-day ferry and speedboat combo transfer from Langkawi to Phuket that was advertised to take 4 hours.
In reality, it took about 9 hours via three different boats, a border crossing, and a couple of island layovers.
We got to see some insane beauty along the way and touched on some nostalgia passing through Phi Phi (one of our honeymoon destinations). It has been built back even stronger since the tsunami wiped it out shortly after our visit in 2004.
While exhausting, traveling by boat was far more adventurous and fun than a budget airline.
The Phuket Grab Scam Leads to a Family Affair
We had been advised that we could just catch a Grab (local Uber) from the pier to our hotel in Khao Lak, instead of setting up a transfer in advance. It’s a 2-hour drive, and we realized as soon as we disembarked the boat that it wouldn’t be as easy as we thought.
We started hailing Grab rides from the pier, and the guy who picked up our hail told us to walk out of the secured parking area to meet him.
Turns out that a group of dudes managing a bunch of fake driver profiles are sitting right outside the security gates doing a bait-and-switch move. Picking up rides then saying “Hey can you cancel on the app? My friend will drive you for cash, but you need to pay in advance,” Lol, no thanks, dude.
So as the sun was setting, around 9 hours into our transfer day, we started walking up and down this remote road near the pier trying to escape the vortex of the Grab scammers. Numerous of our hails were picked up and canceled.
We wandered by an official taxi van parked on the street, told the guy our destination, offered a few hundred more THB than the Grab price, and he agreed to drive us. The catch? He wanted to run by his house, switch cars, and pick up his son to keep him company on the 2-hour return trip home.
So here we go, off into the evening across Phuket to this guy’s house, where we met his son and daughter-in-law, switched to a smaller vehicle and started the 2-hour drive north. He was a nice older guy, and his son was cordial too. We successfully escaped the scam and our money went to the right place.
Diving the Surin and Similan Islands
We spent 5 days sailing the Andaman on the M/V Dolphin Queen, a liveaboard dive boat based out of Khao Lak. It was magical.
We took the opportunity to finally get our PADI Advanced Open Water certification. We had more dives under our belt than most other guests on the boat (over 100 for me, with Hilary not too far behind), but we were some of the only ones without this cert.
We dove from the world-renowned Richelieu Rock down through Surin and Similan Islands, seeing tons of marine life and visiting some truly paradisical beaches along the way. It was a total of 18 dives: 4 per day, with 2 on the last day on the way back to the pier.
Our dive instructor was great, and the boat cooks made a ton of excellent vegan fare for Hilary. It was incredible to disconnect and enjoy some of the best diving we’ve ever done.
Check out the dive videos here, here, and here.
Hanging With The Germans in Khao Lak
We had a 3-night gap between our dive boat and Christmas dinner in Kuala Lumpur, and instead of trying to make yet another transfer, I decided we’d stay in Khao Lak for a few days. On paper, it has plenty of hotels, beaches, and things to do, and we needed to decompress (literally!) after so many dives.
What I didn’t know is that Khao Lak is a heavily German tourist enclave. I have nothing against Germans, and we love Germany, but hanging out with a ton of them in Thailand wasn’t really on our agenda. For Americans reading this, imagine being in downtown Puerto Vallarta, but with middle-aged Germans partying like crazy, and it’s Thailand.
We made the best of it, attempting to bypass the restaurants serving “XXL schnitzel” and pizza, to find some decently authentic Thai food. We discovered one place that could make legit vegan local dishes and ate there at least 3 times.
We also had flashbacks to our honeymoon on Koh Samui in 2004, where we saw lots of big European dudes with little Thai ladies on the back of their scooters riding around town. I’ll leave it at that.
Familiar Faces in a New City
The last segment of the trip was spent with friends from Porto who live in KL now, and we split time between Malacca and Kuala Lumpur.
Everyone told us that KL doesn’t have much for tourists, and to an extent that’s correct - it’s not heavily touristed by westerners and is mostly just a big, modern city. But the food scene is pretty insane, and because we got to see it from a local’s perspective, we had a blast.
We ate excellent Malaysian food, were expertly guided around town, and spent NYE watching fireworks and partying on the famed Changkat Street.
Melaka was a bit more touristy, but mostly with Singaporean, Chinese, Malay, and other Asian travelers. We got to see some very old Portuguese ruins and dig into the rich history that also included colonial stints by the Dutch and British, as well as deep ties with the Chinese.
After sweating for a week in these two cities, it was time to head back to Porto.
Random Reflections
Just a few quirky observations from our trip:
Sparkling water is very hard to find in Malaysia. They even have water brands called Spritzer and Bubbles and they’re both not sparkling water. Who does that?!
Langkawi is almost devoid of Western tourists. It was nice to be in a place with a different diversity of tourists and locals. We got plenty of monkeys, birds, mangroves, etc, as well as some insanely good street food at the night market. When we took a boat ride 1.5 hours north to Koh Lipe, in Thailand, we experienced a 180º shift. Hordes of Western tourists and lots of infrastructure (including plenty of vegan options on menus). It was surprisingly like crossing the border from Panama to Costa Rica.
We took a vegan Malaysian cooking class and learned to make rendang from scratch. It was delicious and fun, and I got to add a new skill to my list. I can’t wait to try my own and expand my curry skillset.
Sadly, like in Indonesia next door, Malaysia hasn’t quite figured out trash cans yet. Lots of trash in the rivers and on the ground. KL was decently clean for a big city, but we noticed that many places like Batu Caves didn’t have trash cans, so people just throw their plastic wherever, and it ends up in the rivers, then the ocean. It was an epidemic in Bali and Flores when we visited Indonesia in 2019. KL is a big modern city, so hopefully, this aspect of being a developed country will catch up.
How were your holidays? What did you get up to? Share with me!
This week’s music is a little playlist I made while on the dive boat when I was feeling a vibe. If you need some summer sun in your winter, here you go:
Cherished all the details including the taxi scam warning. Reading this very early morning on a layover in Singapore. Just thought about doing a grab instead of a more expensive taxi back to the airport, but being on my own I think I will just stick with a taxi ordered by hotel.
Your diving adventures were wonderful and brought back many happy memories, especially as our diving times are done now for a variety of old doggie reasons. To all you young readers, don't wait to climb your tallest mountains and dive your deepest dives.
Great adventures, Don! Happy New Year to you both!