Merry Christmas from K.L.

Wow, alot has happened over here since the last post...

In short:
We flew down to Phuket, saw a really ugly and overpopulated beach out front, took a boat trip to "The Beach" which was beautiful for its powder white sand and snorkling, got scammed into paying a high hotel bill, and took off for Koh Tao. This island was a quiet paradise, and our pace slowed down tremendously. Carson got Scuba certified, Andrew and I did a couple fun dives, I got to snorkle alone with black tip reef sharks- 30 minutes I will never forget! We quickly became accustomed to the mellow locals and travelers, and decided to extend the trip a few extra days. Carson took off from here to surprise his family on Christmas Eve (probably less than 12 hours ago from now), and Andrew and I carried on to Kuala Lumpur, Malyasia.



This journey proved to be the most frustrating/ patience building day of my trip so far. The day began at 5:20am (40 min before I planned on waking up) with a phone call to the room that our bus is waiting. Next we were duped into paying for the travel agencies overbooking mistake by paying $40 each for a form we found out later was free. After 3 bus changes, and still no clue what was going on, we are dropped off at yet another random travel agency in some middle-of-nowhere town. We are told that we have bus tickets for the 10:30pm bus to KL (6 hours away at this point), but we can buy tickets for the bus that leaves in a half hour. Reluctantly we paid for the time, and all we had to show for it was the same bus ticket that now had a time written on it... duped again. This is the third time we paid for the same ticket to KL. I had to open Kirsten's "save for a bad day" letter. It helped. At11:30pm we are kicked out of the bus onto the main street's median, and stumble around looking for somewhere to crash. It was a long flipping day, but we made it. The next day we went to the mall and ordered our first fru-fru coffee drinks all trip at Coffee Bean. I completely forgot about the previous days trials with a large frappachino, Christmas Carols playing (in English), and a 100ft christmas tree in the mall's center. Finally, I could begin to forget about the 90 degree heat, and get in the mood to really think about Christmas, and what we are ultimately celebrating.



Yesterday, Andrew and I found an all you can eat buffet in a pretty nice hotel. It cost 10x a normal dinner for us, but we went in with the intention of gettin our money's worth. There were about 7 or 8 of these counters with food from all regions. It was awesome!! It felt so great to be that full; I could hardly eat today.


This morning was odd, and somewhat depressing waking up for christmas morning in a small, undecorated hostel room. We tried our best with a backpacker decorated Christmas tree and stockings (above), and reading Luke 2 sitting on the floor. Its strange being away from home now that it finally hit me that it's really Christmas. We buried our homesickness with waffles and good coffee from Coffee Bean.

If the rain holds off, and the tickets arent completely sold out (we are waiting on both answers), we will catch a train to Singapore tomorrow and scout it out for a fun new years eve.