Slightly more solid plans

First, the good news that I've been accepted onto the elephant volunteering course. It starts on Monday 8th at 8am in Chiang Mai (northern Thainland) and I'm currently only half way up Malaysia, in the Cameron Highlands.

Next stop is Georgetown in Penang for two days (3 nights) and since time is somewhat limited I'm going to have to fly to Bangkok, rather than get the train as originally planned, which would have meant two sleepers and arriving in Chiang Mai only hours before starting the elephant thing. This way I get a (hopefully) comfortable night in a sleeper train and a night in Chiang Mai. I still don't feel good about flying so much though, it feels like I'm cheating.

The thai train website doesn't like me and won't let me book the Bangkok-Chiang Mai ticket online, so I'll have to risk getting it at the station. Apparently this is usually fine, but it's the school holidays here at the moment and this might be a problem.

So far Malaysia seems alright. Prices have increased a fair bit from Indonesia, people speak less English and where I was staying in KL was a bit of a dive, but the rest of the city was amazing. The Cameron Highlands are pretty stunning too, but a bit on the pricey side and rammed full of Chinese tourists.

I really can't be asked to finish the last blog. The last night in Indo involved me, Nolke and Bob going out to the night market for dinner, eating some extremely strange food (some of which came back to haunt me... I can now say with confidence that Dyoralite works pretty well) and me having what can only be described as a condom full of green soy milk explode all over me. I also bought a cool lighter with a green flame which, within hours of buying it, stopped working. It only cost me about a quid, so it ain't too bad... I think it might even be fixable.

I'm gonna try this train website again and then go and get some dinner. There's a big night food market 10 mins walk from here, so I'm going to try some local delicacies.

Until Penang,
Matthew