Malaysia PTII: Leaving the jungle was almost a cool as being inside of it. We decided to take boat instead of a train so we could see the river. It was pretty fantastic. We saw some native people swimming. The women were all shy and covered their mouths with their hands, and the kids all ran around splashing in the water and yelling hello. We got very wet, not because it was raining, but because a little French girl kept sticking her hand out of the boat and dangling it in the water, thus splashing everyone behind her. But she was super cute, and we knew we would totally have done that at her age, so we didn’t care. We got into Jerantut and had to wait for the night train to Kuala Besut, the mainland access point to the islands. While we were waiting, we played Yahtzee with Florian and Thomas, two German mathmeticians headed to the same islands we were. (I won the Yahtzee game, btw) We shared a taxi with them to the jetty and hung out on the beach, where they told us about math formulas for calculating probability, the German word for “a spiraling descent into hell” and other assorted awesomeness which I will never be able to remember.

The second day was all about snorkeling. Uber awesome. Swam with the fishies and the turtles. Some people saw lots of sharks, but I only saw a tiny one. Oh well. There was coral that kind of looked like a clam, but closed up when you came near it, schools of fish that you could just swim through. There was a fish feeding frenzy on one pile of dead coral, and a pink and blue fish the size of a microwave came and started running the other fish away. There were fist of all colors and sizes. Seriously, some were as big as me. The turtles were definitely as big as me. They got rather annoyed by all the divers, but they have to come up for air sometimes, so when they do, we can touch them. Excellence. Also, in the course of the day I found that my sunscreen had expired, therefore I have the worst sunburn ever. I didn’t know the back of my knees could burn, but it’s possible. Oh well, the burn was totally worth it. We left yesterday. On the boat, we ran in to too cool guys named Ben (English) and Aurli (French, his name is really longer, but I can’t spell it, sorry). We decided to share a taxi. (In Malaysia, taxis only take four people in a small sedan; unlike Cambodia which can take as many as eight, nine or ten if you count children). This was not as simple as it sounded. Because it was so late, all the taxis raised their prices. And there was a guy following us around making sure that no one gave us a lower price. Then they told us that there was no bus. Then, when the bus does come, the taxi people tell it not to stop for us. So Aurlie jumps on the bus, and tells the driver if he doesn’t take us to the place we want to go, he will call the police. So the four of us had the bus to ourselves for the trip. Then comes the fun part. We get to our destination. Kelsey’s bag was stolen, so all of her local currency was gone. I had to pay for things like the room and bus tickets, so I didn’t have enough either. We needed a bus to Singapore. But there was no one to change money for us. We left our bags with the guys and went frantically searching for money changers. We finally found a ticket seller who would accept US dollars, but he gave us a terrible exchange rate. He also gave us tickets to Kuala Lumpur because all the Singapore busses were already gone. So here we are, probably but not certainly leaving for Singapore very soon. More updates pending.
Love and miss you all!