Good morning, Phi Phi!
Still can’t accept that this is my last day in here.
Garlic 1992.
Breakkie - Rosti with ham & cheese, nyum.
Thai baby.
Loh Dalam, again and again.
Broken-hearted because I know I’ll leave this place soon.
Bye birdie, I have a boat that I don’t want to catch.
Is this…
… the end?
No, I don’t wanna go.
Good morning, Thailand.
We’re planning to snorkel and dive in Bida Nok and Phi Phi Ley. And oh, please turn on the music.
Feels Like Home by Basement Jaxx (feat. Meshell Ndegeocello)
Please tell me god, how can I leave this place?
It’s Bida Nok.
Sam.
Bok and Loh. There’s also Sid, another crew.
First spot.
I jump with Malkmus. Loh paired us because he’s paranoid, haha, no no, it was reasonable because water not very friendly that time. Current is wavy and it was a bit dark because the spot is hiding from the sun behind the rocks. So again, I don’t catch much.
I’m this close to the rocks, I do. It was great to have that feeling.
What life should be.
Where would that boat go from the cave? Wonderland?
Cabin.
Jinxie and me. Before lunch in Phi Phi Ley.
Malkmus.
Second jump. This time I jump alone because Malkmus prefer to sleep. I swim for a while, and Loh jumps too into the water, unexpectedly. This is where the word “I go with you” is becoming the sweetest word I’ve heard in Thailand. He’s over protective 
I thought I was dreaming.
Loh. He dove in to the depth just to point me those colorful fishes.
Loh showed me a family of crab within the rocks. It’s too dark, I know, but there’s a family of crab hiding there. Really cute. Loh grabs my arm to make sure that I can take the picture steadily, but the wave is harsh and hole is too dark, so, anyway, Captain, kop kun kaah.
Last view before I go back to the boat.
Once you pick your head up, you see this in front of you. You’re alone, in the water. In the sea who never taste you before. Tell me what is that feeling.
I drop my heart right in this very spot.
Go back.
I decided to spent my evening in Loh Dalam Bay. It’s really the place where time does not exist.
Beachbums.
Yea baby, share the love.
Me and Jinxie shop for souvenirs in Long Beach market. Then we go back to hotel. I bunk in Bee’s terrace and watch half “Across The Universe”. Then before bed, I took a nightwalk alone, accidentally meeting a familiar face again. Here’s a song dedicated for my full-moon(struck) night in this island.
Sleep Tonight by Stars
Good morning, dreams.
Yes, one way. I only need one way ticket.
Chao Koh boat transport. The fee is 700 baht people, 700 (Mini shuttle bus from your hotel to harbor transportation is included in the price). Please do bargain, unless, if you’re rich, you can pay them 1000 baht. They wouldn’t mind.
Play the song, so you know what I mean.
Blessed Brambles by Múm
Thank you Jinxie Rini for taking this.
We’re there!
Madame restaurant and Jordan’s Irish pub, 10 feet away from our hotel. (By the way, we’re staying in a sweet hotel, called The White, 2-min walk from Loh Dalam Bay, 2-min walk to the only Seven Eleven in the island, 10-min walk to Tonsai Bay, plus friendly assistance from its silly darling staff. Perfect. See review of The White hotel here)
Late lunch in Madame: Chicken cashew nut fried rice. Smashing.
The best seafood tomyam I’ve ever taste.
Loh Dalam Bay’s water is always low, starts from 4 pm everyday.
Arin.
Silly cliche macro. Sue me, I’m already happy anyway. Haha.
We rented a longtail boat, planning to see sunset from Maya Bay.
Friends and family, if one day I disappear, you might wanna check here because I’m planning to let myself lost in this very spot.
Bee and Vita.
Jinxie and Arin.
Viking cave in Phi Phi Ley.
Loh Saman Bay.
We snorkel here for a short while. The water is oily because Loh Saman Bay is one of the most crowded spot for boats to take tourists snorkeling, oil comes from the boat engine. My camera casing bear the impact. It’s becoming foggy and slippery.
Not much to see. I have to admit that my underwater photography mission in Phi Phi is successfully failed, because I’m too busy astonishing the view. Haha, I’m corny, I know.
Is it a coral or an animal?
Maya Bay, the beach they all have been talking about. I over estimate the beach apparently, lotsa knife-edged stones in the bottom of the sea, hurts my feet every time I took a step. I really crave for that diver rubber sneaker right at that time. The sand is perfect by the way. I can’t take anything good from my foggy camera’s casing (Thank you Loh Saman Bay!), so I borrow Jinxie’s photo.
The sunset.
Me and Bee. (Thanks Jinxie for being such sweet papparazi, haha)
This is why I love candid.
Going back to room to wash things up. I’m a stranger in her home.
Dinner. I don’t like Padthai.
Stranded whale. Haha.
Actually we chill out in some by-the-beach bar, really, Bee took us there off from the stone walking path, through the hidden beach by the rocks, and voila, the shortcut works. We enter the bar from the seaside. They put coffee tables and mat next to the sea and put some music. Singha beer is 80 baht. The place is nice.
Hi, we’re black and blue, burnt, yet still, buoyantly bubbly.
Good night, dreams.
I believe this is Patong beach.
Patong beach, real time.
Baby octopus satay is the most wanted here.
150 baht ride, yes it’s tuk tuk madness.
Journal coming, later on. 
Kuala Lumpur offers a familiar nuance for me. From the language’s accents, the fried bee hun, desperate ballads songs, chilli and greasy foods, I feel like visiting my old relatives from Malaka and Sumatra. The conservative ones, but yes they’re still family. Islam principle is much stronger here than Jakarta, I think that is one of the reason that bounds Malaysian people creativity. But once a person in Malaysia have a bravery to express himself, usually he is gonna be really good because to take the risk like that is a hard thing to do in the country. I recognize some good creative people in Malaysia, like Muid Latif and Sue Anna Joe.
Rini and I arrive in Kuala Lumpur at 11 PM. We don’t know how to reach our hostel that time. Rini’s friend, Arin, suggested us to take a shuttle bus to KL Sentral and pick up a taxi there. But it was almost midnight. I don’t feel like looking for taxi in the middle of town that I never visit before, we’re aliens here (despite the fact that we look like Malaysian people a lot). So once we got out from the LCCT airport, we saw booths of buses that offers us variants of service. One booth says “Take You Straight To Your Hotel”, so I ask the lady is that true. She said yes, the shuttle bus will take us to right in front of our hotel door and the ticket is RM 15. I take that offer. The lady in the booth says that the bus will leave in another ten minutes, so Rini and I rush ourselves to find the bus, it’s the one with the “Star Shuttle Bus” sticker on it. We got in. Rini drifts off to sleep not so long after. While me silently sitting in that dark furnished bus, with other foreigners, listening to the radio that plays a sad desperate Melayu ballad song, something about a woman who has been cheated and she decided to kill herself and will haunt her husband and wait for his death to finally meet again in the afterlife. Phew, what happen with the concept of Optimism, mrs. suicide?
Almost an hour later, we arrive at our hotel, it’s a hostel actually, but don’t you imagine the movie Hostel. It’s nothing like that. Number 8 is a well professionally organized inn for budget travelers. I love the interior, it represents Malaysia perfectly. You can see my review of the hotel here. Urged by our growling stomach, 1 AM that time, we decided to look for food. So we took a nice night walking towards to Bukit Bintang area. Five minutes after, we found a road full of Chinese and Indian restaurants. We browsed some bak kut teh, curry, grilled ducks, seafood, pork satay and finally decided to try the Chinese restaurant at the end of the road. We share a portion of Singapore fried bee hun which was not bad at all, and I had two glass of ice tea that was very good. It only costs us about RM 10. I acknowledge that this road is getting crowded by dawn. Mostly people who come there are from clubs, so they still wear their party suit and get over their hang over there before they get home. I overhear someone’s saying “Hey DJ Romi is gonna be here next week!” or “Did you go to that Agrikulture gig yesterday?” - I’m a bit proud because afterall Indonesian musicians are highly appreciated here. Rini and I took off at 3.30 AM, get back to our hotel tiredly and instantly passed out on our bed.
6.30 AM, Rini shook my shoulder and tell me that we have to wake up early because we were planning to pay a free visit to Petronas Sky Bridge. The tickets are only free for morning, they say. And by they, I refer to Rini’s friend who already arrive earlier in Kuala Lumpur, Arin. And Arin brought her other two friends, Nita and Sayu. They stayed in room next door. I woke up and hurrily hit the shower, had a toast and a coffee. We stop a taxi in front of our hotel, the driver is a snob Indian who assumed (and despised) that Indonesian Rupiah rate is way below Malaysian Ringgit, I hold myself not to snap out and yell “And how much do you think that your silly Rupee costs here??”, but he’s not worth it. We got the taxi in cheap price anyway, only RM 10, and there’s five of us so each will only have to pay RM 2. Hehee. Look who’s stupid now, you stinky taxi driver.
We got ourselves to Petronas Sky Bridge entrance at 7.30 AM, and whoa, there’s already a loooong line of people in the counter. I mean, real long, security has to arrange the queue into a swirly snake shape to fit the room. Boy, people do get up early in Malaysia. We wait for one hour and once we’ve got the ticket, it was scheduled for 10.15 AM. Our plane to Phuket departs at 11.30, it’s risky. So we let go the Sky Bridge visit and just enjoy Petronas from the building porch. We took a taxi back to Number 8, planning on how to reach airport after we check out. The taxi driver offers us to extend our ride to airport, costs us RM 80 after we bargain, it was not a bad deal due to practicality so we said yes. He drop us to the hotel, we pack things up and go straight to airport. It is a one and a half hour sleepy ride, and the driver is quite chatty, but he’s kind and a bit of fatherly (if you know what I’m saying, he’s a 48-year old man with a wife and two sons and he likes to lecture and share his life story), so I keep listen and response to him. I kinda like the guy. So yeah, my visit to Kuala Lumpur is only a quick glance. They’re saying that DJ Steve Aoki will come tomorrow on March 22, it was a bit loss, but hey, I’m in the journey to Koh Phi Phi, to the place that I’ve been dreaming about in the last 8 years of my life. So bye Steve Aoki, Genting Highland and whatever else there that I’m missing. It’s too bad I didn’t have the chance to see everything in Malaysia, but I can’t wait to arrive in Thailand, so what the heck.
Noran Bakrie
