Around South-East Asia in 80 Days

Day 1: Koh Samui, Thailand

Farewell Malaysia and thanks for the memories, what a couple of years it has been!
But all good things must come to an end, ideally to be replaced by even better things. So ends a two year experience as an Australian expatriate living and working in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, or Asia for dummies as it is affectionately known to some. But now the training wheels are firmly off it's time to see the real South-East Asia, backpack securely fastened to my spine, like some strangely accented ocker snail who has taken the fork in the road away from the salt pot and firmly headed to the lush field of cabbage that beckons on the horizon.
Whatever that means. Much love to the KL crew, you hold a place in my heart always.
So I guess the main reason for keeping this log of my travels is to test an ambitious theory, that it is possible to come back from travels/holidays in better physical condition than when you left.
On a budget.
While still having a great time.
And learning mad new skillsets along the way.
The destinations include most countries within South East Asia: (respectively) Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, (back to) Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, each with its own sport, hobby or pastime to use to acheive my lofty goal.
With that in mind I left KL, Malaysia this morning at the Subang airport, one of the cities smaller airports. Destination: Koh Samui, Thailand, where I plan to take a 1 hour ferry trip across to Koh Phagnan island (home of the infamous Full Moon Party) the next day.
But we aren't here to party, we are here to visit the Chorenrit Stadium for a refresher course in Muay Thai boxing. While I used to train very seriously as a teenager in this discipline, it has been many years since I laced up the gloves, hopefully the years have not been too unkind and I will still have a decent core muscle memory to fall back on.
On the plane from Malaysia to Koh Samui I learned that the world record for holding your breath set by magician/mentalist David Blaine has been broken and now stands at 17 minutes and 19 seconds. Good for him.
The landing into Koh Samui was the roughest I have ever experienced, the plane hit the ground like a skimming stone and bounced back into the air, when we were on the tarmac it felt like we were about to go sideways into a three wheel drift.
At Koh Samui airport, as you are hurtling down the runway the first thing that you see is the fenced off wreck of Bangkok Airways flight 266 which crashed into the control tower killing the pilot and injuring 6 people.
Perhaps this is meant to serve as a warning to other aircraft, the same way that car wrecks are parked on the side of the highway during long weekend holidays to remind drivers to be careful on dangerous stretches of the road.
If so, surely there would be a better way to get the message across? Especially considering my next flight is from Koh Samui to Singapore, on Bangkok Airways.
The fitness component has failed today because of lack of planning, nothing on the agenda, spent the afternoon sipping a Singha and feeling pretty good about life in general.