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Published: December 11th 2008
Singapore We arrived from our flight from Korea straight into the humidity and heat of Singapore - Lindsay was finally warm and Matt was sweating! We stayed in Singapore for 3 days, exploring Chinatown, Little India, Orchard Road (a very posh shopping street) and even a trip to Sentosa Island for a day at the beach. Singapore is one of the cleanest places we have encountered with beautiful buildings and lush greenery complimenting the concrete. To top it all off, the entire city was decorated for Christmas and this years theme was candy! Giant lolipops, christmas trees decorated with candied garland, gingerbread houses, and twinkling lights lined the streets and shops. It was very festive but with the 30+ degree heat we just couldn't convince ourselves that it was nearing Christmas time!
Kuala Lumpur We took a bus from Singapore to KL and immediately we noticed a big difference between the two countries. The beautifuly lanscaped town was traded for decaying concrete buildings. Our first impressions were a little eye opening, but a few days in this city changed our minds and we saw the charm hidden within.
Lodging in KL isn't the cheapest in Malaysia so we thought
our $10/room was quite the bar-gooon when we booked it online. Well, we learned that you get what you pay for as we soon found out that our "steal" was a 8x8 room with paper thin walls and a "wear shoes at all times" kind of place. Actually, it turned out to be in an ideal location for us, the hostel had a free dinner on the friday night, and the room with no windows kinda grew on us....but perhaps we just lowered our standards! We spent our days exploring KL, lining up to get the free tickets to go up to the sky tower on the 41st floor of the Petronas towers, barganing with the hawkers at the Chinatown night market, and having a spa treatment like no other for our feet at a Dr. Fish pond!
We woke up early our first morning in KL to join the 1000 other tourists who also wished to take advantage of something free - a trip up to the sky bridge of the Petronas towers. We were told to be there before 8:30am, so when we arrived just before 9 we were a little concerned as there was a huge line
- luckily (after a 45 minute wait) we were given our time slot to head up the tower. We spent all of 10 minutes up on the bridge and although it did offer a good view of the city, we enjoyed the video at the bottom on how they were made the best!
The KL Chinatown night market can best be described as rows of tightly packed vendors selling all your knock off apparrel; jewlery, hand bags, LaCoste, Billabong, Quicksilver t-shirts, riped DVD's etc. Everyone wanted to sell you something, and at a special price of course! If you paused to look at something the vendor was right on you offering a price, then a bit lower of a price when you said "no thanks", and even to the point of putting something in a bag and putting it in your hands to help convince you to buy from them. At first it was a bit overwhelming, but then we got into it and tried to see how much of a discount we could get, even if we weren't interested in the item. Our personal best - a 70% discount on a t-shirt! If we had to give an award
Langkawi
Our first sunset!for the most persistent sales vendor, it would have to go to the DVD selling guys. For some reason they didn't believe us when we said we didn't have anywhere to play them and continued to follow us down the street offering different movies!
With all of this walking around the city, and running away from persistent vendors, we decided to have our feet pampered with a little spa treatment. This isn't your regular foot massage and pumis; with Dr. Fish you stick your feet in a small pool of about 2ft of water and have hundreds of fish nibble off all the dead skin! $1.50 each for 10 minutes, we couldn't resist. At first we couldn't stop giggling as the tickling sensation is undescribable (although I'm sure you can imagine), but at around the 8 minute mark it became berable, although it could never be considered relaxing by our standards.
Taman Negara - a brief visit to the jungle Malaysia's national park, the Taman Negara has some of the oldest existing rainforest in the world. We hopped on a bus out of KL to experience some jungle treks, a night spent in a traditional hide in the middle
of the jungle, and a canopy walk above the trees. This however did not happen as two huge factors prevented us from doing so. The first - monsoon season had arrived on the east coast of Malaysia bringing all day rains which caused the things we wanted to do to be either closed, or very difficult to get to in the muck. The second - our camera. We're not entirely sure when or how, but inbetween the bus and the boat to take us to the park it went missing. Needless to say we were both very upset, disappointed, paniced, devastated, (insert word of choice) as all of our pictures from Korea, Singapore and KL were now gone, as well as the means to take further pictures of our time in the jungle. We did everything possible to try to track it down, but apparently it wasn't meant to be. Being pretty down we went for dinner on a floating restaurant in the small villlage where we were staying for the night. Here we met a couple who put our situation in a bit of perspective - they had just arrived from travelling through India where they had experienced bring
Trishaw
This one was decked out with a stereo, flowers, horns, and a Guiness drinking driver! robbed, food poisoning on a bus with no bathroom, and a head on collision in their overnight bus with a semi truck where they were lucky to escape with only a few scrapes and bruises. Suddenly our misfortune didn't seem so terrible - especially since we could get pictures from our time in Korea from Dan, and that we'll be back in Singapore 3 more times before we head home. During our time at dinner, with the river flowing extremely fast with all of the rain, we watched our bridge back to land be completely washed away. We had to link up a boat to the restaurant beside us, crawl over it above the rushing water and then use their bridge back to land - quite the experience! Besides our misfortune, we did enjoy our night in the jungle as the sounds are extremely loud and it is a guessing game as to what creature made the noise. We woke up early the next moring to catch a bus to head back into town so we could buy a new camera. We ended up going all the way back to KL in order to find a store that sold cameras
from this era! Now, we are the proud new owners of a Panasonic DMC-FZ28 Lumix. It is a step up from the old point and shoot and hopefully you'll notice a difference in the picture quality......if not, just tell us so so we can justify the amount of money that we had to spend!
Georgetown, Penang Island Ready for some relaxation we headed on an overnight bus to Penang, an island on the north west of Malaysia. The city of Georgetown is a UNESCO World Heritage Site so we were expecting a quaint town with lots of charm. We were also looking forward to this city as it is famous for its many hawker food stalls boasting fantastic Malay, Indian, and Chinese dishes. Instead we found a falling apart city and we had a hard time finding any food stalls. We decided to move on and didn't stay long enough to find it's hidden charm. To give it the benefit of the doubt, the day that we were there was a national holiday so many things were closed.
Langkawi We made our way a bit further north to the island of Langkawi in Malaysia to put our feet
in the sand, test out the ocean waters, read a book, and start a bit of a tan....and that is exactly what we did! So this is what beach life is all about! It isn't the greatest beach town we can imagine, especially since most of the city is under construction, smells of garbage waft through the air, and the beaches are less than perfect, but it is a few days of much needed relaxation. Also, it is a duty free island so the beers are cheap!
Love to all,
MandL
Our recomendations to other travellers: KL to Singapore - take the bus to Johor Baru and transfer buses to KL - it will save you about $15 than the direct bus
To stay in KL for cheap - Wheelers Hostel - close to Chinatown and has a lounge on the rooftop, however you get what you pay for
Taman Negara - opt out of the package travel deal that includes bus from KL and boat to the park - regardless of what they say, you can take a bus from KL Putra station to Jerantut where you can catch another bus right into Kuala Tahan for less
Langkawi
Our first beach stop and Matt's new hair do! He lasted 3 days in the heat before shaving it off! than half the price. You miss out on the boat ride up the river but the bus is half the time and half the price!
Langkawi - accomodations are cheaper on Pantai Tengah but head down the road to Pentai Chenang for the better beach with nicer sand and beach side bars
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Julie
non-member comment
wow!
hey guys.... wow - it all sounds great....I was squirming the entire time I was thinking about little fishes nibbling on my feet.... take care both of you and miss you lots! xoxoxoxox