Food, glorious food!

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Lou: Well before and after our whistle-stop tour of the Philippines, we were in Malaysia. Doing what? I hear you cry... Well, er, mostly eating...

We headed from Singapore to Melaka in southern Malaysia on an amazing bus. After the coffin-style seats designed for pint-sized people in Vietnam, we practically had an armchair each on the bus to Malaysia! They even reclined and had flip-up foot rests. Our trip to Malaysia was off to a good start! We arrived in Melaka and found somewhere to stay, the owner of our guesthouse, Zen, was an absolute legend. I asked him where the toilet was, he showed me and also thought this was the perfect opportunity to teach me a secret handshake! As Malaysia is a Muslim country, we had heard you are not allowed to buy or bring in alcohol to many guesthouses, not here though, as Zen explained to Mark 'You want beer? I get you beer!'

Among the many services Zen provided was a nightly DVD, although that night's selection turned out to be The Love Guru so we decided to give it a miss and headed out for some food. We went to the most amazing satay restaurant, you picked from any kind of satay you could imagine, meat, prawns, vegetables, dumplings, bread, all sorts and then they put a bubbling vat of satay sauce in the middle of your table, you dipped your sticks in and cooked them in the sauce at the table. Seriously, it was one of the best meals we've had since we've been away.

The next morning Mark told me there was an elephant walking down the street so I ran out to the balcony in a towel and then realised it was April Fool's Day and he was being mean! Having ditched my towel in favour of some clothes, we wandered round Melaka's main square, Chinatown and went up St Paul's Hill where we had views out over the Melaka Straits. We also had a wander round a mall and managed to pick up an alarm clock from the Malaysian equivalent of a pound shop, as our phone, which had been our alarm clock, had broken in Thailand.

Armed with alarm clock, we headed to Kuala Lumpur where we had some more yummy food from the night market near our guesthouse. We spent a day wandering round the city, looking at the mosques and strolling round Chinatown's market. From Kuala Lumpur we headed off to the Philippines and back and then couldn't bring ourselves to leave again!

The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur are the highest twin towers in the world, and you can go up them for free but you have to go at about 8am to get a ticket for later that day and the tickets go really fast. The first day we didn't get up to go and get a ticket as we needed a lie in after the Philippines. So we went and wandered round the KLCC centre and we went for a fantastic curry in Little India. The next day we didn't get up either and ended up going to the cinema at 11pm, so you can guess what happened the next day... Our alarm clock was not proving to be a great investment! You'll be pleased to know we did eventually get up to go up the towers and had fab views over the city. And as we had stayed the extra days, we bumped into Sophie (who Mark was in Vietnam with the first time round) and her friend Chloe on their way back from Bali!

Having been up the towers we managed to leave and headed to Pulau Penang. We had another yummy curry in Little India there, and Mark devised us a walking tour of Georgetown going to see all the mosques, temples, the museum and the Chocolate Boutique where we got lots of free chocolate! We got the furnicular up Penang Hill where you could look out over Georgetown below, and managed to miss our stop getting the bus back and stumble across another great restaurant. Their special was a bargain, you got tandoori chicken, naan, daal, salad, mint and tamarind sauce, it was delicious. The next day we headed back for more! But before that we went to Penang National Park where there were some lovely deserted beaches. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit pants, but we had a nice time just wandering round the park.

From Penang we got the rather hell-ish ferry across to Sumatra in Indonesia (very rough seas which made us both sick) which is where we are now. Until next time.....


Louise and Mark xxx

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