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It’s been 6 weeks or so, but it feels like it’s been forever, since I last wrote a blog entry; I might be a bit rusty, so please bear with me!! Here is a quick summary of what I’ve been doing during my own mid-season break. Hopefully I’ll get up to date with everything else soon after this one.

When I left off all those weeks ago, I had been in Darwin for a few days and was heading to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia via Singapore.

Singapore was hot and wet. On my first whole day there, we had half of one month’s average rainfall in one afternoon! I had been wandering around in the morning taking in the sights including Raffles Hotel, St Andrew’s Cathedral, The Padang, the cricket club, the old and new courts, and part of china town, and had a trip up the river to see the famous Merlion, but the rain and lightning storms became too much so I decided to join the Hippo hop on hop off bus tour - well, I hopped on but I didn’t hop off (neither did anyone else)!

I took the cable car over from mainland Singapore to Sentosa Island. It’s really just one huge tourist resort, but it’s quite nice. As part of my cable car ticket I was able to go on a tour of the island and then make use of the island’s bus service for the rest of the day for free. I visited the aquarium which has a moving walkway underneath a clear tunnel so you’re on a conveyor belt with sharks and rays and so on swimming over your head and all around you.

The rest of my time in Singapore was spent wandering around the various ethnic quarters: my favourite was Arab Street which was one street full of shops selling silk and other dressmaking fabrics. I had my first taste of a glutinous rice snack with a coconut syrup - I have no idea what it was called, but it was quite tasty so long as you had plenty syrup - the rice bit on its own was a bit bland.

After Singapore I was in KL to catch up with mum and dad who were also visiting Andrew, Laura, Matthew and Kayleigh for the school holidays. We visited the world’s largest free flight aviary where a love bird landed on my head as I walked into the first section. Now I know that I’ve not been near a hairdresser in months (and could probably do with a good haircut) but I didn’t think it was so bad that you could mistake it for a bird’s nest!! Thankfully no photos of that episode - my face was probably worse then than it was in the skydive photos just as I was getting ready to come out of the plane!!

We also had a trip to Kota Kinabalu in East Malaysia: it’s on the island of Borneo, still technically part of Malaysia, although peninsular Malaysians still need a visa to visit there, so I’m a little confused on that. While we were there, mum, dad and the others chartered a boat from Kota Kinabalu to spend the day between fishing and snorkelling. I, having promised myself no more boats (and this time sticking to it!) decided to spend the day in KK wandering around and taking in the sights the town has to offer. We also visited a wildlife park where we saw various animals, including a few orang-utans. Mum managed to get pretty close to a little one called Mowgli when they brought him out as part of an educational show. During the same show, Matthew was on stage holding a 6 month old baby python, and afterwards Kayleigh was also holding it - I was considering myself very brave to be close enough to take a picture of them doing it!

It’s probably no secret by now that I’m a big fan of the hop on hop off tour buses, so, since KL has one of those, mum, dad and me went on that and had a trip round the city.

We spent some time doing Batik painting at the craft complex, which was quite relaxing. Dad had been speaking to one of the artists who was selling some pieces and later on we had all gone back to see him, and he showed us how a real artist does batik, and then he let me have a shot. He was making a piece of fabric from which eventually a traditional costume would be made; so, just think, in a few months time, someone will be wearing a piece of cloth I helped to paint.

Dad is maybe going to be famous - while we were in the central markets in KL, mum and I had been looking at something and when we caught back up with dad, he was chatting away to a lady. We thought she ws either asking directions or trying to sell him something. It turns out that she was part of a crew from the Malaysian tourism board, and they are working on their next brochure as part of the “Malaysia, Truly Asia” campaign - I’m sure you’ve all seen the TV ads. They took some pictures of dad shopping in an antiques shop, so we’ll need to keep an eye out for the next edition of the brochure to see if dad made it into the final cut.

One afternoon when we were in one of the shopping malls, we did some fish feeding with a difference. I can’t remember what the real name for it is, but basically we sat with our feet in some tanks while all these little fish swam around and eat the dead skin from your feet! At first it was unbearable - some of those fish could really bite!! I pushed through and eventually for me it just felt like I had pins and needles, and was kind of relaxing, in a wierd fish are eating your feet kind of way.

Still to come: Australia: Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, the Great Ocean Road, Melbourne

Not sure what’s happening, but I can’t upload any photos just now - it’s maybe just my connection being a bit slow, so I’ll put up the text and try to get some photos up another day.

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