Blogs from Malaysia, Asia - page 739

In two weeks we hit 5 different countries.... now thats impressive! we arrived in Singapore at 10:30 at night on a holiday and didnt have any acommodation booked. after calling about 10 different guest houses we finally found one that had a free room. It was called hotel 81 and it was in the red light district of singapore. wasnt exactly the nicest part of the country but we survived. while in singapore we visited the zoo. I have to say hands down it was the nicest zoo i've been to! they had every animal imaginable and it was under 15 dollars canadian. we are hoping to see more of singapore after thailand. The next country we went to was Malaysia. we decided to arrive in style so we took the luxury bus. it had huge ... read more

Diving still incredible! Dived at different islands of Mabul and Kapalai yesterday, which was macro muck diving - very different from the pretty corals of Sipadan - lots of sand, wrecks, and random large objects and rocks to look under which was very fun. Saw completely different types of fish - crocodile fish, HUGE cuttlefish, massive groupers (literally twice the size of me) and the weird looking stonefish, frogfish, leaf fish and pipefish - very cool! Today was my last day of diving at Sipadan - was a fantastic day and one of the dives was the BEST dive I've done here so far - more sharks than I've ever seen in my life, they were literally everywhere! And turtles gliding around every direction you look, and even saw a big school of squid mating - ... read more

The month of Ramadan gives everyone a chance to buy and taste the fantastic wide range of yummy Malay and Muslim food in Kuching - cat city, where else, but the Sunday Market at Satok Road. A slight haze still enveloped the city as we hurriedly made our way past hundreds of stalls to the far end of the market. Finally we arrived at the "food zone"! What a relief and assurance to smell and hear the sizzling noodles..nasi lemak...etc.. It was hard to know where to start as hunger pangs were hampering me from making wise judgments about calories and cholesterol. From the oh-so-colourful multi-layered combo tiered 'kuih lapis' cakes ( some bearing names of popular singers like Siti Nurhaliza, for example - she's just been conferred the title of 'Datuk', folks..so it's now ..erm...eg...i'd ... read more

Am now in Semporna, on the east coast of Sabah (the Malaysian part of Borneo) diving at world famous Sipadan Island with my friend Mel, who has been working as a divemaster here for the last 6 weeks. First day of diving was on my birthday (great way to spend a birthday!) and the first dive was at the top dive site of Barracuda Point - in the first 10 minutes we were surrounded by a school of about 200 huge barracudas, circling in a frenzy, and next to them were about 8 huge grey reef sharks, with a hammerhead shark in the distance. Currents were strong and it was my first proper dive for ages, ended up diving very deep, so needless to say I was slightly pooing myself and breathing up my air pretty ... read more

Well onto the last stop before Oz. Singapore to Kuala Lumpur is another long journey so we decided to go for the over night train option again. So off we went to the station in the morning to buy our tickets to avoid any disasters like the last time and ensure that we got the sleeping berths. But no of course it's not gonna be that simple for us !! Turns out that there is a Malaysian bank holiday and there are no berths free, no bother we'll endure seats again, but no, no seats either. The thought of doing another overnight bus trip was not the most pleasant of thoughts but hey it's the only option. Turns out that the bus journey from Singapore to KL is actually shorter than the train journey. No idea ... read more