Feb 8th - 9th: We took a bus up to Butterworth where we stayed for one night and then caught what was supposed to be a 6 AM train out the next morning to Padang Besar, the border town where we crossed into Thailand. On our way to the train station in the morning we met a fellow American traveller by the name of Kendall who we ended up traveling with for the next few days. While waiting for the train, which left a couple hours late, we ended up getting to know him. Kendall is a med student from San [View Full Entry]

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Due to the winding roads down from the highlands, we had a toast to the wonderful drug dramamine before we left. Took the bus down to Ipoh, then through Lumut, where we hopped on a ferry over to Pulau Pankor, a small island off the west coast of Malaysia. We lucked out at each transfer point and only had about 10-15 minutes between each leg of the journey. Originally we thought we may have to overnight in Ipoh or Lumut so this was a nice surprise. In Lumut we met a Dutch woman by the name of Susan who we ended [View Full Entry]

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February 2-5: Well it took a while and was a bit rough and nauseating, but we finally got high. The plantations up here are great, you can get a lot of really fresh and ripe goods. Actually, we're only up at about 3,000 feet, but that's the highest we've been in this country so far. The road up to Tanah Rata was a windy, narrow road up the side of a valley. Every corner was a blind corner and it was amazing we didn't crash into one of the many trucks and buses coming the other way. We were in the [View Full Entry]

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February 1st: Semi-recovered from the previous day's long trek, we decided to go to Gua Telinga (the Bat cave) which was supposedly a 2 hour hike each way. We set out early so we could catch the afternoon bus out of the jungle. After breakfast we took the ferry across the river and started on our trek. The sign said it was 2.8 km to the cave, but we were skeptical. The first part was also a really long, really steep section that made it feel longer than it was and had us worrying that if the whole trail was like [View Full Entry]

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January 30th: Today we hopped on a bus out of the city to Jerantut (3 hr ride) where we then hopped on a boat to Taman Negara (another 3 hours). The catch is that between the two we had 2 1/2 hours to kill for lunch, which we drew out by typing up a long blog entry of our time in KL which disappeared into nowhere when we lost our connection and we also nearly missed our boat - luckily we were close to the takeoff point and the tour lady found us before they left. The boat was a long [View Full Entry]

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Just catching up on stuff since our last internet connection died on us after typing a long entry... January 28th: Woke up early to go to the Petronas Twin Towers but got there and found out they are not open for viewing on Mondays. We walked around the attached mall a little bit and took advantage of their "premium" bathrooms at a price of RM2 to get in. It was spectacular! They even provided toilet paper and paper towels! Next we took a stroll through the lovely park and playground behind the Twin Towers building. They had some really cool play [View Full Entry]

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We arrived yesterday in Kuala Lumpur after a 2 1/2 hour bus ride (that only cost about $3 USD!)...our first impression was not that great as we pulled in to the Putamaya bus station surrounded by a traffic jam that made it take about a half hour to go 50 meters...we were then welcomed by 100 degree (HUMID) weather, trash, cockroaches, and people everywhere. The first room we looked at was so bad, we couldn't leave the place fast enough...the matress was so dirty/moldy/rotten, it was almost black! I don't think anyone was actually staying there. We looked at several other [View Full Entry]

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Thursday we hopped on a bus to Melaka in Malaysia. The border crossing was ridiculously easy and lax. It was about a 4 hour bus ride, with a stop for lunch. Melaka is a good size city but not huge. It's interesting because there is influence from lots of cultures here...dutch, portugese, indonesian, chinese, etc. Thanks to a nice lady we met on the bus ride into town (from the bus station), we ended up at a guesthouse (Discovery Cafe) that is relatively new (new in the business, but the building is about 100 years old) and is still figuring things [View Full Entry]

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Greetings! Wednesday, we took a bus to the MacRitchie Nature Reserve in Singapore...it was difficult to figure out how to get there as there was not a lot of information but it was well worth it! It is some of the last rain forest in Singapore and it was incredible...we saw monkeys, squirrel, butterflies, small lizards, turtles, and the huge water monitor lizards that look somewhat like small crocodiles. Our hike was about 7.8 miles and included a "tree-top walk" where you walk over a bridge at the level of the forest canopy...there were informative plaques everywhere which were great. Th [View Full Entry]

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This will be a short one due to computer keyboard issues...yesterday we went to Sentosa - a very touristy resort area with marine show, aquarium, & beaches...it was actually a lot of fun! [View Full Entry]

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