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 Diego who is about to start his residency and is enjoying his last bit of freedom. The border crossing was once again, very lax. When we arrived in the Padang Besar train station it was ... read more

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 very front seats of the bus so we had the best view of what was going on and what all the honking was about. On the way back down, we're definitely taking motion sickness pills! ... read more

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 narrow wooden boat with aluminum sheet metal strapped to some 2X2s as a roof, which was nice shade from the hot sun. The ride was great for the first half hour - beautiful scenery, smooth ... read more

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 sketchy places, then decided to act on the recommendation we found on the Lonely Planet website...Wheeler's Guesthouse. The entry way was a little scary and gross, but then as you reach the floor of the ... read more

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. The one surprise (okay we weren't really surprised) was that shortly after we started walking, a very heavy rain started (imagine that, in a rain forest!)...despite the huge leaves of some of the plants (which we ... read more