I'm back in KL, meaning that my trip is nearly over. It's been a while since the last blog, so I'll try to cover everything I've been doing over the last couple of weeks. I last let you know that I was set to go on to the big cats section of the zoo. I only spent two days here, but it was rather brilliant. It's hard to get close to the cats, as you may imagine, what with them being huge deadly carnivores and all. The lions are the easiest to get involved with. They can be surprisingly docile. There [View Full Entry]

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I'm back on the computer again, hopefully with long enough to get down everything I want to and check for the numerous typos that I make. The state of my last blog was frankly appalling. I shall try harder this time. Zoo Events As I mentioned before, I've been placed on the African savannah section of the zoo. Just for two days, this placement, which is OK with me as there isn't really a great deal to do here. Not that it isn't a packed section of the zoo - a large enclosure with giraffes, zebra, ostriches, flamingo and an ankole [View Full Entry]

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It's been a little while since my last blog, as I have been a busy little zoo man. I have many things to witter on about, so today I'm going to be efficient and use headered subsections. Marvel. The Zooniverse Been having a fine but utterly exhausting time of it at the zoo. I spent three days with the chimps, which was a bit of a chore as the main ape keeper clearly doesn't like having volunteers there. Rather than tell us what to do and correct us if we get it wrong, he just takes things off us and does [View Full Entry]

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Hello there once again, I'm going to start this blog with a little explanation of where I am, as not everyone seems to know that much about Malaysia. Malaysia is a federation of 13 states, nine of which are monarchies, split between Malaya, the peninsula in the west, and Borneo, the island in the east, which are seperated by the South China Sea. I'm in Taiping, a town in the state of Perak, in the north-western area of Malaya. Perak is the oldest kingdom in the country, and Taiping is one of the oldest towns. They actually claim it's a city, [View Full Entry]

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Afternoon fans, Arrived in KL yesterday as planned. RealGap were up to their usual standards, having not informed the coordinators here of my flight time, or the guesthouse that I'd be arriving on this day. After all, they've only had the information for four months, so you can't really expect them to have bothered phoning people yet. That would be too much to ask. So I had to make my own way here. Still, it's a lovely little place, and KL is yet again a different environment altogether. Bangkok is every inch the bustling city, dirty, seedy, filled with tourists and [View Full Entry]

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Evening all, It's my last full day in Singapore, and here I am on the computer. Well, frankly it's far too hot to be doing anything else, even if it is nearly seven. I'm just above the Equator here, and it's frankly baking. Thankfully, Singapore is almost fully air-conditioned. Almost every building has it, it's just lovely. There are other wonderful things about this place, of course. They serve Guinness here - not in dingy bars that you'd never drink it from, because it's probably been sitting there for years, but from proper, classy establishments. They charge a bleeding fortune for [View Full Entry]

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Hello all, Apparently my little blogs have become quite popular reading, so here's another. I'm safely in Singapore, having taken a swift flight from Bangkok this morning. I recommend Cathay Pacific - nicest plane I've ever flown in. So much room! It's the evening now, but it's still damned hot here; I'm only just north of the Equator on this little island. Frankly, I'm feeling tired and still rather ill from an attack of the Bangkok belly, so I'm taking it easy tonight and going exploring tomorrow. I'm in a nice little hostel on the edge of town (thankfully, the town's [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone who's still reading this nonsense, I'm back in Bangkok, following my final week in Chiang Rai province. It has been fine, fine fun, but it's nice to be moving on to new adventures. I've visited several more Akha villages since I last posted. First, my fellow travellers and I went to a village in the most astonishingly beautiful mountainside location. Don't ask me the name of the place, but it was stunning. I hope the pictures, when I finally put them up, do it at least a modicum of justice. We were there for two days, during which time [View Full Entry]

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So, I've just got back from a little village in the middle of the mountains. It's under an hour from the city centre, yet somehow manages to be very remote at the same time. I stayed with Lek, one of the Akha girls who was staying at AFECT for the last couple of weeks. Two of my fellow phalangs (western foreigner sorts), Zoja and Suzie, spent three nights sleeping on the floor of her house. Lek and her parents slept in the room next to us. The house was on stilts, my I add. I still don't know why the Akha [View Full Entry]

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Morning all. It's Song Kran today, the traditional Thai new year. Actually, the celebrations have been going on for a good few days now, and aren't likely to stop just yet, either. Song Kran isn't just about the new year, though - it's the celebration of the upcoming rainy season, and is also called the water festival. People celebrate this holiday by chucking huge amounts of water at each other. Trust me, when you're being carted around on the back of an open truck, you get a lot of water thrown at you. Yesterday was even better/worse. I walked into town, [View Full Entry]

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