So I have finally made it to the last place on my trip...what am I feeling? Excited.. I can't wait to go home and see my friends and family....have warm showers ...eat cereal with fresh milk....drink from the tap without getting e-coli.... I arrived at the new Air Asia terminal in Jakarta which was lovely and shiny new. I was picked up by my friend Ferry, who I was visiting, the only reason I was going to Jakarta really. He said he didn’t recognize me a first, not sure if it was from my weigh gain or by this point I [View Full Entry]

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Ok, so this was the second to last stop of my travels and I was getting a bit sick of sight seeing, so I spent my 2 weeks in Bali mainly relaxing on the beach or at the pool, going out with friends, and learning to surf. I didn’t leave the resort town of Kuta for the whole 2 weeks. It was great. I staying in the town of Kuta which is on the west coast of Bali and is definitely one of the most popular/touristy places I have visited so far. There are lots of clubs and restaurants. including big [View Full Entry]

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Met up with the German girls from the tour for a day trip to Singapore’s Sentosa island, a reclaimed island built in the 60’s. I think its Singapore’s only decent beach as everyone advised us to visit it. We took the bottomless cable car across to the island. It was more expensive than the normal cable car by £1 and meant we didn’t have to queue. We sat on the man-made beach for a couple of hours in the sun. The water was so polluted I didn’t swim and the 19 oil tankers I counted in the close distance put me [View Full Entry]

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It was a good morning...a very good morning... the hotel not only had free breakfast..but they had baked beans on toast!!! Something I hadn't had for a very long time. It was a very nice start to the day...Unfortunately I then had to check out of the lovely hotel and move to the cheaper hostel. The hotel was included in the tour I was on, but now I was back to being on my own and the smaller budget. The hostel ( called the Fernloft) was lovely. Really cheap only £10 per night for shared/mixed dorm with locker. It also included [View Full Entry]

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We left malaysia and crossed the border at the very posh crossing. We checked into our lovely Chinatown based hotel and the headed off for a walk towards the river. It was very similar to the London docklands area, but cleaner. We sat on the river side and I had my first Starbucks. At 7pm we met the rest of the group for a lovely last dinner and a Durian tasting session, which I still couldn’t bring myself to try. The smell was just too bad. [View Full Entry]

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I awoke at about 7am (after getting back at 5am) to go and queue (something brits do best) for a ticket to go up the Petronas towers. It was a free ticket but I had to queue for about 2 hours for it. They assign you to a time slot for your visit (we choose the last slot 6pm). There is only a limited amount of tickets assigned everyday. The shopping center below the towers was amazing. It was huge and contained lots of posh shops like Gucci, but also English shops like Topshop and Marks & Sparks. After queuing we [View Full Entry]

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We took a public bus to KL from the Cameron Highlands. It was the nicest public bus so far on my trip. The seats we huge, they went very far back and there was AC. Our hotel, The May Something was lovely and situated right near the main shopping street and central market. Lara and I went walking around town for the afternoon following the LP walking route. We didn’t make it very far before we started shopping, we went to the (air conditioned!!) central market, where we both experienced “Dr cute fish”. You put your feet into this large paddling [View Full Entry]

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First we went up to the highest peak in the Cameron Highlands which was 6666feet high, but it was so misty we couldn’t see anything. On the way down we went for our “jungle trek” which was very short as it started to rain too much and the tour guide promptly guided us back to the jeep. We were then driven to the biggest tea processing factory and gift shop. The company is called Boh and owned most of the tea plantations in the area. I didn’t buy any tea here as it was actually cheaper at the local shop. Then [View Full Entry]

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We took the mini-vans up to the Cameron Highlands. This is in an area famous for tea and strawberries and they do great cream scones with jam. We arrived just in time for afternoon tea. We spent the afternoon looking around the small town and in the evening we met up for a steamboat dinner. This was very similar to the one I had in Vietnam a few weeks before. However there was a lot more food, there was about 7 different types of fish, 5 different types of tofu and lots of veg and noodles. It was a lovely dinner. [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 30th We took 2 mini-buses to Penang in Malaysia from Thailand, crossing the border at the UK governments un-recommended places to visit, but everything was fine and we didnt see any fighting. On the bus there the music was techno versions of all random songs including Mariah Carey, it was really funny. Penang is an island on the east coast of Malaysia and to get there you have to cross the longest bridge in Malaysia, it might as well have been called the longest traffic jam, it took us ages to cross. Once in Penang we stayed in a lovely [View Full Entry]

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