The more geographically astute of you will have noted the flag of the current location and realised that there is change in the previously advertised plan.....yes, we've decided to come home.....and by the time many of you read this, we will no doubt be back in blighty. It remains to be seen whether the Year of the Pig will be as good as the Year of the Dog has been for us, as no doubt it will involve getting a job! We've been away 10 months and maybe putting down our "roots" a little in Penang, dimmed the enthusiasm to go [View Full Entry]

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Yes, we are still in Georgetown....we like it! We decided that it a refreshing change to be able to unload the contents of our rucksack for a while and not to have to constantly keep changing beds....and so we settled down to a more detailed look at the life of Georgetown. The original plan was to head to the beach at Batu Ferringhi for a while, but after our day trip mission to give the place the once over we decided to stay put in town. The bus was so old that we didn't think we were going to get there [View Full Entry]

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After the cool of the Cameron Highlands, the lure of the Malaysian FA Cup was enough to entice one of the party to return to Penang. The first round tie between FA Pulau Pinang ....(yes, the locals spell it, Pinang) and Shahzan Muda was played in front of a packed house at the City Stadium....well maybe not, but the fixture captured the imagination of two passing English. There have been many past reports of match fixing in this part of the world and the collapse of "Pinang's" unassailable 2-0 lead with the aid of two rather dodgy looking penalties near the [View Full Entry]

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After a hard day watching body piercing and coconut smashing, it was off to the cooler climates of the Cameron Highlands for a few days. We've travelled on a full range of Malay buses to date from the super luxury to the speeding - the bus to the Cameron Highlands was neither and there seemed considerable doubt as to whether it would actually make it up some of the climbs to get there! It was approximately 5 1/2 hours before we alighted in the town of Tanah Rata - the hub of the Cameron Highlands. Tanah Rata apparently translates as flat [View Full Entry]

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This page is not for the squeamish...if easily offended by body piercings, please turn away now! Thaipusam is one of the biggest Hindu religious celebrations. As far as we can understand (and apologies if we have got any of the details wrong), the Goddess Parvathi gave her son, Murugan, a vel (lance) with which he went out and slayed all the demons. The lance is transported to the temple. There are chariots depicting the image of Lord Subramanian, which are pulled through the streets and coconuts are smashed on the streets. That is how the event was described to us by [View Full Entry]

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The road to Penang turned out to be very comfortable indeed, courtesy of the Super VIP Konsortium Bas Ekspres. We decided that the extra one pound 50 pence would be wisely invested in the aforementioned service, that came complete with airline super snoozer seats and individual entertainment console......and before we knew it, we were at the bus station on Penang Island. The scenery en route was more of the previous in peninsula Malaysia, although generally it was a lot drier than anticipated. The express bus station on Penang is about 12 kms outside of Georgetown, which leaves you with lim [View Full Entry]

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We always thought KL would be a lot more frantic than Melaka, but didn't really expect it to start on the bus journey up there. The fare was a bargain at RM9.50 and the coach driver was obviously in preparation for the Grand Prix in early April - he ended up having a discussion with the boys in blue about his speed. The frantic nature of KL started at the bus station - there were so many buses, those dropping off literally can't get inside to the platforms. We had heard a few bad stories about the place, so we weren't [View Full Entry]

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We crossed the Straits of Johore on Number 2 Causeway and made our way up peninsular Malaysia on the Singapore - Melaka Express into the land of the Proton. The border formalities were all very straightforward and it was smiles all round, except for having to unload our packs from the bus to walk through customs before loading tham back on the bus! We weren't really sure what to expect on the Malaysia side, but there was a fairly impressive toll motorway, lots of red pantile houses that could have been lifted straight from the Spannish countryside and a lot of [View Full Entry]

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After a 7 hour flight from Melbourne, we have now arrived in Singapore. We were joined in cattle class on our flight by Joe Tsonga, who we'd seen beaten by Andy Roddick at the tennis on Monday - just goes to show that it's not all glamour in the world of international tennis. We've calculated that we've now topped 23,000 and are effectively on the homeward leg. It was good to escape the searing heat of Melbourne...out of the frying pan however and into the fire, as it's not exactly freezing (if you don't count the air-conditioned shopping malls). We walked [View Full Entry]

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We were back in Melbourne after another overnight on the XPT for the start of the 1 Day cricket series. As the Australian press put it with the advent of this series and the Twenty20....now for some real Pommie bashing..... and so it proved, as Gilchrist in particular proceeded to test the catching skills of the 78,625 crowd. After the contest the became irrelevant, the so called "feral minority" of the cricketing public (probably numbering 20,000) proceeded to make everybody's life uncomfortable by hurling plastic beer glasses (not always empty) and other debris to hand during the irritating [View Full Entry]

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