Sammiads travels

It's well over a month since I last logged on, let alone made an entry so thought I'd better make a concerted effort this morning. From Bali we took the 6 hour flight into Sydney. Now a little grumble here, as our round the world tickets are with BA & Qantas, yet they stuck us on JetStar, which is the equivalent of EasyJet - fine for a couple of hours, but when you've got 'Bali Belly' (or hangover as Mike called it!); you have to pay for any food and drink (we had neither Indonesian or Australian currency), and you have to rent a screen to watch any films, I think it's fair to say we felt a bit cheated. Anyway, we touched down in Sydney in the early hours of Monday morning and found ourselves ... read more

The past few days we've done some industrial travelling and had SO many early starts you wouldn't believe!! From Borneo we arrived back in Kuala Lumpur and the following day we took another coach journey across the border into Singapore. We're staying in a rather strange hostel in Little India. I say strange as I don't think they planned on opening just yet and Mike and I were the first guests - they just seemed totally unprepared. The good thing is that it's clean and has air con! We only have 2 1/2 days here so wanted to do all the typical tourist traps!! The first day was devoted to animals. First off was Singapore Zoo, which is fantastic, and beats the cr*p out of Chester Zoo which is the only one I can remember ... read more

After a very luxurious coach journey from the Cameron Highlands (the seats are like armchairs) we arrived in Kuala Lumpur. Now, I know that I shouldn't moan about this, but we'd been on beaches pretty much for the past 4 weeks or so, and so it was quite nice to get back to a more civilised place. The last big city we went to was Bangkok, which as you probably gathered we didn't really like, so it was a relief when we got to KL. There are three main districts, Little India, Chinatown and the Golden Triangle. We stayed in Chinatown for the 5 days we were there, and met up with Jeff who was one of the DMT's in Koh Tao, which was good. Kuala Lumpur is also home to the largest Twin Towers ... read more

On the 28th June we finally left Thailand and headed into Malaysia on an 8 hour bus ride. Our first destination was the Perhentian Islands, which are two islands, the large and the small. The larger one has slightly nicer accommodation and is therefore slightly more expensive - needless to say we stayed on the smaller island! The island is quite stunning. As we got off the boat the sea was so clear it was unbelieveable, you could see right to the bottom and the sand was so white and fine. One of the main reasons for going there was for the scuba diving. However, thought I'd better avoid it this time as I didn't want my dog bite being chomped on by the Wrasse fish - the little buggers. So I just chilled out ... read more

From Railay Beach we went to Krabi. We had heard the name before and knew that travellers came here so we went to the TAT office and booked 3 nights accommodation. What we didn't realise was the majority of people come here and then leave the following day. The room was nice, but the star attraction was definately the power shower. You just cannot understand how nice this was. Having lived in many guesthouses and hostels over the past 4 months and used the crappy showers the majority of them offer, this was pure luxury. Not only was it a powerful shower, but it had hot water too. It's only when you've been travelling for this long that you realise that the smallest things make you smile!!! So the first night we went searching for the ... read more