I dropped into Singapore to catch up with Sonia for dinner. It's so close to Malayisa and yet so far removed. The outdoor restaurant where we ate was incomparable with the dingy cafe where I watched the world cup final in JB - full of westerners (I was the only one in JB), clean, efficient, decorated, modern, and bloody expensive. Luckily Sonia was paying! A bit of history: Singapore joined the federation of Malaya (hence the name change to Malaysia) in 1965 and left in 1967 when Lee KY saw the writing on the wall. Good choice. The sultan of Brunei [View Full Entry]

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Mt Kinabalu Mt Kinabalu, at 4200m, is the highest mountain in South East Asia, hugely spectacular, and a bloody hard climb. 5 July 2006 I was picked up at the ungodly hour of 0630 (I get up late in cities) in Kota Kinabalu for the two hour ride up to 1800m where we would begin the climb. Climbing with me was Vong, a Scot of Chinese descent, and a Malaysian-Singaporean couple who weren’t destined to make it to the top. We stopped to get registered at the ranger HQ and hotel where I devoured a cheese cake and most of the [View Full Entry]

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25 June 2006 Tourist traps around Malacca The Swiss guys we met in told us that Mini-Malaysia and the butterfly/bird/monkey/reptile park were worth the trip, so we decided to spend the day as proper camera-toting tourists. We managed to get about twenty metres from the guesthouse when we encountered a reasonably sized crowd and traditional band, all waiting expectantly. The crowd had reached critical mass (the point at which the crowd alone attracts curious passersby and tourists who join the crowd because there must be something worth looking at) so of course we [View Full Entry]

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23 June 2006 Great big shite KL to wonderful little Malacca I started the day by watching Italy get a penalty in the 95th minute of the game. What a way to start the day. I slept for about five hours and was up at 9am for a chat with Azmi. Azmi, according to him, is a Malaysian born New Zealander whose father retired there after serving as military attaché to Wellington. Azmi also let on that he was given an 80 foot yacht as a retirement present by the Indonesian government. Azmi, apparently, was a commercial diver for a time [View Full Entry]

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Georgetown to KL We all had a lazy start to the day - traveling being tiring, even on a sleeper train, and with two of us recovering from dengue fever - but managed to get up for an 11 o’clock brunch at a local India place for about a dollar. The others all bought tickets to KL and I changed my plans from the Cameron Highlands to join them, the main reason being that the highlands are 1800m up and have an average temperature of about 15 degrees: way too low for a poor backpacker with only a pair of shorts [View Full Entry]

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20 June 2006 Georgetown, Malaysia Wandering around Chinatown Waking up on the train, I met Alex and Teresa, and English couple, and wasted an hour and a half watching The DiVinci Code on their portable DVD player. Probably the worst Tom Hanks movie since his last one, The Terminal. Movies are so overrated as far as constructive pastimes are concerned. More constructively, I read most of The Postman, a novel Kevin Constner turned into a passable but financially disastrous movie. Naturally, the book was far better then the movie. Upon arrival at Butterworth, best known in Aust [View Full Entry]

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Surat Thani, Thailand AN EVENING IN SURAT THANI On arrival at the jetty I found that I still had a one hour bus ride to Surat Thani, and than again when I got off the bus I still had half hour taxi ride to the station. The girl at the bus station quoted me THB250 or THB150 if I were to wait for another passenger to share a cab with me. However, I was fortunate enough to meet two Thai ladies getting off my bus who had the evening spare and offered to show me around town. Given the alternative of [View Full Entry]

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I finally finished and am now eating, after seven days of famine. POST FAST They say what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger, but I fail to see how I could possibly be stronger after seven days of starving. But my energy is up and I’m looking forward to watching Australia thrash Brazil tonight. My co-fasters asked me the usual questions on my last day: “Is much stuff still coming out?” “Do you have much dark rubbery gunk in your colander?” (I don’t usually use a colander, but other fasters do and pick through it with ch [View Full Entry]

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Fasting in Samui again Thailand has some of the best food in Asia and probably the world, making it, by simple logic, one of the last places where you would fast. And yet, here I am for my fourth or fifth time on the tropical island of Koh Samui, living at a resort with, according to one survey, one of the fifty best restaurants in the world, and actually paying not to eat. Even worse, the money I’m paying would buy all 26 of the vegetarian specialties every day of my fast. Who said California was the only place where people [View Full Entry]

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On my first day in Muang Ngoi, a quiet picturesque backpacker place (almost a contradiction in terms) I met Ernie, who was keen to go hiking the following day and was looking for someone else to join to halve the price. I had breakfast with Ernie, Brian and Tania before setting off on the trek with them. Brian, a head ranger from Canada, and Tania, a doctor from Perth, decided during breakfast to join us. Of course, there was no chance of be getting injured or needing survival training - that would only happen when there isn't a doctor or ranger [View Full Entry]

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