Stray cats and dead birds

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This morning we are in Mersing; Johor Bahru, on our way back down to Singapore for tonight.

After our stay in Kuala Tahan in Taman Negara, we made our way over to the East coast of Malaysia to start making our way down to Singapore again. Our first stop was Teluk Chempedak, a beautiful little coastal resort-like town, next to Kuantan. Unfortunately, on the way there, Paul got hit with his first (and hopefully only?) bout of food poisoning and thus had a horrible trip to Chempedak and 2 days hopping from toilet to toilet. Teluk Chempedak was a gorgeous place! Beautiful beaches and big smooth boulders, surrounded by jungle and rainforest, but on closer inspection, like most of Malaysia as we've found, it was dirty and smelly. Rubbish strewn everywhere, open sewers that give off a lovely smell in the sweltering sun on the day and little monkeys with big fangs that follow you trying to steal your food an drink! We went for a swim anyway, at a little beach around the corner and it was a lovely temperature! Only trouble was that i felt very uncomfortable having everyone on the beach staring.. We were just about the only white people in town (apart from the rich ones hiding away at the Hyatt Resort) and i was definitely the only girl in the water.

The next day we made our way into Kuantan for a little bit of the city life.. we wandered the malls, ate KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut (as Paul was quite cautious after his bout of sickness) and saw two movies 😊 The new Karate Kid with Jackie Chan (AWESOME!! 😊) and "The A-Team" quite funny!

The nest morning (yesterday) we made our way to this little fishing town of Mersing. The city actually quite a lot cleaner than a lot of places that we've been but along the waterways and down on the "beach" is quite a lot worse that what we've seen. How can one country be so dirty? It's just such a contrast to Singapore which is pristine! The bus station where we can coffee this morning was teeming with stray and mangy cats, when we looked up, we could see dead birds littering the nets above us on the roof and i've seen at least 3 dead cats floating in the rancid open sewers... mmm.

Anyway, we're heading back to Singapore in half an hour for a bit of cleanliness and hopefully safe food before braving it in India on Wednesday!!! 😊 xxx

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