Blogs from Kelantan, Malaysia, Asia - page 5

We woke up at 5am to head to the ferry for Pulau Kecil, we wanted to be on the first one to optimize our chances of finding a decent room. The taxi picked us up in a beat up old Mercedes and as we headed out of town, he made a quick pitstop at the gas station to fill up (this is the second time on this trip that a taxi has stopped for gas after they've picked me up. Can you imagine this happening in San Francisco?) and I realized that I still needed to buy a roll of toilet paper...the just in case kind. I walked up to the window, and asked the shop guy if I could buy some toilet paper. He didn't understand, so the taxi driver offered a translation to him. ... read more

El día empieza muy temprano. Esta mañana cogemos un avión a las 7 de la mañana, así que hay que apresurarse hacia el aeropuerto. Negociamos con un taxista (tozudos ellos ninguno acepta a utilizar el taxímetro) el precio hasta KL Sentral, estación central, donde cogemos el autocar directo al aeropuerto. Al llegar, como nos sobra una hora, desayunamos tranquilamente esperando nuestro turno. La compañía AirAsia nos lleva de KL a Kota Bharu, en el noreste de Malasia, cerca de la frontera con Tailandia. En el aeropuerto nos espera Mr Lee, el dueño de la pensión que viene a buscarnos en su coche. De camino, nos explica que siendo viernes la mayoría de cosas están cerradas y, en particular, una agencia que organiza un tour a unos templos que nos interesan. No es de extrañar ya que ... read more

What a difference a week makes. Just over seven days ago we struggled to cover 70Km and now in the last 3 days we have covered 192 miles - 70, 50 and 72 miles respectfully. I think it is safe to say that we are now acclimatised and have got our cycling legs back. Joy got upset when we left Kuantan after running over a live lizard. She is petrified that she could run over a live snake and it could possibly rise up and bite her in revenge. I have reassured her that the chances of that happening are very slim and, if she went a bit faster, almost impossible. The result of this advice is that our daily average speed has increased by almost 2mph. The east coast of Malaysia is beautiful and there ... read more

This blog was written on March 20 and Mach 24. So I’m sitting in the ferry from Jakarta to Batam. It’s a Pelni ferry, which is the large company which runs fast ferries all over Indonesia and have a virtual monopoly on many of the longer routes. The ferry is spic and span in much the same way that Malcolm Turnbull has a good handle on the Australian economy - that is to say, not really. It’s also full of cockroaches, which, I hasten to add, is where the Liberal Party metaphor begins to break down. Actually I’m not even sure if these things are cockroaches, I haven’t been able to catch one. They look like cockroaches but they have wings. I understand that cockroaches can have wings, but none of the cockroaches I’ve seen ... read more

Hi everybody, Sorry for the lack of blogs recently, we've been in the Perhentian Islands, just off the North East coast of Malaysia. It's a beautiful place but somewhat remote and lacking in internet cafes. We've just got back to Kota Bharu on the mainland and we're heading down to the rainforest in the centre of Malaysia (Taman Negara). The train is at 6am tomorrow morning and is meant to be one of the most beautiful stretches of train line in the world. Once in the jungle we're hoping to do some of the animal spotting activities and try not to get bitten by too many leeches, mosquitos etc. We haven't been able to find a decent enough internet cafe to upload pictures yet but as soon as we do we will add full blogs and ... read more