Malaysia 2

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Malaysia 2

Day 131

After doing a little shopping & book swapping in the morning we were back at the airport to catch our flight back to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately Joe's baggage was over the airlines allowance so he had to throw away his mahout suit in the airport and ended up wearing 2 pairs of shorts on the flight.

When we arrived back in KL we went back to the same hostel but were split into different dorm rooms as the mixed dorm only had 1 available bed left. We caught up on some admin and went out for some local noodles, then when we returned to the hostel we joined everybody watching the DVD Australia on the communal tv. Once Tracy had gone to bed in the girls dorm Joe and the boys decided to head out to some bars and were still roaming th streets looking for food at 4am.

Day 132

As we had decided to change our route and fly to the Philippines from KL rather than Singapore we had a few days to kill so decided to take an overnight trip to an old colonial town called Malaka. Though it wasn't more than a 2 hour bus ride away it seemed to take ages to get there as we had to change buses several times as the long haul buses in malaysia only seem to run from bus stations on the outskirts of each city.

We finally arrive in time for a late lunch and went to this great Indian restaurant where they serve you all your food on a banana leaf, not a plate and if you want you can use your hands to eat your curry & rice. The food here was really good and it was a fun experience. Once we'd eaten we went to try and find a hostel for the night. The first place we found whcich was recommended by the LP was particularly dirty looking so we bypassed that and ended up in a cheap hotel for only a couple of pounds more. The only downside to the hotel was that it had no showers so we were thankful we only needed to stay the one night.

We went for a stroll around the town which is quite small butt very beautiful. There is an old spanish fort and an interesting looking maritime museum, though it happened to be closed. In the evening a bustling market street lights up some old cobbled streets and is buzzing with tourists and interesting sights & sounds. Later in the evening we went for traditional Malay satay in a restaurant that is so famous & busy that we had to queue for half an hour to get a table even as late as 11pm. The food here was great though, each table had a big fondue pot in the centre with a bubbling peanut satay sauce. You could then select whatever meat / fish / veg skewers you like from the display and would cook them yourselves at the table and each stick only cost about 10p each.



Day 133

In the morning we went to see the a famous wishing well and St Pauls church in Malaka before heading for the bus back to Kuala Lumpur. Once back in KL we managed to skype some more and then we went out to grab some food in a bar which was showing the manchester vs city derby game on some big screens.

Day 134

The first job of the day was to find the Indonesian embassy so that we could try and arrange longer visas than the standard 30 day visa that is issued at the airport. After walking for about an hour trying to find the embassy (which is not in the same place as the map on its website shows) we finally got there onlyn to find out that visa services were suspended due to a religious holiday – how frustrating they didn't write that on their website. We were bit annoyed but there was nothing we could do so we walked back to town, stopping to look at various shops and malls on the way.

In the afternoon we took a stroll around the 'Little India' quarter & chinatown but many restaurants and shops were also closed due to religious festivals. In the end we ended up back at the hostel having a very early night ahead of our flight to Manila in the morning.

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