Advertisement
Published: December 11th 2009
Edit Blog Post
Wow, another update and so short after the last one! After all your nice comments, we are even more motivated to write blog on Singapore Malaysia and Bangkok. Some of you who have met us during traveling might ask why the next destination is Singapore and not the Philippines? Shortly after we booked our flight from Kota Kinabalu to the Philippines, we learned that a huge tornado has caused
death and destruction over there. The day we would arrive in Manila another typhoon, even bigger then the first one, was expected. So we decided not to take that flight (waste of money unfortunately) and instead we booked a flight to Singapore. From there we would work our way up into peninsular Malaysia.
Singapore After a safe flight we went to Little India to look for a hostel. Little India (the name says it already) is the district in Singapore with a huge Indian community. Since Singapore is a very expensive place to stay (10 Euro for 1 bed in a dormitory and private rooms are even more expensive), we needed to save money on food and drinks in order not to overspend our daily budget too much. Little India is the place
where you can eat fairly cheap and delicious. Besides the area is centrally located and it is fun walking about in the little busy streets cramped with Indian restaurants, shops and people. We stayed 3 nights (2 full days) in Singapore, enough to visit it's main sights (Day 1):Mt Faber, from which you have good sight all over Singapore; A walk along Boat Quay and Clark Quay with it's pubs and restaurants; strolling on the Riverside with it's colonial buildings and statues; Going around in Bugis with supposedly the biggest open air street market and Chinatown decorated with hundreds of lampions; (Day 2) Getting fresh air and peaceful walk in the Botanical gardens followed by an attempt to shop in
Orchard Road famous for it's endless and endless amount of malls. After half a mall we discovered that this is no fun if you can't buy anything, so we ended up watching Pulp Fiction at our Hostel.
Tioman Island We took a bus (complete with engine problems) to the coastal town of Mersing, from where we could catch a boat to
Tioman Island. We stayed first one night in Mersing, which ended up being a nightmare. Our hostel had bedbugs. The
people staying in the dorm warned us not to sleep there anymore. We were so tired that we took our chances with catastrophic results. We were itchy for many many days!
On Tioman Island we stayed first a couple of days on ABC beach on the west coast of the Island, where most of the cheap huts are located. Unfortunately there were only 2 'beachable' parts a bit of a walk away. We layed on the beach a couple of times and visited the deserted Monkey beach. We discovered that that beach was deserted for a reason: After the small hike to get there we wanted to lay on the beach, but we were harassed by monkeys.
We celebrated Anna's birthday by trekking trough the jungle a few hours across the island to Juara and back. On the other side we discovered a perfect beach with a few bungalows right on it! We decided the day before that we would leave the day after Anna's birthday, but when we saw this, we immediately booked the nicest bungalow on the beach and walked back to ABC to get our stuff. Eventually we stayed 5 days extra on Juara, filling
our days with drinking our cheap bottle of wine we had bought on the other side, playing Yatzee, reading, swimming, eating and beaching.
Kuala Lumpur We learned that the day we traveled to Kuala Lumpur, was the day after
Deepavali (Indian 5 day festival), therefore the bus we wanted to take directly to KL was full. We had to travel over Johor Bahru. We were warmly welcomed by Anna's friend Veera from Finland and her friends. We stayed at their place for 3 nights. Since we both have been in KL previously, we didn't do any sightseeing. We did some shopping and hanged out with Veera's friends: We dined, had drinks, had
shisha and watched DVD at 'home' with them. We had a very nice time in KL, Thank you all!
Perhentian Island We heard from a lot of people that the
Perhentian Islands were closing due to the start of the wet season on the east coast. Fortunately we took our chances and went anyways. When we arrived on the island we found out that they were closing the end of October, which gave us just enough time to enjoy a week staying. The Perhentians exists of 2
islands with no roads and no traffic. We stayed on Long Beach: A white sand beach strip with a couple of restaurants/bars and guesthouses along it. Our daily activities were beaching, reading, writing, dining and watching movie's at one of the restaurants after dinner. Because our porch was so big and peaceful, overlooking a nice garden, Anna could do her stretching and Yoga activities almost every day. One day we had a snorkel tour during which we saw turtles, sharks and beautiful coral (not as beautiful as in Maluku). Don't think we weren't active during that week: We hiked 2 whole times to the other side of the Island and back, because they had a nice restaurant there where we had fresh barracuda. It takes 10 minutes to walk across the island. ;-)
Bangkok We decided not to go to some of the islands in Southern Thailand but in stead we wanted to go directly into Cambodia. To get to Bangkok from the east side of the peninsula is kind of a hassle, because Thailand's
Narathiwat province is considered to be unsafe to travel in. Therefore we took an overnight bus to Penang (8 hrs) in west Malaysia followed by
a night train to Bangkok (24hrs). We had about 6 hours in Penang, which gave us the opportunity to wonder around in it's streets with colonial architecture and prepare ourselves for the upcoming train journey.
When we arrived in Bangkok we were happily welcomed by Anna's relatives Sarika, Pertti, Alisa and Maria. Since we both were already in Bangkok before, we didn't do too much sightseeing. We spend one night pub crawling in Khao San Road; We went to the weekend market with Alisa; We bought some movies which we watched at home. Our most important task was to get our passports and visas for Laos organized. Anna got herself a new passport send to the Finnish embassy in Bangkok, because hers was torn. After pickup we had to get an entry stamp into her new passport at the immigration office, which was located an hour away by taxi ride. Luckily a Thai-Taiwanese couple was so friendly to give us a lift. After that we could apply for our Laos visa, which we are using at this moment. Our next update won't be on Laos but on Cambodia.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.154s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0864s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Äiti
non-member comment
Hei!
Näyttää tosi kauniilta maisemilta:) Ja Singapore niin siistiltä :) Ettet vain lue shoppailusta , heh :)) Lähetä vain paketteja , vielä mahtuu kaappiin ...