Blogs from Malaysia, Asia - page 762

Sunday, we packed up the Proton Wira (Malaysian made car) and headed across the peninsula to Malacca on the west coast. The route that we took sent us through more oil palm estates and rubber plantations than we could count but the road was not very crowded aside form the occasional truck that we had to overtake. Lots of small towns on the way since we were not on the expressway but the old roads. By avoiding KL and taking a southern route we missed all of the traffic there. The trip took about 4 hours putting us in Malacca town at about 3:30pm. We got there just in time to check in at the Baba House (I’ll explain more about that in a minute) and have me zoom off to the express bus terminal to ... read more

greetings from Kuala Lumpur after the cold of cameron highlands it is nice to be in the warmth again and KL is hot - about 30degrees. it is very modern and plenty of shopping malls again plus a cool night market selling copy clothes etc and nice chinatown. had a few drinks and watched the footie in the Regage Bar last night. not much Raggae music played though and Adam beat me at pool twice! today we went up the Petronas twin Towers. the skybridge is on the 41st floor so got a great view of all KL. This was where Entrapment was fillmed (Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta Jones) and just realised that i have now visited at least 3 film sites - here, cambodian temple from tomb raider and Halong Bay which is where a ... read more

Next stop: Pulau Tioman (a.k.a. Tioman Island)! We arrived around 4:30 in the afternoon and immediately dumped our packs and hit the water. After a four hour bus ride and and hour and a half on a "speed" boat, we were in need! Tioman, or more specifically Air Batang, became our new 'hood. We intended to stay for a night or two, and ended up staying four! Nazri's Place was the name of our set of bungalows, and let's just say it was a HUGE step up from our Singapore experience! We stayed in this lovely little bungalow (with a hot shower, flush toilet and A/C!), and for Melissa's birthday we even splurged for a proper "hotel" room in the main house. The Canadian dollar does pretty well when changed over to the Ringitt (sp?), so ... read more

Okay well the last 2 weeks have been quite adventurous and full of fun, a special thanks to the comrades I’ve met along the way. I think I left off in Brunei where I had met again with Desi, the Swiss girl. From Brunei we bused it to Miri and shacked up in a really nice little hostel, The Highlands, where we ran into 2 more Swiss, Steve and Christoph, and ended up spending about 5 pretty full on days with them. Christoph only spoke French so it was pretty hard to communicate with him but Steve turned out to be quite a good translator making it bearable. They had energy in almost too high of a dosage for us to keep up with. A relaxing day on the beach, with massage, which I personally was ... read more

greetings from country number 5 on my south east asia tour. i really like Penang - it's very modern and westernised with skyscrapers and large shopping malls. After over 5 weeks of visiting temples and many other cultural activities i decided to give the colonial buildings and tourist attractions a miss. Instead i had a long lie (never slept past 8am until today and plenty of 5am starts), updated my journal, shopped and sat in starbucks drinking a mocha frapucchino with my book. was lovely just to chill out. tonight we had a lovely dinner (nuala had a very funny dish called "Fish jumps in the pan") before heading for a drink to a cool bar called Soho - apparently it's very popular with the celebrities when they visit Penang and it had pics of the ... read more