Blogs from Malaysia, Asia - page 763

Greetings from Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur Wow, loads to tell as usual, starting with last weekend, when we had 3 days on tour with Acacia in Kruger National Park. When we booked this, I thought we might have been safari'd out a bit, what with nearly 3 weeks with Dragoman, but luckily I needn't have worried. We transferred from Joburg with Miles, in a clapped out Astra type mobile & it took us 6 hours to get there, starting @ 5am. Miles drove without shoes, and I imagine without a recent shower, and managed to get us lost in Pretoria in the dark, which is NOT a clver place to stop and ask directions!! Nevertheless, we joined our new gang, led by TJ a strapping ginger South African at lunchtime and set off for our campsite. ... read more

20 June 2006 Georgetown, Malaysia Wandering around Chinatown Waking up on the train, I met Alex and Teresa, and English couple, and wasted an hour and a half watching The DiVinci Code on their portable DVD player. Probably the worst Tom Hanks movie since his last one, The Terminal. Movies are so overrated as far as constructive pastimes are concerned. More constructively, I read most of The Postman, a novel Kevin Constner turned into a passable but financially disastrous movie. Naturally, the book was far better then the movie. Upon arrival at Butterworth, best known in Australia as having once been the home of our only overseas airforce base, we jumped on the ferry to Penang and arrived at Georgetown forty minutes later. The hotels ranged from very basic and dirty to very basic and clean, ... read more

So from Singapore we headed up to Malaysia with Kuala Lumpur as our first stop. We had booked a hotel in Little India which was nice and just a short walk from the metro into the city centre. As Jemma's camera has officially died we headed to the KLCC, the shopping mall at the Petronas Tower to have a look for one. Eventually she got a pretty good deal on a Fuji camera so we were ready to start snapping! We headed out the mall at the Petronas end and were amazed by the towers. So many things we've seen so far on this trip we'd only ever seen before in pictures and movies - but it's so different to actually be there. Although unfortunately Sean Connery wasn't swinging from the bridge like in Entrapment!! Off ... read more

We spent 2 weeks travelling through Hong Kong, Singapore & Malaysia. HONG KONG We arrived to a deluge of 'black rain' - so heavy that we could get off the plane, but baggage handlers refused to go out into the weather (for over an hour) to get the bags off for us!! Then we found that hotel had reserved was not what we had wanted, and so had to switch hotels. Then it started raining again - however, aside from all that, we did have a good time in HK!! We tasted the ex-pat lifestyle with Rupert (an ex-work colleague of Helen, currently working in HK), with dinner, drinks & dancing to filipino bands until the small hours of the morning. We explored Central Hong Kong island ... took a bus to visit & buy souvenirs ... read more

We've just left the Perhentian Islands to go back to KL. We had a really great time there. None of the hectic dives as we had on Pulau Mabul - just one dive a day and snorkelling in the sea. We saw reef sharks and turtles while snorkelling. We had two really great dives and the second one at Tokong Laut (Temple of the Sea) was truly spectacular. You'll just have to wait for Russell to describe it. As far as I'm concerned it was simply, "big fish, small fish, balls of yellow-coloured fish, clown fish living around ananome with purple coloured covering". Confused? You won't be when you see our pics! Almost end of hols :-( Love swimming in the sea every day.... read more