Mallrats

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The rest of our time in Kuala Lumpur was spent mostly exploring and shopping. As the last cheap place on my route it was important to buy as much cheap stuff as possible. This including many fake watches, a wallet, dvds, tetris game for long journeys and some huge spectacles. We spent most of our two days left in the shopping mall browsing, going to the cinema and bowling. In terms of tourist attractions we did visit the butterfly park and yes it was as expected, absolute rubbish. It was literally a small garden with a hell of a lot of butterflies. There were other things like tortoises, snakes and random insects but I still left thinking why the hell did we come in here in the first place?! On one of the nights we walked our usual way back from the mall to see that something was going on in the stadium. We were allowed to just walk in for free and found ourselves watching an international marching band competition. We luckily only got to see the end of the competition but one of the cameramen there insisted on filming us watching the marching and doing air guitar and drums. I wonder if we will make the dvd? Although we have only visited two places in Malaysia, they have both been really great places.

On a sad note, my good friend Dan left team Barry while we were in Kuala Lumpur. He has been a great person to travel with over the last 3 months and will be missed. Although we spent half of the last 3 months waiting for him to get ready and do his hair. That will not be missed!

We reluctantly left Kuala Lumpur and headed for our last stop in South East Asia. We were on a vip bus which had huge comfortable chairs that were great for sleeping on. After crossing the border check we drove across the bridge onto the island of Singapore. I was surprised at how close the island is to the Malaysian mainland. The first impression I got of Singapore was how new, clean and modern everything is. Naturally we stayed in Little India for the curries. The food in Malaysia and here in Singapore has been amazing. There is such a variety from Indian, Chinese, Thai to Western. Some of the curries here are as good as the ones in India.

Our first day in Singapore we explored the shopping malls again and went to the cinema again, this time the chipmunks movie. Everything here is a lot more expensive than the other countries in SE Asia. The majority of the shops sell items at the same sort of prices we get in England, so not very good for a budget traveller. On our first full day we explored the city and some more shopping malls. The night was Ben's last before he headed off home. So we decided to splash the cash and go drinking at Clarke's quay. This reminded me so much of an English waterfront nightspot. We started of by having a tower of beer in a place called brewerkz, which had its own microbrewery on the premises. We were not allowed in most places as the t-shirt, shorts, sandal combination was not an accepted dress code. If you go out in Singapore forget about getting a taxi back without queueing for a hell of a long time. We decided to trek back.

The day after the night before we went to Sentosa island, which is a small touristy island full of rides, attractions and man made beaches. To get there we had to take a cable car, where we could see out over the city and onto the docks below us. Once on the island we luged down a hill to the beaches. Yes, luged! We had a quick explore round the island but all the attractions were too expensive for our budget. We had to take a skylift back to the cable cars and typically it started raining as we got on the skylift. Ben leaves tonight and it will be down to just me and Donkey. Its been good having Ben here who has been a big laugh. Tomorrow is on to a new adventure in the land down under.

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