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Published: November 30th -0001
18th August - 13th September 2010
Still a bit behind schedule with the blogs, ok maybe very behind unfortunately but here is what we have been up to since Vietnam....
We arrived in Kuala Lumpur mid afternoon and got the shuttle bus to the city as the airport is about 70km away. After trundling through a bustling Chinatown knocking people out with our big bags, finally settled on a hostel we thought we would be comfortable in. Within 30 minutes of settling in, we realised it would be a long night - the absence of a window and dreary grey walls should have been the first clues but went unnoticed at the time of check-in. We made an early start the next day to find a new guest house and truly start our KL adventure. The next guest house was the Reggae Reggae guesthouse but they cocked up our reservation so it would be 3 guest houses in 3 nights! Ah well.
On our first full day we headed for the amazing Petronas Towers to book our visit to the skybridge half way up which we managed to book for that afternoon. As we had some time to
waste we first went to the Chinese embassy to apply for visas then into KLCC which is a huge shopping centre below the towers..... this was Ellie’s heaven and Steve’s hell as we wandered aimlessly round looking at things we couldn’t even consider buying on our backpacker budget!! After watching a lovely promotional video all about Petronas, the national oil company, we were let loose on the skybridge to take in amazing views across the city then spent the rest of the day getting our heads round the enormity of KL.
After 2 months of travelling round Asia it was a nice change to find KL was very westernised, including English cinema and some good restaurants. So, as we had 5 days to wait for our Chinese visas to be issued, we decided to hit the cinema, aquarium and the museum of Malaysia (which was really boring.... even Steve thought so!!). However, after the boredom of the main exhibition we moved into the special exhibition on coffins which we felt compelled to attend and saw some pretty wacky coffins from Malaysian history. We also spent a few afternoons sitting out in the sunshine of City Park which is overlooked
by the Petronas towers and the other skyscrapers surrounding.
Our last night in KL was spent at the Skybar on the 43rd floor of the Traders Hotel which provides fantastic views of the Petronas towers. Our aim was to have a few drinks while watching the sunset over the towers so at 6.00 we settled in with a rather expensive cocktail for Ellie and nice glass of Chardonnay for Steve. At around 6.30 we were expecting the sun to start disappearing as sunset had always been around that time since we started our trip. However, we hadn’t thought to factor in the one hour time difference so we were forced to continue drinking more expensive drinks until the sun finally set and we were amazed with how beautiful the city looked at night. This can be seen on the photos.
The next day we jumped on a bus headed for Penang, an island off the west coast of Malaysia linked to the mainland by one of the longest bridges in the world. We stayed in Georgetown which is a real mixture of cultures ranging from Colonial British buildings such as the Town Hall to the colourful surroundings of
Little India. It was here that we ventured for our first (Indian) curry of the trip. We were in very adventurous moods opting for the Chicken Biryani and Butter Chicken, the usual really!
Public transport didn’t seem to be that good on Penang so we toured the island by moped. Whilst our search for a nice sandy beach was fruitless (there didn’t seem to be any) when we headed towards the centre of the island, we discovered that our afternoon would bear fruit......... at the tropical fruit farm. We had a tour from a Malaysian chap who missed his calling from the world of artistic photography. He insisted on taking countless photos of us in the background and with a fruit in the foreground, with the result being the impression that the fruit was the size of a person and Ellie’s face was obscured by some sort of greenery in almost every one - pretty bizarre. After the tour, we were led to an area where they had all the varieties of fruit they grow in a buffet and were told to get stuck in. There were some very unusual flavours but it was a lovely way to spend
a scorching afternoon.
Whilst in Penang we also visited Fort Cornwallis which was developed as a defense base for the island by Francis Light back when it was under British rule. We stayed 2 nights in Penang which was probably about right. We had hoped to go on the funicular railway up the highest peak but this was closed for maintenance which was a shame. Despite this we had a wonderful time in what was a cultural melting pot but we were still desperate for a few days on the beach - so we boarded a boat to Langkawi...... and were bloody well glad we did.
We had heard it was a really nice place as our friends Tom and Lisa honeymooned there in May so we thought we would check it out. The weather was amazing and Steve got seriously sunburned on the first full beach day of the trip, sadly very painful but at least he had eventually got rid of his ‘Brit Abroad’ t-shirt tan lines. The beach was beautiful and not too busy as it was off-season, but it was by no means dead. We spent a couple of days chilling by the beach
Skybar at the Traders Hotel
Expensive cocktail no.1 - yummy!for some much needed relaxation after all the hard work we had done recently!!!
We rented another moped and headed towards the cable car which affords a wonderful view across the island. On arrival however we discovered that it too was closed and not scheduled to re-open for another few weeks - bugger! We headed over to Seven Wells Waterfall where the ice cold water within the bathing pools was well worth the hike up the 700 odd metre hill in the baking sun. Some of the rocks were very slippy in the waterfall and pools and Steve came up with the idea of sliding down part of the waterfall, which fortunately worked without any injury! After spending plenty of time plucking up the courage, Ellie agreed to go down it as well..... only if Steve waited in the pool at the bottom to catch - not even the small child who had started doing it needed this! As a result of Steve needing to be in the pool there is no video footage of this feat of courage (as the camera would have got wet) so you will have to take our word for it that she did
it! We have some footage of Steve though that we will upload if this blog site ever fixes the technical fault.
On our last day in Langkawi we headed to the Laman Padi or Rice Museum which was a short distance from the main tourist town of Pantai Cenang. They offered free tours in English which we gladly accepted and we learned how they made rice back in the day and how they do it now. When the tour guide was walking the two of us through a paddy field, one of the water buffalos took a dislike to us and began charging us. This little Malaysian fella waving a flimsy looking stick just about did enough to make the buffalo think twice but there were several moments of panic as it made a surprisingly fast bee line for us! Then the farmer walked over to the beast, laughing at the situation and all of a sudden, it was good as gold! Our last night in Malaysia we decided to sign off in true local fashion - by watching the Belgian Grand Prix in an Irish Bar! The next morning we were on a ferry bound for Thailand for
the second time..........
Our ferry arrived in Satun on the border between Malaysia and Thailand and we lined up to go through customs.... as we approached the front of the queue a seemingly random Thai guy started talking to us. At first this was just polite conversation about where we were headed and then all of a sudden he decided we knew each other well enough to get out his weapon, a small gun! This was a little alarming at first, especially for Ellie when Steve asked if he could ‘have a go?’ As it turned out this bloke was a plain clothes policeman who was just showing off! The next stage of the journey was to get on a VIP bus, which looked very much like some sort of mobile disco and much to our surprise they even put a James Bond film on the TV instead of the usual wailing karaoke. Our joy was a little short lived as we realised the film was dubbed Thai and as soon as this was finished the karaoke came on, with the bass up so loud it was giving us a headache.
A while later we arrived in a
Fruit farm
We are the 'secondary subject', the fruit is the primary...thank god for that! dreary and wet Krabi town and jumped straight into a taxi, well van with seats, to Ao Nang - the beach area nearby. Not long into our taxi trip the cab started to slow down and eventually came to a stop at the side of a busy road. This seemed a bit unusual until the driver looked at us embarrassed and said that he had run out of petrol but he had called his brother for help. After ten minutes of sitting chatting with the driver, his brother and quite a few members of his family turned up in a car. We were told that we were now transferring to the car and felt terrible as we moved into the comfort of the car while the family, including small tired children, all had to cram into the cold van.
Anyway, we eventually rocked up at a hotel which Steve had got a really good deal on so we were spending the next 3 nights in luxury. The room was gorgeous with a big comfy bed, massive balcony and a bathroom as big as a lot of the rooms we’ve been staying in. However, the best part was the beautiful
eternity pool they had which had amazing views over beautiful countryside in the valley below the hotel. So, we spent the next few days sunbathing by the pool, walking around by the beach and rediscovering our love of Thai food. We even invented a new dish when we asked the woman in a street stall if she could make us tuna and pineapple fried rice which was absolutely delicious! Ellie also managed to convince Steve that his weight loss was resulting in him wearing his shorts round the bottom of his bum - a la teenage skateboarders - and this is not cool for people our age so we went to one of the many tailors and got him two pairs of very nice tailored shorts and a shirt.
After three days of luxury we decided to get back on a boat and head to Koh Phi Phi, a beautiful island in the Andaman Sea. We were met at the ferry port by a bloke from our pre-booked hostel for our ‘taxi’ to the hostel. It turns out that this was in fact a massive wheelbarrow for our bags which we had to walk behind as there are no
Fort Cornwallis
Boys will be boys proper roads and certainly no cars on the island. Arriving at our hostel we realised we had made a mistake in pre-booking for two nights as it was really horrible and one of the beds was broken... we decided the best way to make this better would be to go and get nice and drunk so we headed to one of the many bars and had one too many cocktails, the final cocktail being a bucket of banana something which seemed to consist of at least 50% vodka topped up with milk and banana liqueur. For some unknown reason we decided that we would need one of these buckets each. We started to realise that this may have been a mistake later when it took us 45 minutes to do the 5 minute walk back to the hostel - aka we were totally lost!!
We woke up early the next morning with sore heads and our beds surrounded by a moat of around 3 inches of water!! It had been heavily raining through the night and the whole place was flooded through! Luckily the water hadn’t got to our bags but, seeing this as a very good excuse to
Langkawi moped
Check out the forehead... its not that big in real life honest. get out of our second night there, we went to reception and told them our room was flooded and everything we owned was wet through so we wanted our money back and to leave straight away. After much argument we managed to get almost all of our money back and trundled the island and found ourselves a much nicer and cheaper place.
Our first full day on the island we were somewhat hungover and feeling quite tender so it passed with a daze but the next day we booked ourselves in to a half day longtail boat trip around Koh Phi Phi Don (the main island) and Koh Phi Phi Leh which lies a couple of km’s south across some seriously treacherous waters. The ride across was terrifying as the small boat was completely dwarfed by the waves. The trip included a visit to Monkey Beach (which is literally covered in monkeys), snorkelling amongst tropical fish and coral and a visit to Maya Bay which was the setting for the 2000 film ‘The Beach’. Maya Bay itself is a no-go area for boats so we had to swim from the boat to a small cove on the other side
of the island - which was being bombarded by fierce waves - and then walk across the island. This again was somewhat terrifying but well worth it. Fortunately, we had a waterproof pouch with us so we were able to take our camera to Maya Bay with us and get some really beautiful photos. However, this did mean we became the beach photographers and ended up having to email random people photos of the day.
Walking back to our hostel we bumped, once again, into Eloi and Cilia, whom we didn’t even know were visiting the island. We had a bite to eat and only a few drinks that night as they were up early diving the next day so we arranged a proper session for the next evening. The next day we visited Phi Phi viewpoint which provides amazing views over the island. It was here that Steve discovered the panoramic feature on the camera, which has resulted in a panoramic photo being attempted all the time and about 80% of them being deleted as they don’t work! Some of the habitants of the viewpoint remain there permanently, never venturing down after the Tsunami devastated the island back
on Boxing Day 2004.
We met Eloi and Cilia later that day and were handed a leaflet advertising that a magician called Dan Berlin would be performing in the Irish Bar. Dan is a German guy who we had met on our way to Krabi who has been funding his travelling by performing in bars around the world. He showed us a few tricks then told us he was heading later to the Banana Bar so after some food we headed up what looked very much like a fire escape to the rooftop bar where the buckets were waiting.... this time one between two! As the drinks flowed we noticed some fluorescent body paint on the bar and all hell broke loose. Before long our faces and arms were well and truly covered in orange and green and we were looking very dapper.... not! We had an excellent night and then bid farewell to our friends as the following morning we had a boat ticket to Phuket.
Our first night was spent in Phuket Town which was a fairly uneventful place but we headed the following day to Patong Beach on the other side of the island, which
The rice museum
That pesky buffalo! the Lonely Planet described as the seedy part of Phuket and Thailand in general. We found the place to be teeming with tourists, particularly Australians. Patong was awash with neon lights advertising all sorts of after dark shenanigans such as specialist cabarets etc. Whilst it was very busy, it was still off-season and the shear mass of sun loungers stacked up on the beach gave an indication of how packed it must be during busy periods. We were delighted to find a Carrefour supermarket and even more delighted when we found it was similar to the originals in France! It is amazing how much you miss simple things when in a place like SE Asia for a prolonged period. In Patong we spent a day at the beach with a picnic courtesy of the aforementioned supermarket. The weather was slightly cooler than it had been in Langkawi owing to the monsoon season in Thailand so the beach experience wasn’t as amazing but relaxing nonetheless.
The biggest eye opening event in Patong was a visit to what we thought would be an exhibition ping pong match, but it appears the ‘players’ had never held a bat in their lives. It
is part and parcel of the Thai culture and we had been advised that we simply had to go, which we duly did. It was advertised as a free show but the catch being the beers cost £10 each and this was cheapest thing on the menu! Whilst it was an experience we will never forget, I don’t think we will be heading back to such an establishment, well not unless there is a stag do involved anyways!
The next day we headed to a bookshop to stock up for China - Steve having read about 15 John Grisham novels so far on this trip alone only had 3 more to complete the set; all of which were bagged with some shrewd swapping and haggling! We had booked a flight a few weeks earlier to our final destination in SE Asia before heading to China...... Singapore, where we would meet Bexs and Rich (Ellie’s sister and her boyfriend) who would be arriving for a holiday before migrating to Australia.
The plane turned out to be a bit of a hassle as 2 days earlier, Tiger Airlines emailed us to say that our 10am flight was being put back
to 8pm which would mean that we would be arriving in Singapore later than we had hoped. On arriving at the airport we were told the flight had been delayed to 10:45pm which ensured that it was about 3am when we arrived at our hostel which fortunately we had pre-booked.
The following day we met Bexs and Rich at the airport in the afternoon and took them back to a hotel room we had arranged for them just down the road from our hostel. We thought we would have a quiet one as it was their first night and grabbed some dinner and a couple of Tiger beers, the local speciality.
We had one full day before our next flight so thought we would make the most of it. We headed down to the harbour and bought a combo-ticket which gave us a ride on the Singapore Flyer, boat sightseeing trip and hop on sightseeing bus. The Flyer is essentially Singapore’s answer to the London Eye but proudly boasts to the biggest in the world. It was a really clear and sunny day so we had some spectacular views across the harbour which was amazing. This part of the
Maya Bay
Setting for 'The Beach' city was in the process of being transformed into the F1 circuit for the Grand Prix and it was impressive to see the work that goes into it all. It was on the Flyer that some of the more successful photos were taken with the trusty panoramic feature!
Singapore was a delight and we got the impression it is a playground for the wealthy - we had hotel envy at almost every junction we encountered on the sightseeing boat and buses. It is a tradition to enjoy a Singapore Sling at the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel but the dress code deterred us being the scrappy backpackers that we are..... Bexs and Rich were intending on going after the scruffies had left town though!
After a full on day of sightseeing (we saw many of the sites at least twice as there was overlapping of the boat route and the two bus routes) we headed towards Orchard Road for a delightful meal of all you can eat Sushi, of the highest quality, so we filled our boots to the point of almost exploding. We had only 3 nights in Singapore whereas we could have stayed a lot longer -
there is no shortage of things to do, but it is on the pricey side compared to the places we have been so far. We need to get used to it now though as now the SE Asian part of the trip is over its China, Australia, New Zealand, Cook Islands, USA and Canada to go - the days of 50p beers will soon be a thing of the past!
We departed Singapore on 13th September on a Hong Kong bound plane for 3 weeks in HK and China before heading to Australia for the summer. On that note, we have managed to secure tickets for days 1-3 of the Sydney New Years test match!
Bring on China...........
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