Hello Asia- Singapore and Malaysia

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Well, I’ve left the Western world behind me and am in Asia now. I started off by flying into Singapore. The first thing I noticed about Singapore was the heat and humidity, this was at 11:00 at night and it was already unbearable.
The next day me and some people I met in the hostel went for a bit of a wander round the city. We started off in China town and had some stupidly cheap and really good food from a stall in a food court. It was quite a relief from the Aussie prices. We then went to a Hindu temple in one of the streets which was pretty cool, really colourful and loads of statues.
We then walked up to the CBD. This area seemed pretty up market and just like a Western city. The skyscrapers were absolutely huge, the area around the river was really nice, there was lots of colourful buildings and quite a few posh old buildings left over from colonial times and the whole area was really clean. We then walked up to Marina Bay. Here we saw the Merlion, a half lion half fish sculpture, which doesn’t actually have any cultural relevance and was just invented as a tourist attraction. From here we could see the huge Marina Sands Hotel, it’s basically 3 huge skyscrapers with what looks like a boat perched across them. We then walked around to the hotel. On the way we passed through the marina sands shopping centre, this indoor shopping centre has a canal through the middle and you can pay to have a punt take you around. We went up to the observation deck on top of the boat. At the top there is an infinity pool, basically a swimming pool which looks like it goes off the edge of the skyscraper. It was amazing to see the amount of skyscrapers in the city, they weren’t confined to the centre, they pretty much covered the whole city. The other amazing thing was the amount of ships in the bay and the size of the port. It is one of the busiest ports in the world.After leaving here we headed to the Fountain of Wealth, which is the biggest fountain in the world. They had an amazing light show projected onto the fountain, for free! We then had more dirt cheap food.
The next day we headed off to Sentosa Island. This is basically a massive tourist resort with a unisversal studios theme park on it. We were way to poor to go to theme park

After Singapore I headed to Kuala Lumpur on the bus. I was staying in China town, which seemed much more ‘Chinese’ than the Singaporean China town, it was a lot more of a culture shock.
The next day I headed to the outskirts of the city to the Batu Caves. They are huge limestone caves with massive cliffs. At the entrance to one of the caves there is a giant golden Hindu statue which is the biggest of its type in the world. In one of the caves there are Hindu temples and when I was there a Bollywood film was being shot in one of them which was pretty interesting to see. I then went for a tour of the dark caves. These caves have loads of bats and creepy crawlies in them and there are some insects which are only found in these caves. There were also quite a few cool rock formations such as stalactites and mites, and there is a cave that lives in the caves. On the way out I saw loads of wild monkeys running about, some had babies which were pretty sweet, and, one had a can of coke! That night I had some amazing Malaysian food from a really dodgy looking street restaurant which I was recommended, it was really good and I was completely fine the next day.
The next day I went up the KL tower in the CBD. The CBD is a lot cleaner than China town and it doesn’t smell of sewage every time you walk over a drain like china town which was quite nice. From the tower you can see the whole city. It’s definetly much more Eastern than Singapore, even the skyscrapers have a big eastern influence, especially the Petronas twin towers. It looked like a very green city. That afternoon I headed to Merdaka square which is where the independence was declared. It has buildings as old as from the tudors and a big grass square in the middle which is really nice.
The next day I was up early to queue for a ticket to go up to the skybridge of the twin towers. I had to queue for 2 hours in the end! I then had to come back later to go up to the skybridge, it was a pretty amazing experience, even though it we only had 15 minutes up there, I’m not quite sure if it was really worth queuing for 2 hours though. That night I got the sleeper train to Penang, which was pretty exiting as id never been on a sleeper train before.
The next day I went for a wander around Georgetown, the main town on Penang. I got absolutely soaked but I didn’t care because the rain was so warm, but I got plenty of strange looks from locals. I sampled the Malaysian food here as it’s supposed to be the food capital of Malaysia and it lived up to its name, the food was amazing and even cheaper than anywhere else as well, about £1.50 for a full meal and drink!
I caught a service bus out to Penang national park the next day and took a short walk out to an amazing beach, which I had all to myself. I went for a swim in the bath temperature water. I was just lying in the sun trying to dry off when I noticed a monkey sat by my bag. It then proceeded to pull everything out of my bag and search for something to eat. I tried to scare it off and it bared its teeth, I tried again and it properly went for me, so I ran away, I was just thinking of the rabies haha. Luckily another monkey came and the chased each other off into the forest. I’ll never look at monkey’s in the same cute way anymore, I was really paranoid of them on my way back.
Now I’ve just arrived in Thailand, on a minibus on the way to the Island of Koh Samui to meet up with my mates from home, Harri and Courts, which should be good. I’ve only got 2½ weeks left now and although I’m really looking forward to seeing all you guys back home I really don’t want to come home!

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