Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia oh my...

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Malaysia

Credited nowhere near enough as a destination by the guidebooks, Malaysia is one of the gems of South East Asia. Malaysia is not just a place to spend a few days passing through en-route to Singapore in the south or Thailand to the north. You could easily spend a month scratching the surface. In the month we saw some amazing sights, met beautiful people and tasted some great food.

We started in the stunning Langkawi Island which was idyllic and luckily the whole island was duty free so cheap food drinks and shopping. We snorkeled around Palau Payer where we saw all the characters of NEMO and we swam with black tipped reef sharks (freaky). We rented a car one day and toured the entire island dodging monkeys and hiking to waterfalls. We rented kayaks and toured the other islands. Sadly we had to say goodbye to paradise and head to the mainland to try the famous Ipoh food.

Ipoh was where we met Ian a fantastic new friend who toured us around, showed us local food to try from nasi goreng to fish head curry. We went to batu caves, soy sauce ‘factory’ (someones backyard, and drove through villages and lakes.

Dad began to feel the heat and needed respite so we took a bus to the Cameron Highlands, with its tea plantations, cloud forests and breeze. Here we spent a week hiking every day. We found the raffleasia the largest flower in the world, along with other strange species of plants. The tea was not as yummy as that of Darjeeling, as in India they still use the traditional picking tea while here they have a machines which chops up everything else with the leaves.

Lastly we headed to Penang which has a beautiful old town charm to it. We were situated in the perfect spot where we could walk around all day and within five minutes in any direction we would hit chine town, little india and other very interesting districts. Following the rest of Malaysia Penang had some of the best food, hawker stands all over. As much walking as we have been doing we seem to be eating our way through Malaysia. So if you are and adventures food lover Malaysia is your ideal destination.

Despite its colonial past and still strong ties to Britain, modern Malaysia's official religion is Islam, although freedom of worship is encouraged in the country's constitution and national holidays are observed for the main religious festival periods of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians. Talk about reasonable. There new slogan is Malaysia1 – Malaysia united.

Singapore

Yes it was my idea to stop here for three days – why? Because I’ve always wanted to see what the hype was about. It may have been the most expensive three days of our trip since our hotel alone was 70$ a night OUCH! But turns out Singapore is everything people say clean, convenient and green. Surprisingly they even had an escalator in the park and air conditioned walkways around town talk about convenient. We spent our days walking everywhere, shopping since Singapore is also mall city and of course eating at the hawkers stands.

Indonesia

We are now in our final destination for this trip. We started in Ubud where we spent seven days in our own private bali home surrounded by rice fields and koi pond. Ubud is an artist hub with so much beautiful scenery the paintings were incredible. Dad had to talk me out of buying so many since I already have seven in my pack I only added two more!

We walked around, found the monkey forest and beautiful spots overlooking the rice fields. We cooked our own meals most of the week but we did try the suckling pig a must when visiting Bali. We each decided to pick one thing for us to do so dad of course picked a cooking class and I chose for us to do a bike tour. The cooking class was great and it also included a very cultural touch where we learned all about Balinese lifestyle. The class was led by one family all generations took part so it was fun to see. The bike tour was mountain biking down the volcano in Bali which had fantastic views and we went through the villages as kids ran out hoping for high fives. We stopped at a coffee plantation where we tried a cup of the famous luwak coffee, you know the poop coffee.

Now we are chillin in Gili Trangwan a beautiful serene island. We can walk out from our room and snorkel the reefs right off the beach. Now this is really paradise I haven’t seen water quite so clear and the turtles are huge! The locals seem to idolize bob marley and magic mushrooms are legal here on the island so who knows how long we will stay but we have two full weeks left and then we head home… for a few weeks anyway 😉



Dad’s Comments:

Weather here in Bali very interesting on average hot and partly cloudy during the day then building clouds sometimes massive formations in sky in the evening building to sometimes major thunder storms and heavy rain showers – this fits with the agro landscape of rice paddies which are not irrigated but instead built up high on terraces and constructed to drain off the frequent rain leaving the paddies with a steady (I presume) depth of water. This was not what I expected about rice paddy agriculture. During a wonderful and exciting major storm with lightning thunder and pouring rain one night Hali asked me what causes lightning and thunder and as Steve wasn’t here to explain I told her I would google it!! See below and also a general explanation of topical weather – I know you are all dying to read that

But also today we are heading for Gili Islands in Lombok and I have been excited for months given the background of the Wallace Line – I find this really interesting and will be looking for differences as we travel there (see link for a great article by Jared Diamond).

Also Bali is a wonderful place – people are so nice and everyone seems very happy and the Balinese have interesting perspectives on living and life of which we hope to learn more. Everyone should put Bali on their travel lists we think!

Tropical Weather

http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/tropical-weather-84224797

Wallace Line

http://discovermagazine.com/1997/aug/mrwallacesline1198#.UQr1V79X36I

Lightning and Thunder

http://www.theweatherprediction.com/kid_weather_questions/lightning_thunder.html

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