Blogs from Asia - page 14872

Well we finally made it to Rishikesh in the north and it is fabulous. We have a balcony overlooking the Ganga and can even see our Ashram too. It's mad to think that we are actually at the Himalayas. The guy who met us at the railway station, Baba, turned out to be so nice and helpful, he collected us the first morning to bring us to the ashram, then brought Irene on a mad motorcycle ride to get a cricket bat for her brother. We got a message to return his call the first morning, so I phoned the mobile number but it turned out to be Mr. Siu - the man who had helped us find our correct carraige after we had literally just thrown ourselves on the train. He was just phoning to ... read more

The nightmare of not getting the 2month visa for Indonesia turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it's brought me here to Sarawak! The people are friendly and helpful. No one tries to rip you off. The place is clean, people drive well, bus services are efficient and the food is great. National parks are all over the place and well set up to recieve visitors with good transport connections and a wide range of accomodation provided. Trails are well set up and clearly marked, though there is also plenty of opportunity to go marching through the bush if you want. Tourist information centres seem to know everything you could possibly want to know. In short the place is just great and I love it. Since being here (I arrived on the 9th of ... read more

So Singapore....arrived 5am after another terrible night on the bus, only upside was i met a lady from KL who was quite interesting..talked about a few politics and cities and stuff, she was cool, and i guess i got a couple of hours sleep so not completely hopeless.. immigration was pretty intimidating in singapore, lots of questions, few smiles, they seem to suspect every single person of trying to bring tonnes of explosives, weapons, drugs, and (probably most drastically for these weird immigration people) chewing gum - yes its illegal! anyway got through despite the copious amounts of all these that i was so obviously carrying, and got dropped in the city somewhere on a sidewalk without a map or any idea of where a hostel was... eventually managed to get a cab and through some ... read more

The arrival of April brought with it improved weather. And the improved weather meant the blossoming of the infamous Japanese sakura (cherry blossoms) wouldn’t be too far off, nor would the equally infamous hanami parties (essentially a picnic amongst the cherry blossoms with a lot of drinking involved). A group of us jumped the gun a little early and had a hanami picnic the first weekend in April. It was a nice time and featured just as much revelry and alcohol as a typical hanami picnic, albeit without the actual cherry blossoms. However, it was clear from the hint of pink emerging from the green buds that they were on the cusp of blooming and we rightly predicted that by the same time next week the city of Hiroshima would be awash with cherry blossoms. In ... read more

After another shocker of am overnight journey, we reached Singapore, and unsuprisingly we didn't learn from our mistakes and were again hostel-less at about 5am. Fortunately we'd met someone earlier who'd been to Singapore and we could just about remember the name of it, so we were luckily able to stay there. Although we could have stayed with the scariest man in Singapore, who was on our bus and decided he'd offer us a plce to stay in his flat...no thanks. Singapore, again, is quite a nice city, and if you had enough money it'd be an awesome place to go with the night safri, the huge zoo, underwater world and Sentosa which is a cool island just off its coast. However, we didn't have a lot of money, so most of time was either horrendously ... read more