KL was bad for our holiday budgets...we spent the large majority of 3 days there shopping! We arrived in KL on the train back from Singapore reasonably early in the morning and caught the monorail to Bukit Bintang Station in the Golden Triangle area. We had been told by Mira and Khalid (from the Perhentians) that this was the area we should stay in as its pretty central and has good food, accommodation and heaps of shopping - turns out thats true. Just down the road from our hotel were BB Plaze, Sungei Wang Plaza, Imbi Plaza, Plaza Low Yat and Lot 10. Conveniently, all the shopping centers were having their 'end of season' sale...which neither of us really understood considering the weather is basically the same all year around. The first night we had dinner ... read more

Having stayed in the Perhentians for an extra three days, we got back to the mainland with about 50 ringit ($17) left thinking that there would be an ATM there. Unfortunately this wasn't the case, but our bus driver assured us that we would be able to stop off at an ATM before we reached the national park. After a couple of hours and breakfast and lunch already eaten, the bus pulled up at a shop front and said you need to go and buy your national park entry tickets...uhhh....crap! we had about 10 ringit ($3) on us and we were sure that this wouldn't be anywhere near enough. Fortunately when I asked how much they were the lady said 1 ringit! That price is a bit of a joke really and it kind of seems ... read more

Surprisingly our Air Asia flight from KL was actually on time so we arrived in Kuala Terengganu at about 4pm. We intended on spending about 3 days in KT, however on the drive to our hotel we were already planning our escape. It was just a town, nothing particularly interesting to see or do. We ended up spending about 1.5 days there not doing a whole lot although we did go for a walk around the city to see the Sultan's Palace, a mosque, the foreshore etc. The Sultan's Palace wasn't particularly impressive. The building itself was alright, however he had no garden really...perhaps he should stop spending so much on the state and maybe splurge on himself...hmm. The Malaysian government is actually quite interesting. Most states have a sultan, and the sultans take turns (in ... read more

This morning we caught a taxi out to the Sandakan War Memorial this morning which is just outside town. Its on the site of a Japanese POW camp which was used to hold British and Australian prisoners during World War 2. The camp held 2700 prisoners of which only 6 Australians (who managed to escape) survived. The site has been made into a memorial by the Australian government and was fantastic. The main pavilion has an extremely well presented history with photos of the camp and quotes from survivors. We spent about an hour reading all the information and looking at the photos, then walked around the grounds and saw an excavator, boiler, water tanks etc from when the camp was operational. The majority of the camp was destroyed by the Japanese just before they abandoned ... read more

It was kind of nice arriving back in Bangkok as we already knew how to use the public transport system and were familiar with prices and the tourist sites. This time we stayed on Th Rambutri which is near the backpacker Mecca Khao San Road. On the first night we ran into Michael (from Vang Vieng) and spent the night at a random bar on Khao San Road. We finally retired to our hotels at about 3 in the morning after arranging to meet the following morning at the reasonable hour of 11am. We ended up grabbing a quick late breakfast on Th Rambutri and then set off for MBK. We spent the next 8 hours exploring the various levels and finally, after the boys heads were about to explode from shopping overload, set off to ... read more