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Published: February 12th 2006
(Gem writes)
What a fantastic two weeks we have had. We flew to Singapore on Friday 27th January and went to a hostel that we had pre-booked in Little India. On the way to the hostel we got a pretty good tour of the City on the shuttle bus. It is such a clean and organised city, some say too clean, but it appealed to the neat side of my personality and I immediately loved it.
Our hostel was smack bang in the middle of Little India, it was the most authentic Indian region I have ever experienced, the streets were lined with market stalls selling colourful and pungent smelling spices and the smell of incense was so strong. The shops sold brightly coloured saris with loud bollywood music booming everywhere, I loved it!
The hostel was ok, but had 14 beds to a dorm, a bit of a disaster, we found a better hostel which we moved to the next day, with only 6 beds to a dorm and was more like a hotel then a hostel. We were much happier there.
We fitted a lot into the few days we were in Singapore, we didn't
Dave eating in Little India
We have literally lived on curry since we left Indonesia!get much sleep as there was always something to see or do. We were fortunate to time our arrival with the celebrations for Chinese New Year, so on the first night after settling into the hostel and eating a delicious curry at one of the many vegetarian indian restaurants, we headed on the MRT to the river front to join in the celebrations.
The streets were decorated with red lanterns and on the riverside there were stalls set up, selling chinese crafts, food and some oddities, there were also stages with chinese dances showing. We walked around and watched the dance show and generally soaked up the atmosphere. It was all very colourful and bustling.
After a sleepless night in the 14 bed dorm we moved hostels and went for another yummy curry. We had lots of jobs to do such as post things home, do the blog entry, catch up with emails and ring home. Dave also spent a couple of hours in his heaven- the Sim Lim Towers, a huge shopping complex devoted purely to electonics and computer software and hardware. For once it was me sitting on the bench while he went shopping, that was
a first!
With all that successfully accomplished we headed into Chinatown for Chinese New Years Eve. The crowds were enormous as we stepped out of Chinatowns MRT station. There was a big Chinese bazaar along the streets in Chinatown, it was hard to move. After a few hours we decided to head out of Chinatown to have a rest from the crowds and to get some food as all the restaurants in Chinatown were obviously closed. After yet another curry in Little India, we returned on the MRT to Chinatown to wait for the firework display at midnight. I had never celebrated Chinese New Year before, so it was an enjoyable experience, the fireworks went off with a bang and everyone wished each other 'Gong Xi Fa Cai!' We headed back to the hostel exhausted from the festivities!
On the sunday, we spent the morning sorting out our transport on to Malaysia, so boring trips to bus stations had to be made, but eventually we booked our tickets and could enjoy the rest of the day. We headed to Orchard Street, the main shopping district and just walked around, stopped for a drink at a cafe and people
Monkey Boy Dave
The Chinese calendar confirms it: Dave is a monkey. watched. In the evening we went to the Cinema, i watched Memoirs of a Geisha and Dave saw Fearless, the new Jet Li movie.
Monday, we crammed in everthing else that we hadn't yet seen and done in Singapore. We started off with a walk down to the river and to the quay where you get good views across the city. We then went to the Esplanade-Theatres on the Bay, a pretty building with a beautiful concert hall, theatre and shopping and restaurant complex. We spent a couple of hours in the nearby Asian-Civilisation Museum which was an excellent overview of Asian culture, very helpful for the rest of our trip. It was then back on the MRT up to the Botanical Gardens where we visited the Orchid Gardens. Orchids are my favourite flower so I loved it here, they had some really unusual varieties, that i had never seen before. We then headed back to Little India, had a quick dinner and got changed before going straight back out to the famous Raffles hotel for the must-do Singapore Sling! It was very sweet but enjoyable, the price wasn't though! By now it was coming up to 9pm but
our day wasn't over, we caught the MRT accross the city and then a bus to the Night Safari. It was quite good but being a public holiday for the Chinese New Year, it was packed with families and was a bit too busy. We still saw some interesting animals such as the fishing cat and some huge fruit bats and flying squirrels. We got back to the hostel at 1 in the morning, it had been a busy day of sightseeing, we were exhausted!
Tuesday 31st Jan was our last day in Singapore, we returned to the Esplanade- Theatres on the Bay to watch a free matinee performance of a band which used a mix of Western and Chinese instruments. They played covers of cheesy pop songs, but it was pretty good, the best thing about it was the venue, the Concert Hall was beautiful.
Our bus to Kuala Lumpar, Malasyia left at 5pm, it was a comfortable coach journey. The two countries are joined by a causeway and we had to get off the bus twice at the borders to go through immigration. It was an easy journey and we arrived at Kuala Lumpars busy Puduraya
bus station at 10.30pm the same night.
We checked into a hostel close to the bus station, again in the city's Little India. The next morning we slept in really late, all the late nights in Singapore were catching up with us. After lunch we headed on the LRT to the famous Pertronas Towers, the iconic building of Malaysia. They were pretty impressive up close, we took lots of photos and then browsed in the huge designer shopping centre which are inside the base of the towers. We couldn't go up them that day as we found out they only issue 1000 tickets early each morning, they are free, but you just have to get there early to queue for them.
We headed to an area on the outskirts of town caled Bangsal, where there was another huge shopping centre with an 18 screen cinema complex in. We went to see The Chronicles of Narnia, which was quite good apart from the Asian cinema etiquette, which is non-existent. People talk on their phones and talk to each other during the films, very annoying!
Went into Chinatown for dinner and then got an early night ready for an
early start to get tickets for the Pertronas Towers.
Thursday morning after queuing we got to go up to the bridge adjoining the two towers at about 9am, it was really cool as the views from the bridge were cool. It was also just good to be in the buildings and learn about how they were built. They aren't the tallest building in the world, just the tallest twin towers. Afterwards we walked across town to the KL tower, a big telecommunication tower with a revolving restaurant at the top and a viewing platform where you can walk around with a audio-visual tour with headsets pointing out the sights of KL. It was good to see where everything was, we could see the National Mosque and Lake Gardens and things like that. It was a good way of familiarising yourself with the city.
We actually really liked KL, the transport system was really well organised, with a light railway and a monorail, so it was easy to get around. We found the people friendly and just generally got a good feel for the place. It wasn't as clean or developed as Singapore, but i still felt it had
Singapore's Lionfish Statue
Created by the tourist board, a little odd. a lot to offer.
After a siesta we went into Chinatown to the Central Market building and then onto the Chinatown markets, where the stalls sold fake watches, clothes etc. The police were actually in the markets confiscating the fake goods and arresting the market sellers, pretty crazy! It was fun shopping though, although there weren't quite so many bargains to be had what with the police having clamped down. I think it depended who could afford to bribe them, whether a specific stall was left alone from what we could work out.
On Friday 3rd Feb we went back to the Central Markets and then went onto Merdeka Square, an important place in Malaysian history as it was where they proclaimed independence from the British. There is a big flag pole on the green with the Malaysian flag flying high.
After a bit of an adventure across town trying to sort out bus tickets to Taman Negara National Park for the next day, we went to the National Museum which was interesting and then had a walk around the Lake Gardens. The temperature in KL was around 35 degrees every day, so it was very tiring
sightseeing.
Saturday we got a coach to a place called Jerentut which is the main base for trips into Taman Negara National Park. A pretty non-descript town, so nothing exciting to report from there, we just packed our bags ready for trekking and went shopping to stock up on our food for trekking.
(Dave continues...)
Sunday we got up and headed out to the park, first by bus to a jetty and then onto a canoe-like narrow boat up the Tambling River. The river is wide and surrounded on both sides by jungle-lined banks, similar to the pictures you see of the Amazon on wildlife programs! It was a beautiful journey, interspersed with a few comical moments when people tried to clambour out of the boat for toliet breaks on the way!
Arrived at the National Park's headquarters and found the hide that we had planned to sleep in that night was fully booked, so we decided to spend 3 days there instead. Hired a bit of 1950s camping equipment and headed off in unbearable heat for a couple of hours to the first hide. It was a great experience to walk in jungle, the vegetation
Raffles Hotel
Apparently they shot a tiger under the billiard table once. is very dense and was the first place I'd had to watch my head as well as my feet to make sure we didn't knock ourselves out on fallen trees!
Stopped at the river for a swim before the hide, we foolishly hadn't brought any swimming gear so took a quick look over our shoulders and went skinny-dipping! It was one of the highlights of the trip, swimming surrounded by the jungle and the water was a perfect temperature to cool off.
Got to the hide just in time to avoid torrential rain and ate the backpacker staple two-minute noodles for tea (although the stove was pathetic and they quickly became 30-minute noodles!). A couple from Finland and a guy from Scotland turned up, we waited for a while before going to bed. We saw a civet cat but not much else - we weren't expecting to though, as the hide is close to the park headquarters and most of the animals relocated due to the noisy tourists!
The second day we hiked to the next hide. It was a 6 hour walk in the heat, soaked in sweat and following a trail that was pretty difficult
Slinging it in Raffles
Cliche of cliches, but who can resist? to find! We managed not to get lost, better than quite a few tourists do. Just after we set off, we froze in our tracks when we found a Malaysian Blue Coral snake basking in the sunshine across the trail. It looked pretty mean so we waited for it to pass after backing off. I was elected to go first and as I walked past where it had been, it jumped up and curled it's body in a pretty terrifying manner. We found out later that it is a highly poisonous snake.
Then came the leeches. I had never experienced the little baskets before, but I got more than my fair share that day. They seemed to love me in the same way Gem gets the mosquitos. I had over 20 of them, my legs were dripping with blood and my clothes were soaked too by the time we reached the second hide. It was an interesting experience, after a while it got annoying but the main problem was stopping the bleeding as they inject a substance to prevent your blood clotting. If you're wondering what they look like, they're surprisingly small, black, like a worm with one end
fatter than the other, and sit on leaves on the forest floor groping upwards like a menacing finger trying to grab your feet as you pass.
Go to the hide and met Daniel, a bloke from Sweden that we've been travelling with since then, as well as a Swedish girl he'd met and a couple from Africa. We waited up quite late this time but didn't see anything bar a very noisy squirrel jumping around the hide's roof. We had seen elephant poo (it's big) earlier in the day but none of the grey plodders turned up.
We had been warned about rats and mice at the hide previously, so we took the usual precautions of bagging up our food and hanging it from cord. We went to bed and a few hours later we could hear the vermin running round the hide, along our bunks and across the roof. Suddenley, I heard a rustling. I grabbed my headtorch and looked out of the window down to where our food was suspended, high in the air. The bags were shaking. I gave them a quick shake myself and to my astonishement a mouse shot out of the bag,
Petronas Towers
The highest twin towers in the world... up the string (never seen that before) and into the hide. The bag moved again. A huge rat came flying up, in a panic it jumped across the hide and headfirst into a wall. Needless to say, we didn't have much food left for the next day.
The following morning, we walked out to a resort by the river that had been deserted after a company went bankrupt, a strange rundown area with a ghost town feeling, and hitched a lift with a local down the river to the headquarters. We returned to Jerantut by boat and bus, I was sad to be leaving so soon but at least I got to clean up my bloody legs and arms.
Before we left Jerantut that night, we decided to find an Indian so we could avoid Chinese 'vegetarian' (usually cooked in pork fat). We asked a guy at reception and before we knew it, his Dad had popped round and we were in his car searching for a curry house. We ended up in a tiny food stall at a transport terminal, everything was shut up but the lady at the stall stayed open to cook for us -
our meal cost practically nothing - yet another example of the amazing hospitality and generousity of the Malaysian people.
The following day we headed up to the Cameron Highlands, a hill station exploited by the British as a great place to grow tea and other crops. The temperature was cooler, the hills rolled a little like England and the rainforest was preserved in parts despite the massive environmental damage being caused by vegetable farming, rainforest logging, and tourism.
Over the next two days we visited two tea plantations owned by the famous Malaysian tea company called "Boh" and had cream and jam with scones etc. A bit like the lake district! We walked quite a lot, tried a jungle walk but it wasn't up to much. We met a few new people and walked with Daniel, the guy we'd met in Negara. I was really sad to have to leave so soon but we needed to get a move on and see the rest of South-East Asia!
So on Saturday 11th we caught a bus to Penang, a British trading port on the north-west coast of Malaysia. Saturday happened to be the day of the Indian festival
of Thaipusam, a Hindu festival that is centred around transiting from one temple to another (the exact details depend on the location) where traditionally people 'test' or demonstrate their faith by piercing their bodies and attaching hooks to the piercings, before carrying weight (usually containers of milk or water, sometimes resistance provided by a friend - see photo!) in a masochistic manner. We were in time to see people arriving at their destination, a temple on a hilltop outside of Georgetown, the capital of Penang.
The whole area was cloaked in stalls, vibrant Indian colours, music, food and culture. Everything was vegetarian (as tradition dictates, hurrah!) and we walked to the temple, watching the devotees passing by. It was quite spectacular.
So that's our time in Singapore and Malaysia. Tomorrow we're heading up to Thailand, first to some of the islands in the south, before heading up to Bangkok and beyond...
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auntie sandra
non-member comment
happy to see you both
Hi, Gem and David you both seem to be having the time of your life what an experience it makes me want to go to all the places my self.