Photographic Memories from Singapore, Melaca and KL!

Well this is it for a while at least, the last post. The last set of photos are up.

Back in the UK - The end of a story

Well we're back, home and safe and have been for around 10 days now.

Our last day, we had a true slice of Asia on the way to the airport. A mad taxi ride. He was literally falling asleep at the wheel. It was pretty scary at stages, but it was a true Asia experience. Something that would never happen in the UK.

The time at the airport was OK but by the time we were there and on the flight, we just wanted to be home. It's all over now, can't believe it.

Now it's up to me and Laura to plan our next great adventure - and after something as EPIC as this, it's really going to need to be special to better it.

Photos will be up soon. I'll also be jazzing the blog up a little bit, I've had lots of compliments about how good it was so I'm sure to keep it going for all of our other trips!

The end of a truly epic journey

Day 105 - 07/09/2010 - 23:32 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Well this is it really. A cab is picking us up tomorrow at 9am and taking us to the airport. Today we've seen the KL tower and Petronas towers, all on foot, truly in the style we've been doing this holiday. We didn't leave until gone noon, chilled out in the morning, had a roti and beef rendang for breakfast, which was epic.

The KL tower was awesome and the views from the top were spectacular, particularly of the Petronas towers. We could see our hotel from the tower too which was pretty cool. We spent a long time up there before coming down to have something to eat - roti with dahl (lentil) gravy and a tarik tea for a massive 70p. Bargain! Before that we saw this animal park in the centre, filled with snakes, spiders and monkeys. It was OK, we weren't overly fussed about going but for some reason it was included in the ticket, along with this F1 simulator which sounded good, but in fact was a rubbish video game. Never mind, the tower was good, this was the important thing.

We then walked from there to the Petronas towers, we didn't get tickets as we would have to have been there at 7:15am and this wasn't ideal! We did see the mall on the ground though and also saw the towers in their full glory which was awesome. The heat this afternoon was unbearable though and we soon made our way back to the hotel where we spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool.

We went to the club lounge again at around 6pm and had free drinks, I had a beer followed by a Chivas regal malt. Beautiful although I think Ali poured me too big a measure, was feeling slightly light headed afterwards. Daryl and Ali have not been feeling well today which was a massive shame as they were unable to join us for dinner on our last night. We went to the shopping centre food court, although ate in one of the restaurants there rather than the stalls at a Malay restaurant called Madam Kwan's which served awesome Malay food.

I've been sitting on the balcony a lot this evening, staring at the Petronas towers at night, they are beautiful. I'm going to miss this so much, the Independence and the travelling, the new sights every day. Tomorrow night, I'll be in bed in Bromsgrove, my home town. It shall be strange but I have to go back to reality soon and when I'm filled with such inspiration to work hard to get back out on the road again, now is a good, if a sad time to do so.

Melaca and KL

Day 104 - 06/09/2010 - 23:17 - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Well we're finally here, the end of our trip and only 1 day left in Kuala Lumpur as well as the whole trip. In 2 days time I'll be on a flight home, with Laura and we'll be heading back to Europe and the UK for the first time in 3 months. Looking forward to it now, I'll be taking home memories I'll cherish forever. We've both had such an epic time!

We left early from Singapore yesterday - at around 8:30am, saying goodbye to 5 amazing days in the country, not forgetting Toby, Ali and Daryl's awesome cat who I've lovingly nicknamed Chairman Meow. We had crossed the border within the first hour and were stopping pretty soon after in Malaysia for a cup of tea. Tarik tea to be precise, beautiful, Malaysian tea.

We got to Melaka, our stopping off point a couple of hours later where we had a very nice lunch in a restaurant where Ail and Daryl always go to when they are in Melaka. It was absolutely lovely as always, and we had this really tasty chicken curry with these huge black nuts in it, the inside of which was like a paste. Strange but lovely. We didn't spend too much time in Melaka to be honest, but it seemed like a really nice place! The Dutch windmill in the middle of the town by the river was a particular highlight - I could have all of a sudden been in Amsterdam - awesome.

We then arrived into KL another couple of hours later, at around 5pm. The hotel - which is a 5 star (I've mentioned this already, I'm sure!) is beautiful inside - massive palace like lobby. It's got nice swimming pools and beautiful rooms. We've had our problems though including a couple of problems with our room - blood on sheets and hot tap in the bath not working and when Ali had a problem this morning with hers, she went and complained. The cumulative effect of all three = upgrade! Yay! We've been upgraded to the club rooms. These are essentially the same class of room but with free Internet (bonus as it was a rip off £3 an hour before, which I refused to pay) as well as access to the club house which offers free soft drinks as well as free food and alcoholic drinks (but the latter 2 only at certain times). This is also good though - beer is a rip off here and for 1.5 hours a day I can get it for free! Our balcony now also has a view of the Petronas towers too! Happy days. Just shows that complaining when something is not right pays off, even if it does take a while and is stressful!

Yesterday we didn't do too much - went swimming and then went to the shopping centre down the road food court. Very cheap but nice meal.

Today we had the moving room saga this morning. Before that we had the most epic sized buffet breakfast I've ever seen, there was so much choice it was unbelievable. We then, after those went to the old district of the city - city square, mosques, old colonial buildings and the central market, where we spent 3 hours shopping and hiding from the thunderstorm, Tonight we had a beautiful meal in the hotel's Malay restaurant and also chilled in the free bar before that. I'm now writing this up in our room - free of charge. Looking forward to tomorrow - the last day of this trip as we know it.

Photographic Memories from Thailand and Penang (Malaysia)

Photos from Bangkok, Koh Samui and Penang are now on the photos page! Enjoy!

Prague to Singapore in 97 days

Day 98 - 31/08/2010 - 22:36 - Singapore

We'll we've made it. 97 days later, we've made the whole journey across Eastern Europe and Asia. We had our last day in Penang and then flew from there to Singapore, arriving at 10pm local time last night. What an epic journey and the best part is there still is 7 days left!

Our final day in Penang was OK. We got up early to check out by the stingy time set by tunehotels.com for a 10am check out. We headed to the Botanical Gardens. The bus journey, despite not actually being that far took a whole hour. A complete farce only coupled by the farce that the buses didn't start running until noon and we were there sitting looking like lemons at 11am! Never mind, we got to the gardens by 1pm - after much mad driving by the bus driver (taking wrong turns and being told off by passengers for going down the wrong road. He then dropped us off insisting the gardens were around the corner. As you can imagine, he didn't fill us with hope but the gardens were there!

The gardens were beautiful though and we saw a variety of wildlife and plants. In some places (up in the hills) it felt like we were walking through a jungle - the humidity helped the atmosphere of it too! I was sweating manically! We saw monkeys, big lizards and turtles at the gardens - the monkeys were a particular highlight, some of them had little babies and they weren't shy of humans, allowing me to get quite close to take photos! We left the gardens, not knowing whether we were going to be able to get the bus back - with the madness of the drive there. We walked back to where we were dropped off and literally one minute later one appeared - thankfully! Unsurprisingly, like all journeys in Penang - it took a whole hour to get back!

We got back and walked to the hotel to get our bags, before walking back to the bus station to get a bus to the airport. As we were leaving the hotel we saw Norman again and he walked to the bus station with us and got the same bus (but got off along the way) and we said goodbye once again. I won't give any prizes for how long it took to get to Penang airport - but lets just say it was around the same mark as the other bus journeys we had taken!

Penang on the whole was OK. I liked many things, I disliked others. I liked the multi cultural society of the place and everyone was very friendly. The botanical gardens were also really nice, as were the temple we visited the day before - both were free entry too. I didn't like the poor transport on the island (why did everything take so long?!) and the fact that Penang hill was closed (annoying rather than a particular bad point). It wasn't a bad point, but I didn't appreciate being woken up by morning prayer at 6am from the nearby mosque either, although it was funny. The man clearly couldn't sing and dogs were howling with him! Haha.

We spent most the time at the airport in MacDonald's as they had free wifi there and then we were off - 20 minutes early too - it was totally bizarre but we got in early. The flight was fairly turbulent though which was annoying. Air Asia flights are nice though, their planes are very well maintained and clean which is good when you have a 15 hour flight with them coming up next week! We ended up arriving into Singapore at 21:45 and cleared through immigration without much hassle. As we came through to the baggage reclaim bit I could see through to the arrivals hall through the glass barriers and Ali and Daryl - Laura's aunt and uncle were there waving at us. I had to nudge Laura as she had her eye on the carousel! Our bags were there within seconds, perfect timing and we put them on and headed for the exit where we were greeted by them both.

Until now their hospitality has been fantastic - they've been so kind to us both and have treated us like royalty - we've been spoilt really! We went for beers and chicken satay (a Singapore favourite) as soon as we got there by the water front. They've been only happy to help for everything. Ali today made us a massive fry up for breakfast including M&S bacon and sausages and HP sauce! Delicious! Ali showed us to the metro station which is a short bus ride away and gave us their version of an oyster card with some credit already on it! Very kind. It's a long ride to town on the underground (although it's overground where they live!) but it was worth it! We went on our own and were going to meet up with them both at 6:30pm.

We got off at Orchard Road and walked down the length of it, although we only went into one shopping centre. The view from the top of that was impressive. We went in a couple of shops but didn't buy anything. One particular highlight was a sports shop called Premier football - the only new Premier League shirts they had were the "Big 4" (Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelski) as well as.... you guessed it - Aston Villa! It's not even out in the UK yet, but they had it here - although it didn't have the sponsor on it, which explains the late arrival in the UK!

Anyway, after that we walked through a couple of city parks, a smaller one near the bottom of Orchard road and Fort Canning park which was a very nice park. It's one of the forts the British had to defend Singapore and it's very very tropical - feels like a jungle in some parts yet still holds it's old colonial style - very nice! Ali and Daryl picked us up from here at 6:30 on the dot - efficiency!

This evening we went for Singapore's version of Indian food with Ali, Daryl and a couple of their friends who live out here. After that, the 4 of us went to a micro brewery bar where we had... ALE! Oh my days! It's was beautiful, they brewed their own and I had one called Singapore Pale Ale - very nice! It was however, very expensive, I wouldn't pay for that normally but it was a nice treat! The evening on the whole was very nice!

Like I've said so many times, Ali and Daryl have been wonderful so far in everything they've done - it all of a sudden feels like a very different holiday. I must admit, sitting drinking Tiger's on the river front was very surreal last night - I couldn't quite believe that we were in Singapore, our destination, with Laura's family. Very strange. Very awesome.

Penang

Day 96 - 29/08/2010 - 22:55 - Georgetown, Penang Island, Malaysia

So we've had our full day in Penang today, although it wasn't as full day as it could have been for two reasons - us getting up late and attraction closures! We overslept big time today - no alarm and no breakfast for our body clocks to be tempted by and ended up crawling out of bed at 11am - although to be fair this was 10am the previous day!

After we'd had our pastries bought from the 7/11 on the ground floor we headed towards Penang Hill. No tours, just us and the local public transport. It felt good! We got to the bus station with no problems whatsoever and got on the bus heading for Penang hill (no problem again). We told the bus driver Penang Hill and he said something about it being closed. We still bought a ticket there, as he said there was a temple nearby although had no intention of seeing the temple - purely thoughts of Penang Hill. There was another foreign couple on the bus and when we were told to get off by the driver (as they did too) we asked them if they were going to Penang Hill. They said the same, the driver had told them it was shut. We nonetheless followed signs for it - in the other direction was this impressive looking temple - the one the driver had told us to go to instead. We started walking to the hill when we saw another foreign man walking back towards the temple. We asked him if he had came from the hill. He said he had and that the Funicular railway that saves a 3 hour hike (each way) is closed until next month. We were gutted. Like him, we turned around at that point and headed for the temple. To be fair it didn't disappoint, it was a very impressive Buddhist temple, with lots of water features (complete with fish and turtles) lots of viewpoints and statues, including a massive one from on top of the hill it was perched on. Impressive.

We spent about 3 hours there, it was massive and then headed back to Penang centre. From there we decided to get a bus along the north coast of the island although by then it was getting late and we had no real purpose or want to be there. We stayed on the bus as it passed town after town, including the beach town we'd told the driver we were going to. We stayed on the whole way until we came to a dead end, he stopped and turned around. By then it was just me, Laura and an old, western man who were on the bus. We all headed back to Georgetown. The bus route maps online showed that the bus route went past a nature reserve to a town inland. It didn't do this. Very annoying. It just stopped at a dead end, and turned around. We got chatting to this man on the way back to town. His name was Norman and he was British, although had lived in Australia for most of his life. We found out he had a lot of family in Birmingham, including Bournville. He was a very nice man, very chatty and we got on well with him. Turned out he was staying at the same hotel as us too, the extreme budget one. In the end we ended up going for something to eat with him, at a restaurant just down the road from the hotel, we didn't get back to Georgetown until 7pm. We ate at a local restaurant and the food was absolutely amazing, despite being a little pricey (for Malaysia). The restaurant was beautifully, yet traditionally decorated inside with an old colonial style. We stayed there chatting for several hours as well, about everything and anything - mainly though about the craziness of south east Asia and giving him some places (websites) of information for train travel as well as links to the places we stayed in Vietnam (barring the crap hotel we stayed in Hoi An!)

It was a weird but wonderful last night of our time on our own before heading to Singapore tomorrow night. It kind of epitomised the trip, meeting someone on our travels, sharing experiences with someone new. It's certainly something I will really miss and has been a highlight of the whole travel experience. Our last day on our own tomorrow. By 10pm we'll be in Singapore with Laura's family (barring a plane delay of course). It will be strange being with other people for a longer than one day period!

From island to island

Day 95 - 28/08/2010 - 21:05 - Georgetown, Penang Island, Malaysia

Well we're now in Malaysia albeit briefly. We'll be back to see KL after we've been to Singapore. As I've mentioned earlier, we're now flying, on Monday night at 8:50pm.

Our final full day in Lamai saw us lounge on the beach and also by the pool for the last time. My sunburn was still hurting (and still is now) but when there was cloud cover, I went in the sea for a bit which was really nice and refreshing because it was very hot that day. We were really sad to leave the beach that evening but we want to come back and will do I think. Such a beautiful part of the island. We went back to the pool in the evening, I had no hesitation about going in as the pool is in the shade in the afternoon so just really enjoyed the last pool on the holiday! Wish I was back there now to be honest! That evening we went to get the suit finalised and paid for. It looks really nice and I'm carrying it with me instead of shipping it - it was £30 just to Singapore! Pah. Never mind.

We got up the following day and checked out at 11, before heading to the town centre to post some postcards, buy some food for the journey and check the Internet (the Internet died the previous evening, so I had no idea Villa had lost, again). We got picked up at 12:50 and got dumped at the Raja Ferry port on the other side of the island. A 40 minute wait there, we got onto the boat. Laura and I had a great view over the back of the ship, we gave Samui a proper wave goodbye as we saw it fade in the distance. It was sad but we were looking forward to our stupidly long journey - our last real one this trip. I said it didn't matter how long we spent in each place waiting, it was all the 'final' experience. And it really was. We had to wait another 30 minutes or so at Don Sak pier before a bus picked us off and dropped us off at a random cafe in Surat Thani. We sat with a northern Irish couple and chatted to them for a while, getting stickers with "Train" stuck to us in the process (we were the only 2 going to the train station). They were headed for Krabi along with most others it seemed. We waited for about 45 minutes there before being bundled in a Pick-tuk. I've named this, it's essentially a small pick up truck that's been converted into a tuk tuk. It was powerful and we got bundled into the back with 2 others - both heading to Bangkok by bus. One of them was old Australian man with a long white beard and was wearing a bandana. He was a great character and kept telling me that everything they do in Asia "is all organised" - including the mad driving! It was funny, every Thai person in their car that saw this man just had a huge smile on their face! Maybe we are not so "same same" after all! (The thai way of saying all whites look the same, I actually saw a Thai teenager wearing a t-shirt saying this! The text was conveniently white on a black t-shirt)

Anyway, we got dropped off at the train station at 7pm, 6 hours before our train was due in. The pick-tuk driver laughed when we told him how long we had to wait. It was all organised though - on my end! We ate a meal at a dirty cafe which we had a coffee at when we first arrived at Surat from Bangkok and this time had something to eat. To be fair, it was pretty good and cheap. Unfortunately they shut at 8:30pm so we needed to find something else to do. Luckily, there is a 24 hour Internet cafe on that road and we spend from about 7:45pm to 11pm in there. It only cost 8quid for 2 PC's as well! After that, we went to the 7/11 and got a couple of beers (I drank them both). Strangely enough the 7/11 at Surat train station was open till 12 but I wasn't complaining. We headed to the train station to wait. On the platform near where we were waiting were yet another British couple around our age - both met at Nottingham Trent Uni. We had a chat with them for 40 minutes or so before they got their train north to Bangkok. Our train was 1 hour and 15 minutes late, it didn't come in until 5 past 2 in the morning. Bad times. That said though, the sleeper was good. It was completely different to any other carriage layout for 2nd class we've seen but it was clean and comfortable! The whole carriage was open, but there were 2 seats facing each other on each side of the train, running down the carriage. These folded down and out to make the bottom bunks and the top bunk came from above, much like they do elsewhere. There is only a curtain separating you from the corridor but it worked well and I slept reasonably well.

Customs was pretty good too. The passport control for both Thailand and Malaysia were in Malaysia so you went through the Thai and then the Malaysian one straight after, got back on the train and then we were off. At the Thai one there was a great law about how the King can refuse entry to those who have "hippy" characteristics, such as being dirty! It was funny. Many people took pictures of it and it led to a conversation with yet another British couple. I knew the accent was fairly local this time, turns out they were from Nuneaton. Small world. We rolled into Butterworth 2 hours late, at around 2:30pm, caught the ferry across and then got a taxi for £2.50 to the hotel. It's a nice but very basic hotel. For £5 each per night, I'm not complaining though! This afternoon we just looked around the town a bit, tomorrow we're going to see if we can make our way all the way up Penang Hill!