Kuala Lumpur

We decided to take a local bus to Melaka Sentral, rather than splash out RM20 on a cab, though this only just paid off as we made our coach with seconds to spare. The two hour, Easter Sunday trip to KL took place under grey skies and heavy rain. We arrived, had a KFC (we were starving) and jumped on the underground and then the monorail which whisked us to the center.

A five minute walk took us to a hostel I’d seen on the internet called Green Hut, where we dumped our stuff and walked two minutes along the hazardous pavements to the main street, Biltang walk. We browsed around some of the new massive air-conditioned shopping centers, including one where there were five stories of just electrical shops (which were similarly priced to home).  

The high street was a jumble of lights, naturally the golden arches, along with large lcd advertising screens, colourful shop fronts, cars and mopeds whizzed by cutting up motorists and people alike. We ate in the food court of a large shopping centre recommended to us by the receptionist of the hostel next door. There were heaps of outlets selling food from every Asian cuisine, we shared Hong Kong duck with glazed chicken with rice, soup and dumplings for less than £3 pp. Afterwards, I returned Rob’s earlier Easter present of a dairy milk by buying him some donuts and myself a tiramisu, for ludicrous prices. After browsing some of the clothes shops above the food court, Rob bought a new Nike T shirt and we headed off onto the humid streets. 

A twenty minute walk through unlit roads took us to the city’s top attraction, and up to 2004 the world’s tallest buildings, the Petronus Towers. They were spectacular, lit up in white, accessed via a grand fountain laden walkway. Oddly I just didn’t think they seemed ‘that’ tall-I think it may just be their shape. We took advantage of a few tourist free seconds to get some nice pictures before heading inside. The inside was another flash shopping centre which we only stayed in for a moment or two to have a look (it began closing ten minutes later any way). Heading back to the hostel we saw the premiership playing in the sports bar next door which we watched before hitting the hay.

Petronus Towers

Shopping Centre inside the Petronus Towers

Watching the Premierleague(Arsenal v Bolton)

Easter Monday was spent seeing the rest of the city, walking through the backstreets with their crumbling tower blocks, run down cafes and rubbish laden streets(in contrast to the clean western style glass and metal built structures on the main roads) until we reached central market. This was a clean air-conditioned building(I imagined it to be a proper Spitalfields style market) with permanent stalls in where for £1 we had our feet bitten by fish (looks like a scene from piranha) which removed the dead skin then headed on to National Square where Malaysia gained independence in 1957. For the centre of a nation, this was a bit shoddy, the grass was patchy and the area wasn’t particularly clean.

Behind the scenes- life in the 

back streets

Eaten by Fish

National Square

 We continued our walk, heading south parallel to the main highway, checking out the National Mosque, before heading into the impressive and interesting national museum. Here we ate and then caught a 40p metro train north where we headed up the KL tower from which we got a great view of the city. This is the second highest building in KL (of course it would have been nice to go up Petronus, but for this you had to turn up at 0830 in the morning and hope you got a ticket), and unlike Petronus looked very tall.

National Mosque

Malay Armour in the Museum

KL tower

Petronus as seen from the KL

That evening we again ate in the food court at the Pavilion (I spent £4 on cakes afterwards which in Malaysia is a lot of food) before returning to the hostel.

We booked our next few nights in Malaysia, and headed off to the tea plantations of the Cameron Highlands from where I write this. 

Moustache in Melaka!

We thought Singapore was cheap until we reached Malaysia, our first night in the buzzing port town of Melaka cost each of us £3 for a private twin room.

We spent our time there checking out the many historical buildings in the centre, including a still used 16^th Century Chinese temple, an old fort from the days of the Portuguese occupation(not used) and a giant life sized replica of a Portuguese Caravel(a giant museum explaining the history of Melaka).

We also wasted a few hours walking to a mosque only to not be let in(we should have grabbed a cab). In the same breath we also visited the other side of the city, the modern glass shopping centre where we compared the prices to back home, many brands(Nike Levi and Lee) were disappointingly not that much cheaper(however a KFC meal costs just £1.20).

The small town came alive at night with a market down the main street of the prominent Chinese district. The town awoke, with the jingling lights and booming pop music of pedal rickshaws whizzing tourists about, bright lights of the street entrance and flashing beer signs above every bar on the side streets and the smell and sizzle of the street food (Malaysian pork sausages, dim sims, dried Chinese chicken meat which looked like greasy bacon and satay chicken among many others). The place was heaving with people, locals mixed in with the odd easy to spot tourist, people selling all sorts of goods for next to nothing including strange sandals with internet companies printed on them, pets and iced tea (I grabbed a wallet for RM(ringgits) 10 about £2). It was great that prices were displayed everywhere with no bartering going on(ie being western meant you weren’t getting bumped).

 

Dancers performing at the night market

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We ate in a restaurant packed with locals on the main street for £3 total including drinks (for the two of us) with a really spicy noodle soup with eggs and pork the main dish, very tasty but overly hot.

 

 

We spent the second of the two nights watching the premiership in one of the bars(beer is expensive compared to everything else still around £2 per bottle) before, after another hot night in the un-airconditioned room, catching a 30p local bus to the station and heading for Kuala Lumpur. 

Two Days in Singapore

We spent two nights in Singapore. The city is as spotless as every geography text book says, the inside of every building and metro train gleamed and the streets were generally spotless. The city is multicultural, with Arabic, Indian, Chinese and Colonial sectors- all of these plus Malays are present on the incredibly efficient metro (MRT). Our day walking around took us through the Arab district with its rug sellers and Turkish cafes, before removing our shoes and seeing a Hindu temple in Little India and eating a tasty curry(as nice as we’ve had sine being away) for just £3.

The Main Mosque in the Arab Disrict

 

Hindu Temple in Little India

Curry

 

We saw the CBD with its skyscrapers, not as modern and ‘glassy’ as Australia’s, with the odd spectacular building such as these flats with communal sky gardens linking them and three skyscrapers upon which is a giant sky deck. The colonial district contained the white stoned St Andrews Cathedral among other buildings, though British influence didn’t seem as strong as I thought(the biggest example was actually the fact that everything was written in English and everybody spoke it).

Skyscrapers with a giant roof garden on the top

Flats in the South of the city with communal roof gardens linking each block

The place was very modern (the excellent quality of cars on the road, heaps of glass shopping centers and number of flashy smart phones on the MRT indicative of this), people didn’t try and haggle you for cash and being a westerner didn’t mean you stared at like an alien. The only minor gripes were that it was really humid, you sweated buckets walking about and there was only one tourist information point in the city which was far to the west, even though the city maps said there were others. We turned up to the central station where a bloke said the computers didn’t work so we couldn’t book the train out for the next day- in the end after a bit of a hunt we managed to sort our coach out to Malaka.

In the evening, we went to Chinatown, eating noodles on the street under Chinese lanterns with Alex Paull(an old friend of mine from Uni who has been traveling South East Asia) before having some tiger beers in the colourful expat area, located next to a canal containing a collection of bars under a canopy of lights(with a weirdly shaped air ventilation system which nobody seemed to notice).

The odd ventilation system

Chinatown

There were some interesting and weird places including a bar where drinks are given in syringes and drip bags and another where patrons sit in wheelchairs to drink (don’t think that would be allowed in England). 

People sat with their own beers along the canal, while street performers and ice cream sellers plyed their trade. A colourful evening. The next day we said goodbye to Alex(who was at our hostel) and jumped on a coach for Malaka. 

Sailing Whitsundays and Cairns-The End of Australia

The last trip in Australia took place cruising round the Whitsunday islands and snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef over three days and two nights. After a day in Airlie beach, we rose to beaming sunshine, departed our hostel, and lugged 30 beers and our rucksacks down to the marina where, with around 25 others, we boarded our boat, Apollo. We were last on the boat, which brought with it a stroke of fortune as we each managed to grab double beds in the communal cabin(everyone else had a single or shared double with a friend). 

 

We motor sailed for 30 minutes till we reached our first destination, Luncheon Bay where, after kitting up in a jelly suit(wet suit which stops jelly fish stings) and the usual snorkeling kit we were taken ashore in batches by a launch. The underwater scenery was spectacular, weaving through literally hundreds of fish of all shapes and sizes and daintily swimming under coral shelves so as not to damage them. The eye was always scanning for yet more exciting creatures-sharks, turtles, rays and larger fish.

 

Snorkeling meant time raced by each day as we followed the route in the picture, pulling up on different, forest covered islands and seeing new creatures at each site. The only interlude to our daytime snorkeling, aside from the brief journeys between each site(mainly by motor as there was barely any wind the whole time), was a trip on the second day to what is according to lonely planet is the second best beach in the world. We felt something spectacular was awaiting us, and, whilst admittedly it was beautiful, I felt ive seen better on my trip so far.

 

In the evenings, everybody sat around relaxing with a few drinks, a nice change from the ‘lets get smashed’ attitude of all the tours we have been on thus. Yet again blessed with sunshine for the whole trip (we have been so so lucky- others we have met coming down the coast have had both their Whitsunday and Fraser Island trips ruined by heavy rain), we were able to see this wonder at its finest. The trip must also be remembered for the food, the few days being my best consecutive days of eating since living in Melbourne. Every meal was lush- be it chicken with gammon,  salad, stuffing and potato salad or creamy chicken with rice and salad- it was always hot, healthy and very tasty. We all ate on the deck above. The other trips have had nice food but this was quality, the staff were really good as well, being cool and friendly when needed, yet discreet when not (no one in your face!).

We met some nice people on board, two English lads Aly and Simon from Leeds  who we met briefly canoeing a few weeks back, some exaggerated Americans, an Irish girl Jill who we had a bit of English Irish banter with, a fanatical Norwegian Man United fan, and dangerous Dave(a friendly but very lightweight(hence the name) English bloke who let me take the underwater pictures he had taken above).

We went out on our final night in Airlie beach with everybody, barcrawling around and bumping into some familiar faces we met on the way up the coast. An irritating 11 hour coach journey took us to Cairns the next day where after a deep nights sleep we spent our last day on the internet (I actually just wondered around trying to save all my photos from my virus infected laptop) and swimming in the free public pool.