South East Asia - The final leg!!!!
Trip Start
Aug 07, 2008
1
17
22
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Kuala Lumpur,
Wilayah Persekutuan,
Malaysia
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Leaving Australia we were looking forward to Asia, expecting nightmare journeys, sweating whilst just standing still, intense sellers, bad stomachs and all that’s typically Asian, plus a dramatic fall in our daily spending. However, Singapore has gone as far away from being Asian as possible, but it was just an entry point to Asia for us, plus you can’t take away from Singapore that they have many different nationalities living together mostly in harmony and its a safe place to live. Singapore has a reputation for being a strict nation, chewing gum is banned and spitting is against the law, having said that, I only saw one group of Police, plus people do still spit, much to my disappointment! If you’ve not been to Asia before spitting is a part of daily life, Asians think nothing of clearing their throat and spitting the contents right out in front of you, some can’t even stop themselves when they are indoors, the mind boggles of who started the spitting craze off and how they don’t see how gross it is
Clarke Quay Singapore
! With Singapore being more western than Asian, we weren’t going to get the impact on our budget, its an expensive city. Our accommodation options were limited, with the backpackers not coming up trumps for us, so we took a hotel on the outskirts of the city. We didn’t expect that our hotel would be a brothel though, which it definitely was, so it felt a little seedy, but it was in a ‘ok’ area. Having said that, we made sure we didn’t get back too late at night, as we were the only tourists around so we attracted a lot of attention. Brothel aside, there was a tube stop within 10 mins walking distance, so the hotel served its purpose for our short stay here, as we wanted to move onto the ‘real‘ Asia as quickly as possible. Speaking of the tube system it was efficient and easy enough to navigate ourselves around the city. So, how did we fill our days in this expensive city, well we spent one day at the zoo and as zoos go it was of a pretty good standard, but no match for the pinnacle - Australia Zoo. It stood out for some of its animals being allowed to free-range to a certain extent. We could walk through an area that had fruit bats hanging within touching distance and lemurs jumping in front of your nose. The most impressive area was the free-ranging organ tans, they swing from the trees above your head and don’t come down to the ground, as there are electrical wires on the trees if they come too far down
White Tiger at Singapore Zoo
. They run various shows/talks on the animals, one where the animals were part of the show, the best part was the monkeys again swinging around the arena, even if the show was cheesy to say the least.Another day we went to The National Museum of Singapore, which is housed in an impressive building and as part of the entry you get an audio tour. We spent hours here and we could have done with more time, the museum takes you through the history of Singapore, focusing a lot on local peoples stories, which made it one of the most interesting museums we‘ve been too.
Another key area of central Singapore is called Clarke Quay, a glossy restaurant area set on the river, it had numerous large bars and restaurants competing against one another with different, sometimes weird themes, for example, one was designed like a hospital, so you could sit in a wheelchair whilst enjoying a glass of wine, it was empty at the time of passing!
Worth a brief mention is Singapore’s Chinatown and Little India, which we checked out one day
Cute Orangutan
. Chinatown was a little flat at the time of visiting, but that might have been due to the rain, but Little Indian definitely had the nicest feeling to it of all the areas we’d visited in the city, with its small streets, cramped shops and makeshift businesses on the curb.Within a few days, we were saying goodbye to our brothel and on our way to Malaysia . We were surprised by the quality of coach we took to Malaysia, it was a comfy small coach with large reclining seats, so we were a bit like kids on Christmas morning but we reminded each other not to get used to it. We were on our way to Melaka in peninsular Malaysia, so called as Malaysia also has part of the island of Borneo. For those of you that paid attention to our list of destinations before we left home, (go to the top of the class if you did) Borneo was on there, but for various reasons, too many to go into when we are this behind on our blogs, we decided we would leave it on the ’To Do’ list. We had no problems crossing the border into Malaysia and arrived in Melaka after about 4-5 hours, going straight to our first choice guest house, which had room at the inn. On the way our taxi driver went over a roundabout on the wrong side of the road and at last we felt like we were in the ‘real’ Asia. If your wondering how we sort our accommodation out, well, if we think we would benefit from having something booked, because we are turning up late or we would have been travelling for a long period, we try to book ahead
Orangutan hanging about above our heads
. If not, we note a few favs and see if they have availability when we get there, doesn’t always work out, but so far we haven’t had too much trouble doing it this way. Our guide book had suggested that china town in Melaka had a bed bug problem at the time of writing, so we avoided china towns accommodation, a little paranoid???…….. nope, a girl arrived at our guest house and asked us if it was ok as the place she was staying had bed bugs! Melaka has just been given world heritage status, as it used to be a big trading port in its day and was in the process of improving some of it sights. The town has been heavily fought over between the 15th- 17th centuries due to its important trading location. It changed hands from the Dutch to the Portuguese and then finally to the Brits until independence in the fifties. Whilst here we took in the sights by foot as everything was close by, here’s a quick summary; The shell of St Paul’s Church built by the Portuguese which overlooks the Straits of Melaka, the remains of an old fort again Portuguese built, Chinese temples and a replicate sultans palace, a sultan could be likened to a King
Can I join the show?
. The town was a little quiet although we’d chosen a room that backed onto the nosiest road with an outdoor restaurant which was an all night affair, with a blaring TV, so I’d often wake to the sounds of screams of someone being hacked to death in the late night horror movie!
Speaking of noise pollution Melaka also has a funky selection of tuk-tuks aimed at tourists, they are all brightly coloured and often playing loud music, which they seemed to think would attract our business, most amusing of all, the music was often heavy rave music!
China town was very quaint, and unspoilt by anything too modern, but disappointingly and surprisingly didn’t have much going on in the evening. Chinatown is the place to go if you are wanting a beer in Malaysia, as it’s a majority Muslim country, so alcohol is not readily available. There wasn’t a great selection of restaurants in the town and whilst we went to have a look at the outdoor food hall with intentions of eating with the locals, without English descriptions of the food, it would have been a bit pot luck what we got, so went elsewhere
You thought your nose was big?
. This became a bit of a trend throughout Malaysia and whilst you’ll see I’ll sing its praises as it rated highly with me, a bit of help with interpreting the local food would have been nice. All in all Melaka was a nice introduction to Malaysia, the people were friendly and it was a taste of what was to come, on a few occasions the locals would shout ‘hello’ to us from long distances or slow down whilst passing in their cars, just to say ‘hello’.
On leaving Melaka, we got into the taxi with an eccentric driver who did impressions all the way to the bus station, so I was glad when we arrived, as I had face ache from trying to laugh at all his impression so not to hurt his feelings. I did tell him a small white lie, I suggested he should go on the ‘Malaysia’s Got Talent‘, assuming they had one, so if he ends up on the tv, it might be my fault.
So, where was next on our hit list, well it was the Capital Kuala Lumpur. It was just a couple of hours, further up the west coast, but no luxury coach this time! First impressions, busy, busy, busy! We had already chosen our preferred hotel based on online reviews, so headed straight there avoiding all the touts. It was a good pick, with really friendly staff and a good location. Having already explained the issue with trying to eat traditional Malay food, we ate mostly in Chinatown whilst here, which was a stones throw from out hotel
The lemur stays still just long enough
. This is where our sweet and sour chicken addiction began, lets just say it’s the best we’ve ever tasted and was pretty consistent throughout Malaysia. Unlike Melaka, Chinatown had a good atmosphere in the evening, with lots of people watching to be done and is filled with stalls. Speaking of shopping, I made a few enquiries on prices of goods and without even starting to barter with them they brought the price down instantly, they were almost bartering with themselves, it happened several times and we were a little taken a back by their approach. Typically, still being several months from coming home at this point, I wasn’t able to go off for a shopping spree and take advantage of the one way bartering. Apart from Chinatown our other favourite place whilst here was the Petronas Towers. Its free entry, but you have to get up very early in the morning to queue for the free tickets that they kindly give out every day. Yes, its just a building, but its pretty attractive as buildings go, with its shiny steel coating. It used to be the worlds tallest building,but it is now only the second tallest buildings in the world and will soon drop further down the tallest list with new taller buildings under construction around the world. Unfortunately, you only get to go to the 41st floor bridge that connects the two towers, the towers have 88 floors. I could tell you more, but I’ve lost the leaflet that tells me anymore!KL doesn’t have lots of amazing attractions, beside Petronas Towers its got a large number of other attractive buildings of mixed architecture, as well as a large park, so it makes for a cheap day out. Check the photos out to see what we saw.
Next time, we’ll cover off nightmare road and boat journeys, huge storms, swimming with turtles, the friendliest town ever and a train journey of 22 hours! See Ya!
