More pictures

Just wanted to let everyone know that more pictures are up at our yahoo site. We've got more from Bangkok as well as Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Here's the link again! http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/nicoleella10/my_photos

Perhentian Islands, Malaysia

What can I say about the Perhentian islands? Imagine the perfect, secluded island with the clearest waters. That about sums it up. Secluded, paradise, beautiful. And while the journey to get there and back was about as fun as a trip to the dentist, it was well worth the 3 days we spent there.

There are 2 islands, the small and large island. We opted for the larger one, even though we rarely left our beach. Plus, the smaller one that is closer to the mainland often gets booked up. There are numerous places that offer basic chalets on the beach. Quite a few have dive centres and a restaurant. All we did for 3 days was snorkle, go on a couple of walks and read. The snorkling off the beach was fantastic. I realized on this trip that I've never really snorkled before. This was a great place to start. Not far from the shore there were huge reefs with tons of cool fish. There was no need to take a boat anyway, just walk about 50 meters off shore and you were at a reef. I've never seen such brillant colored fish before, some quite large. We also saw plenty on Nemo fishies - baby nemos too. We saw quite a few cool things, such as a sting ray, crabs, and sea cucumbers. I know for some people it's probably not that exciting, but for me it was fantastic. We snorkled almost the entire day on our last day there.

Not as thrilling was the journey to and from the islands. While there is plenty of accomodation on the islands, it's still not that built up and hasn't really been taken over by large hotels and resorts. To get there, we had to take an overnight train from KL, then a 2 hour taxi ride from the train station to the port and then a 2 hour boat ride on a junk boat to the island, then a quick ride on a small boat to get to our place. It was interesting to say the least. All of the touts kept warning us that the boat left at 9:30. Well, the boat doesn't leave until it's full and that's not necessarily at 9:30. But, part of the adventure is getting to these destinations.
We are back in Thailand now and heading up to some islands, hopefully. It's monsoon season on one side over here so we don't really know how we will fare. But we figured we'd check it out. Despite my feeings about Bangkok, it's nice to be back in Thailand. We've already had some great meals here and last night I ate way more fruit than I should have :)

We got our Chinese visas in KL and are set to leave at the end of the month before the school holidays make it difficult to find a place to stay. It's hard to imagine that we'll be home in a little over 1 month. I'm sure June 28th will come very quickly!

That's all for now! Take care.
Love,Nicole

The journey to Malaysia and Kuala Lumpur

Unknowingly, we decided to make our way by bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur on Labour Day in both Singapore and Malaysia. This is at least the third time we've celebrate Labour day in our 2 1/2 months of travel. Our very 1st day in Perth it was Western Australia's labour day and then we hit it again at our next stop in Melbourne. Not to mention the other public holidays we've encountered along the way.
Note to others making this trip - don't do it on a public holiday! Or if you do, buy your bus tickets in advance. We, of course waited until the day of to get our tickets and there wasn't a ticket to be had until later in the evening. Deciding that it wouldn't be good to arrive so late into KL we took the public bus tot he border and thought it would be much easier to get a bus from there. We were wrong, AGAIN. The bus drops you off at the bus station in Johore Bahru and this was the first sign that we had left the order and neatness of Singapore behind us. The bus station in JB was crazy to say the least. And again, no tickets until very late at night. Mark, however, went out to assess the situation and ended up buying them from a scalper! Yes, a scalper. Not exactly the luxury coach that was promised, but the drivers were good and got us there safely. However, due to heavy traffic, a trip that was supposed to take 4 and a half hours ended up taking six and a half. We still got into KL late. Luckily, we found a place close to the bus station. We've met some really interesting proprietors of guesthouses and hostels throughout this trip and the woman who owns traveler's Palm in KL is no exception. Until 6 months ago, she was a flight attendant for Malaysia Airlines. She's been everywhere they fly and says that it's quite the posh lifestyle as flight attendants are seen as ambassador's from their country and are treated very well. She gave that up to run the guesthouse and meet genuine, not "plastic" people, as she referred to those she would meet. She was incredibly helpful, especially with us arriving so late.
The original plan was to stay in KL for a month while taking Chinese language classes. That didn't pan out so we stayed for about 10 days, but only took a few of those days to explore the city. (I was still sick from Thailand and Mark ended up getting sick as well.) We took time to rest and get better. We did see the touristy things in KL, such as the Menara KL (which is a tower), the Batu Caves and the Petronas (pronounced Petro-nas) Twin Towers. The Menara KL isn't as high as the CN tower, but it came with a really nice audio tour so we actually knew what we were looking at. At the Petronas towers you can go up to the 41st floor skybridge that connects the two towers. We were told that on windy days the bridge can sway about 10 inches. Thank god it wasn't windy when we were there. The towers are 88 floors and the design is inspired by Islamic beliefs. It is quite an impressive sight.
There's also some nice parks and gardens in KL that we explored. We didn't really do too much. We did read the English language newspapers though and you can certainly learn a lot about a place by reading the paper, or should I say the government propaganda. There's no doubt in my mind what's on the agenda of the sultans and king.
Bali has been, by far, the cheapest place we've visited. We were hoping the prices there would hold throughout SE Asia. Thailand is about double the cost of Bali (although still very cheap) and Malaysia seems to be almost double the cost of Thailand. Coming from Bangkok, we were pretty disappointed to find that what you got for your money didn't go too far. For instance, we got some very decent accommodation in Bangkok (attached bathroom, aircon, fridge and tv) for what we paid for the traveler's Palm in KL. Traveler's Palm was ok, but rooms were quite small with only a bed and with a shared bathroom. And there was no sink! We had to brush our teeth in the shower. But, the price we paid for that seemed to be the going rate for accommodation in KL. Then the food in KL, in a word, sucked. We didn't have 1 enjoyable meal there. In fact, we didn't even like eating because we never found anything that great and it was twice what we would pay in Thailand. From what we have discerned, Thais love to eat and expect the food to be good and cheap. That doesn't seem to be the case in Malaysia. We are willing to accept that we just didn't do enough searching, but we did a fare amount. All we had to do was walk out of our door in Bangkok and great food at a really great price was right there. Again, take my opinion with a grain of salt, but Mark and I love to eat and have some sense of what's good and what's not.
Since we weren't staying a whole month in KL we decided to head for some islands. First stop, the Perhentian islands in north east Malaysia.

Singapore and the pink dolphins

We really enjoyed ourselves in Singapore, but it's hard not to. Singapore is, in my opinion, similar to Disneyworld. Everything is neat, clean and orderly - rarely a thing out of place. I'm sure that everyone has heard of the strict laws and fines for thing such as jaywalking and littering. You'll be hard pressed to find litter on the streets (although we did see some) but it's even harder to find any dirt in their subway system. Things seem to run so smoothly in Singapore. People exiting the subway walk on oneside, while people entering are on the other. Need a taxi - Simple just queue at one of the many taxi stands. No need to flag one down. Singapore is definitely THE place for an obsessive-compulsive person who wants to travel to Asia (AKA - me)!
We only had 2 days there so we filled up each day. We visited Chinatown and Little India to check out the scene and search for food. I got a chicken biryani in Little India from apparently the best stand in Singapore. I waited about a half hour in line. I figured it must be great if so many people were lining up. I also loved the freshly squeezed, right from the cane sugar cane juice. And despite what others say, it's not sickingly sweet - it's perfectly refreshing.

We spent the majority of one day on Sentosa island. Sentosa is a big theme park like attraction. It houses various attractions and hotels. Instead of paying one admission price you pay for each thing you want to see. There's also a number of beaches there and while they are nice with bays protecting them from the ocean, it wouldn't rank on my top 10 beah list. The water had a lot of algae in it and it was VERY warm. It wasn't a refreshing way to cool off. We did make it to the southern most point in SE Asia though. Most of the attractions on Sentosa are overpriced and cheesy. One, however, caught our eye - Underwater world and the dolphin lagoon. Underwater world is an aquarium that was described as spectacular by our guide book. Obviously, the writer has never visited any other aquariums. It was ok, but certainly, I wasn't as enthusiastic about it as the guide book. The dolphin lagoon, however, which was included in the admission to Underwater world, was definitely worth it. They put on 3 shows a day in a sectioned off portion of the beach. Plenty of room for these dolphins to swim and play. And yes, they are pink, bubblegum pink. They are endangered due to habitat destruction and fishing nets. The show was great. First, they bring out this huge male dolphin they call "Jumbo." He definitely was a big dolphin. It's surprising he could throw himself in the air so high. We later got our picture taken with him as we were next to him in the water and petting his back. (Mark forked over an extra 10 dollars so I could get near the dolphin.)

So here's the exciting part...They needed volunteers during the show and of course I immediately wanted to get up there. We came extra early so we could get good seats and we ended up in the front row. And...I was picked to be a volunteer! I got to get in the water with one of the dolphins and it kissed me and I got to kiss is back as well as rub its tummy and back and feed it! And at the end, the dolphin waved goodbye to me! It was great! It's something I'll never forget!

After the excitement of the dolphins, we spend the next day checking out the Botanical garden. Again, a very nice and free attraction. It's definitely worth taking a walk through. There's is also an orchid garden that charges a nominal fee to see these beautiful flowers. There are way more orchids than I thought and the Botanical gardens has actually created numerous hybrids. Apparently, I'm just not special enough to have an orchid named after me. The King of Morocco visited 2 days before us and he got his own.

Our stay in Singapore had to come to an end and once again we were foiled by Labour Day. But that's a story for another blog...