Malaysia

G'day all

Yeah i'm still alive and kicking just been away from it all lately. Well the first leg of our trip is over and what a leg it was (we were reasonably legless for most of it as well). Anyway after our little jaunt in Thailand we decided to say good bye to the Lady boys and geezer birds and head down to the slightly more conservative location known as Malaysia. Talk about hitting the two extremes, compared to Thailand this place was the epitimy of all that is pure.

Our first destination in this beautiful country was Penang, a small colonial city off the west coast of Malaysia. Very quaint but once you'd taken in the cultural scene there wasn't much else to do, it was maybe a little bit to quiet and for the first time in some time we were the youngest people in the whole town.............worrying!!!!!!! Needless to say we were back on the road before long. Next stop was the Cameron Highlands (a colonial hill station) for me and Kuala Lumpar for Dan who had to meet up with Grania (his girlfriend) who was over for a couple of weeks, the reason for which are non of our concern so i'll move swiftly on.

For me it was the hills where i spent two or three days, trekking through jungles, exploring tea paddies (this place was very colonial) and having tea & cakes with the locals, it was all very civilized. Maybe a little too civilized so i decided to head off to the big city that is Kuala Lumpar to meet up with the other two. I wasn't that impressed with KL as cities go but then again non of the cities i'd been to date were nearly as impressive as Hong Kong, but nevertheless it did have it's moments. For the architects out there and anyone else remotely interested the Patronis Towers are something else, they were in the film entrapment for those who can't picture it.

We didn't stay in KL for too long, we did the rounds checked out the night spots and fuelled up on roti canai's (a very delicious indian bread served with curry which was too dam good for mere mortals) as well as banana leaf curries before heading to the jungle once again. The jungle in question was Tamanegara National Park which to say it was off the beaten track would be an understatement. To get there we had to travel up river on an elongated canoe with an engine for three hours. All you saw as you traversed up this river system was jungle on both sides and every so often you would spot the odd water buffalo on the banks and monitor lizard swimming through the murky water, it was quite a trip. On arriving we decided to go on two day trek through said jungle which turned out to be an interesting experience. The idea was to spend a night in the jungle in a timber hut on stilts and check out the nocturnal wildlife. We didn't however bank on coming head to head with its slightly smaller annoying inhabitants for the duration of the trek namely leeches.

On the first day we set off we were warned about the little gits but took very little notice until we got into the jungle and the carnage began. The little blighters were every where and if you stopped for a minute you would be attacked from every angle. We spent most of the walk when we weren't dying of dehydration and questioning what on earth we were doing here, flicking them off our shoes, checking down our socks and constantly checking that no flesh was on show for them to clamp onto. Except for grania of course who decided to go in shorts, brave girl. Occasionally we would have to stop for long durations and peel off the individuals that had managed to breech the defenses and had clamped themselves onto a vein or two...............it wasn't pleasant i can tell ya. We finally arrived at our destination seven hours later and Dan and I proceeded to strip to our jocks and perform a thorough examination, for unless you had titanium trousers with an access code then you were probably going to get a nasty surprise. Luckily for me the thought of scaling my legs and heading for higher ground was too daunting for the little buggers so they decide to party at my ankles instead, i didn't exactly sleep too well that night.

The next day was a lot easier and more pleasurable and at this point i was beyond caring about the leeches. We got back to the resort and i had one of the best showers of my life, pure bliss but anyway enough of that. We chilled out for the rest of our time there before heading of to a group of islands on the east coast of Malaysia called the Pehentians for some R&R. These islands are by far the nicest islands we have been on to date, the place was gorgeous, the marine life was amazing we spent most of our time snorkelingg off the beach amongst some amazing coral, did a few dives around the surrounding islands and even got to swim with some black tip reef sharks even though we didn't exactly plan to (and that was just snorkeling). It took a bit of time to get back into the water after the first sighting. We even managed to get some under water shots which will be going on the website once we get them back from Grania.

We spent a week in the Pehentians before heading down south and on to Singapore. Our time in Singapore was short and sweet but we did have enough time to check out the Singapore sling in Raffles hotel, the night safari which was quite an experience and undertook a tour of the tiger brewery , which is a blur, as well as meeting up with the young Kath for a few days. I would have liked to spend more time in Malaysia as it was truly an amazing place to visit and the food is far too good in fact i had to leave for the sake of my waistline, that ROTI CANAI is just too good.......in fact it's wrong, anything that good has to be wrong. Then of course there is the satay!!!!!!!!!!!!!! smothered in peanut sauce and of course the fresh fish we got so accustomed to on the pehentians, fresh from the boats. Shark, Barramundi, Barracuda, Grouper, fresh tuna..........................ok that's enough i'm getting hungry got to go and find something to fill this empty void that is my stomach and to stop me salivating unfortunately they just don't do roti canai down under, which is also wrong, all wrong..............it's just not right!!!

Well that's me outta here, duty call

laters people

Phil