South East Asia 2006

Well its been a little while since I've had cause to post here but as you may have guessed from the title of this post I've made it to South East Asia!! :)

My boyfriend who works out of Asia has asked me to join him over here. We've just spent 10days in Malaysia & are now in Singapore for a few weeks as he has training here.

Malaysia was great!! Also very cheap which I tend to like too :D

We started off in Singapore. I flew in on a Wednesday evening (13th Sept 06) & Mark flew in a few hours later. The Thursday was spent getting taxi's around different places then deciding it would be good idea to get a start moving into Malaysia.

After getting a taxi to one of the major bus stations & finding out there were no buses to Malaka, Malaysia, & going oops - maybe we should have checked that out... We caught a local bus for $2.40sing across the boarder to Johor B... (JB, If you've ever read my post before you'll know I can't spell). Catching the local bus was an experience, considering we had no idea where we were going. As it was a local bus, it was crammed packed full of locals which I'm sure used the boarder crossing as a time trial for a sprint race ;) What 'we' didn't realise is that when you get off the bus if you don't rush through to exit Singapore customs you miss the bus... We only had to wait 15 min or so for the next bus, but realised why the locals have perfected the sprint to an artform.

So Singapore was exited & on to the causeway of no man's land between Singapore & Malaysia. Then comes the call of "all off". We tried to ask if we get back on the bus once we go through Malaysian customs but didn't really get an answer. The driver just pointed to the tickets & said keep and we deduced he didn't speak much english & thought we'd probably see the bus on exiting. Which we didn't,lol. Going through customs my backpack was to wide to go through the machine so the agents were like "ah, don't worry" asked where we were form & gave condolences re: Steve Irwin.

So standing on the Malaysian side of the boarder & not seeing the bus... What does one do when you don't know where you are, don't speak the language & forgot to get any money changed before going across the boarder...? Follow the crowd :D So down an escalator & through a dark & dirty underpass coming up the other side, still following the crowd & getting offered taxi rides (but no money...) I saw a money changer changed some money then we were all set to catch a taxi & asked a guy to take us to some budget accommodation, luckily he was honest & said turn left & low & behold we were in the city already, lol. We found a cheap hotel, clean enough with a shower & basin in the room but no toilet, oh & no windows... It had Air-con & you can't really complain, a double room, for under $20au a night.

What we didn't realise is that tourists don't really stop in JB. Supposedly it has a reputation... We didn't have a problem but it does explain why we got a lot of looks :)

Only one night in JB then Thursday morning we jumped on a train to take us close to Malaka. Mark decided on the first class seats. The train ended up taking about 6 hours, who would have thought that a train takes longer than a bus!

Anyway have had enough of writing for now, I wasn't going to write such a comprehensive blog just a 'we went here & there' but looks like I imparted a bit more info.

We spent 3 nights in Malaka, 1 night in KL, 2 nights in the Cameron Highlands, 2 nights in a FLASH hotel in Penang (Mark also took me to a 5 star restaurant, NZ Steak -YUM!), then 1 night on the bus (9hr) back to Singapore.

Will expand a little later :)

Friday 29th September 2006 10.55am