Singapore

The final stop on our travels is Singapore. We began with a visit to the botanic gardens (well no city visit is complete otherwise!). There were some lovely lakes filled with turtles and lilypads and plenty of tropical trees and flowers. The highlight was the orchid garden though, where we saw hundreds of beautiful orchid varieties and were even lucky(?) enough to bump into Maggie Thatcher.

One of the lakes in the gardens

A few of the orchids

Margaret Thatcher (we jest not!)

After our stroll round the gardens we went to the colonial district and saw lots of old buildings and statues, including one of Sir Stamford Raffles (founder of modern Singapore).

Sir Stamford Raffles (check out that tropical rain!)

The Merlion, mascot of Singapore

In the evening we felt obliged to head to the Bar & Billiard Room at the famous Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling. We had intended to go somewhere slightly less classy and expensive for dinner but Matt got a sniff of the buffet dinner and we somehow never left. Oh well, with 8 courses we definitely got our money's worth (it was very yummy too, especially the desserts)!!

Claire with her Singapore Sling, invented at the Raffles

Now we just have a few hours left then time for the long flight back home. See you all soonish :-)

Malacca

Our final stopover in Malaysia was in the historical city of Malacca, which was home to Portugese, Dutch, British and Japanese colonial masters and has been the home of lots of chinese people for centuries.

The only remaining part of the portugese fort, A'Famosa

The main attraction to Malacca though was the beautiful old Chinatown, full of century-old buildings and old chinese blokes trying to flog you trishaw tours. There was a chinese temple on every corner and the smell of incense filled the air. It was like stepping into a whole different world and well worth the visit.

The interior of one of the temples, I haven't a clue what any of it means though

Pulau Tioman

From Taman Negara we zipped our way down the east coast to a beautiful tropical island called Pulau Tioman. Staying in a hut just yards from the sandy beach and surrounded by palm trees, we tucked into freshly caught barbecued barracuda as the sun set over the ocean on our first evening. The next day we ran inland, up over the hill and down towards the village on the undeveloped far side of the island. Those who haven't experienced tropical heat won't realise quite how hard it is to run for two hours in temperatures of over 30 degrees and humidity of 90% (and don't forget the humungous hill!)

Post-run, we found something a litlle more relaxing to do. There is a coral reef just metres off the beach in Pulau Tioman, and for the cost of snorkel hire (about 50p!) you can see all sorts of brightly coloured tropical fish, evil looking spiky sea urchins and even the odd turtle (very cool!). Unfortunately, we have to return to England, or we would have had longer to lie back and enjoy the island and the snorkelling, maybe next time!

Taman Negara National Park

We spent a few nights in a jungle village just across the river from the national park. Unfortunately Matt was a bit poorly so he spent most of the time lying in a hammock reading Harry Potter while Claire went across the river to do some exploring.

Matt has a well earned rest

View from one of the BIG hills that Claire climbed ALONE!

Batu Caves

Due to a slight mishap involving passports (wasn't my fault, I didn't lose them, honest!! - Claire) we were forced to return to KL. After being pleasantly surprised by the lack of queuing at the embassy we headed north of the city to the Hindu shrine at Batu caves. There were lots of statues everywhere including some very big ones, and the caves themselves were pretty huge.

There were also lots and lots (and lots) of monkeys, including some cute baby ones:

Penang

Next stop was Penang Island, the oldest British settlement in Malaysia. This obviously means that it is jampacked with colonial sights so we went for a stroll and saw a few of them...

The largest cannon at Fort Cornwallis, the old British military base in Georgetown

This one's for Gibbo

In the afternoon we decided to sample some more hashing and joined one of the Penang chapters for their weekly run and social gathering. We picked a good week as it was someone's birthday and they cooked dinner for everyone - some authentic Malay cooking, yummy :-)

Cameron Highlands

We escaped the heat of tropical Malaysia for a few days and travelled up to the Cameron Highlands, a former colonial hill station with lots of tea plantations and strawberry farms - all very civilised :-) We went on the obligatory trip to one of the tea estates and sipped some of the local brew whilst looking out over the stunning countryside:


On the way back from the tea estate we stopped off at a 'butterfly' farm and made a few new friends....


Finally, we stopped off to make a quick phone call:

Kuala Lumpur

So we finally departed Borneo for Peninsular Malaysia and our first stop was the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. KL is a very modern, developed city with its own underground trains, shiny financial district, upmarket shopping centre and, of course, the tallest buildings in the world, the Petronas Towers.

The Petronas Towers, tall.

Little India and Chinatown were our first port of call, both to see the sights (Including the Hindu temple below) and track down some Premiership football. Unfortunately, Spurs lost :-( but watching Premiership football in a Reggae bar with a Bob Marley soundtrack in SE Asia is a once in a lifetime experience!

A Hindu Temple in KL's Little India

The next day we went to the Lake Gardens looking forward to seeing some nice orchids, hibiscuses and deer...but they were all closed for renovation . Nevertheless, we saw Malaysia's National Mosque and the gardens themselves which were really quite a beautiful interlude in KL's jungle of concrete, steel and glass.

The next day we went up the KL Tower and the Petronas Towers, getting some fantastic views of the city...

The National Stadium as seen from the KL Tower

Afterwards, we went to do what the whole visit to KL had been about, lunch at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel (v v posh) and a taste of durian pancakes (durian is a Malaysian fruit infamous for its awful smell but fantastic flavour). The pancakes were lovely, but durian is definitely an acquired taste.

Kuching City Hash Harriers

We've enjoyed our time in the Borneo jungle so much that we decided the only appropriate way to spend our last afternoon in the country was to join the Kuching Hash Harriers for a run through the jungle. We were picked up at our hotel in the early afternoon for the journey out to the mountains near the Indonesiam border, for which 4WD was an absolute necessity!! An hour and a half later we arrived slightly bumped and bruised at a tiny village where about 100 crazy people were standing around preparing for the run. We then set off for a 2 hour run/scramble through the jungle, following a paper trail which had been laid earlier in the day by the 'hare'. Navigating lots of slippery steps and muddy slopes was hard enough but then you also have to contend with several false trails leading to big paper crosses, and then time spent running along trails with no paper hoping that you stumble across the correct route, all the time dreading the cries of 'on-on' from people on another trail which means that they have found the correct route! It wasn't all bad though as you could always hang around at the junctions letting other people do the hard work of finding the trail ;-)

We made it back to the village safely but somewhat soggy and muddy. Unfortunately the beer truck hadn't turned up but we headed back to a cafe for some well earned dinner and refreshments. As we were visitors we had to introduce ourselves to the group and were forced to down some beer....then we lost a darts game and were forced to down some beer.....it was quite a merry night and lots of fun. We also managed to turn up on a free t-shirt night so came away with a good souvenir!

Kuching

Our final few days in Borneo were spent in Kuching, Malay for cat, and they really do like their cats there - cat statues and souvenirs everywhere!!
On our first day we went out to the Kubah National Park and trekked 4 hours through the jungle to the Metang Wildlife Centre. The walk was great fun if a bit hot amd sticky, we had our first leech encounter(s) of the trip so now we feel like proper jungle explorers. The wildlife centre was good too, they do some rehabilitation work and we got to see lots of native animals including some big scary crocs, porcupines and more orang utans.

The intrepid explorer!

Doris, unfortunately too humanised to be successfully rehabilitated back to the wild

In Search of Longhouses...

Our next stop was deep into inland Borneo, along the Batang Rejang river in the small town of Kapit. It was nice to experience some real Malaysian life away from the major tourist spots and we had hoped to journey further upriver to visit a traditional tribal longhouse. Unfortunately we weren't able to get anything organised so we didn't get to go and sample some local tuak (rice wine homebrew!. On the plus side we did find some lovely places to eat and soaked up a bit of culture at the museum and raja fort.

Niah Caves

We almost didn't make it as they'd stopped running the bus that we were planning to take but thanks to the local taxi touts and a chance meeting with some friends from our jungle experience we were able to get ourselves a good deal for the trip from Miri (in Sarawak) to the caves. There was then a treacherously slippery boardwalk to negotiate before we made it into the caves but they were pretty big and impressive (and very very dark) so it was worth the effort. On the way back along the boardwalk to our accommodation we got caught in a tropical rain storm and can honestly say we have never ever seen so much rain!

View from The Great Cave

In the evening we walked to the nearby town of Batu Niah which was refreshingly empty of tourists. We sampled some Chinese rice beer and then walked back by torchlight through the jungle!! We saw lots of fireflies on the way which was pretty cool but then some impressive thunder and lightning started followed by more rain so it wasn't all good :-s