Malaya & Singapore 1999
Heading back to the mainland from the Island paradise in the Gulf of Thailand, we headed by bus for the town of Suratanai, a scuffy town with a railway through the middle of it which is why we were there except the train was to leave six hours after we arrived, at 2am, never mind soon we were on the overnight Bangkok to Butterworth Express where we got off at 1pm the next day. Now Butterworth is on the main land of north west Malaya and was built up in a gastly manner but our purpose was to get to the island of Penang. No problems getting the ferry across the bay and arrving in Georgetown. Now without going on about the history of this place, it certainly had the genuine old China Town part of it, with the old ricketty shops and hotels. Catching a rickshaw to this really old sweaty hotel because it was cheap, was not the best move we ever made.
After two nights we just had to get something with at least a fan, which we did.
Ok, off to the top of the highest mountain by cable car, something world famous about it, perhaps it is the longest or highest or steepest, anyway damn interesting.
Looking over the city of Georgetown then visiting the avery and some factastic parrots - god this sounds just like a typical tourist log. Back down and a wander around town then off on the bus to another town on the west coast about 100km further south.
Melaka, another old town set up by the Portuguese then taken over by the Dutch then the English of course, as well as the rest of the country. Really hot weather by this stage but we soldiered on around town and checked out the slums and back streets, rivers and rats. Lots of history around and yes yet another great education.
The usual shops with fantastic cloth, some pretty unusual rickshaws which, by the time all the gold and bits are tacked on it is surprising they are not too heavy to cycle. Oh yes and the old gold antique plaza's. There certainly must be some money around.
The Back streets of Singapore show a different side
What happened to Kuala Lumpur where we spent a few days on three occasions, oh thats right, I forgot to take any movies of it so hence no photos. It must have had something to do with the fact that we used KL to organize the next move and to buy tickets and things. It was both very modern and also very shambled and a traditional chinese mix and extremely busy with traffic & people everywhere, anyway here is Singapore! A real kick in the guts reaction when simply going accros the one mile channel seperating Malay from this modern South East Asian City of three and a half million. One can sort of see why they broke away from the confederation of Malaysia. Still like all other western styled cities, it was the usual 'Boring' by comparison with the third world. We did meet up with Tom & Barbara who were there to present Toms products.
A huge Indian population and an area called Little India and many of these intricate shrines. Apart from a quick excursion to the Gold coast of Australia to meet up with our daughter & grand children for a couple of weeks, it was back to Kuala Lumpur for the third time and away we go again, overland that is, back by train for sixteen hours, all the way to Bangkok, to catch a flight to Nepal.