Melaka

If you take a bus two for two hours south from Kuala Lumpur, you’ll find the costal town of Melaka. It’s a pretty little place – nominated as a world heritage site only one month ago – and therefore has big pseudo-Chinese gate advertising boards stuck up all over town to celebrate! Very traditional!

We only expected to stay here a night or two, but got off to a bit of a bad start. Our lovely Rough Guide placed the bus stop quite central to town on the map, but unfortunately for us it was wrong by more than 3km. So we trekked, rucksacks and all, from miles to the north of town before finally getting to our hotel. And as it seemed a nice place (and we fancied passing out for the afternoon) we thought we’d stay a night or two more.

Melaka has the distinct feel of a cross between Louang Phabang and Macau. It’s a small colonial town first developed by the Portuguese, but then taken over by the Dutch, and finally by the British. Before going to full Malaysian control again. So it has weirdly European buildings in places, ruined churches and forts, all surrounded bys distinctly Asian regions – there’s a particularly nice China Town for instance (which is where our hotel is). Altogether a quiet, sleepy place - nice for a few days rest and relaxation. Our hotel has been great too – it has a piano in the lobby which guests are allowed to use. This is the first time we’ve seen a useable piano in a hotel in all our travels, so Gary took full advantage and gave two brilliant performances – especially considering he a) didn’t have music and b) hasn’t played in over 6 months!

Anyway, now we’re moving on again, another early start (groan), across to the East Coast of Malaysia. We plan to spend the next week in Pulau Tioman, an island 2 hours by ferry away from the mainland. It hasn’t really got any roads, and so the only way to get from village to village is by walking or by boat. And as we’ll probably be staying in a wooden shack we may be out of contact for a while! But hopefully it will have some nice rainforest trails and diving to keep us entertained. We’ll post some more when we get back to civilisation!

Melaka Photos

This is the Dutch square at the centre of town. For some reason all the historic buildings here are painted this red colour, making it all very festive. There's also a miniature windmill behind the small Vicki (unfortunately just out of shot). The best thing about the square are the rickshaws though - these things would give Indian rickshaw drivers a stroke! They are all yellow, festooned with plastic flowers, and have their very own car radio-cassette players - complete with extra-loud sub-woofer under the passenger seats. You can hear them coming miles away and hide from the touts! Probably not the original intention...
Gary in the heart of China Town - very quaint buildings and very nice weather for once.

More of China Town - this time Vicki's by a very authentic temple with some really beautiful Dragons carved into the stone around the doors.

Kuala Lumpur

What are our first impressions of Malaysia so far? Well, all very nice, but it’s a bit damp! It’s like being home in Wales…

Kuala Lumpur is Malaysia’s capital of course. We arrived very glamorously with the fantastic Air Asia to the aptly named ‘Low Cost Carrier Terminal’ of Kuala Lumpur Airport – which is built a whole 20km away from all the other terminals to ensure that the quality passengers don’t catch anything nasty off us cheap-skates. But we’re definitely not proud! We jumped aboard a nice cheap SkyBus and headed into the budget part of the city (China town). You might gather from all of this that Kuala Lumpur (or KL as it’s universally called here) is a bit spenny. Not too bad, but definitely a step up after Thailand.

Kuala Lumpur is an odd capital. The centre is actually quite small and walkable, and is covered by a reasonable SkyTrain/metro system. It has lovely areas of greenery with jungle trees and exotic plants… I suppose the rain is the price you have to pay for a lush landscape! A good deal of the centre of town is given over to plush shopping malls, the most exclusive being that under the Petronas Towers (where Gary actually managed to buy his first pair of shorts today – yippee!).

It’s also got a very tall communications tower – the 4th highest in the world – which we managed to climb just before one of those tropical rainstorms that have been dogging our footsteps. We just managed to do a circuit of the platform with great views over the city before the front closed in, giving us a visibility of say 10 yards…

Anyway, we’ll be moving on to Melaka next (southwards), and then hopefully find some nice little tropical island to test out our new scuba diving skills!

Kuala Lumpur Pictures

Kuala Lumpur has several tall buildings! The Petronas Towers are impressive twin structures with a linking skybridge - a very small Gary on the bridge in front of them gives a good idea of the scale. Surrounding the towers is a nice park area with lakes to compliment the plush shopping malls nearby. Alternatively, the Menara tower is the 4th largest in the world, and the viewing platform gives an aerial perspective of the Petronas Towers... We saw a spectacularly gloomy view of it as a Thunder storm approached!

Phuket

If you head south from Bangkok, the shape of Thailand looks a little like the tail of a comma stretching out towards Malaysia. Phuket Island is a little north of the tip, just off the west side – the Andaman coast. It was this part of Thailand that suffered devastation at the hands of the Tsunami a few years back, but now most buildings have been reconstructed so well it’s hard to tell (apart from the occasional sign directing you to the ‘Tsunami Evacuation Point’!). Phuket is not quite the idyllic Thai Island that travel agents describe in their hard-sell – it’s too big for a start, and a bit over developed in places. But it still has beautiful stretches of palm-lined sand, crystal clear water, and – of course – loads of Go-Go bars and sweet Thai girls on the hunt for a sugar-daddy!

But Phuket does have some truly picture-perfect miniature islands off it’s coast – and they were the real reason we came here. Well, at least their coral reefs were. We thought that this trip around the world would be the perfect time to learn how to scuba dive – we actually have time for once! And of course over the next few months we’ll be visiting Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Tahiti… I suppose Thailand is really the start of the beach section of this trip.

So, we checked into a hotel in Patong Beach as it has the biggest concentration of dive shops on the island (and incidentally the highest concentration of Go-Go bars…), and signed up with West Coast Divers for the PADI Open Water Course. This is the standard introductory course for scuba diving – after finishing and passing you become a ‘certified diver’ and can go on dive trips to a depth of 18m. Easy peasy? Erm, well, sort of.

The theory part certainly wasn’t too bad - you just had to read a 200 page manual, watch a video and answer a few questions, before finishing off with a very friendly MCQ exam. After all the exams we’ve done over the last few years… no problem. Then you had to swim 200m and tread water for 10 minutes. That was fine too – although my wonderful tendency to sink like lead made the treading water a tad tiring! Next we were introduced to our scuba gear. Air tanks, regulators, BCDs, weight belts, depth gauges, fins, masks… hooking it all up was bad enough, but after putting it on you feel as cumbersome and ungainly as an astronaut. And the stuff is as heavy as anything – really disconcerting as you’re about to try and swim in it!

Fortunately the equipment is designed to be ‘neutrally buoyant’ with you in it: neither sinks or floats (unless you inflate the buoyancy control device of course, at which point you can pop out of the water like a cork if you’re not careful). And actually swimming underwater with it is relatively easy – once you’ve started. I had a bit of a nightmare trying to start since my ears really didn’t like adjusting to the pressure changes as you descend through the water. It took me ages to get my ears ‘equalising’ properly by swallowing, blowing my nose, jaw wiggling – and sucking loads of Thai sweeties! It was worth it in the end though, as after our training in a practice swimming pool we graduated to spend the last two days diving off the shore of Ratcha Ya and Ratcha Noi – two tiny untouched islands off the south coast of Phuket.

So now we’re both certified (certifiable?!) divers and have seen lots of pretty fishes, coral, and the odd cuttle fish and sting ray. On to Malaysia!

Phuket Photos

Patong Beach, Phuket Island. It may not be quite the picture perfect Thai island, but it's not bad! Perhaps less busy than could be expected as it's low season. This is supposed to mean lots of rain, but since we've been here there's been none at all for a change. Just absurdly low hotel rates! And below you can see sunset over Patong Beach. As I said, not bad at all.



Some of our first scuber-diving endeavours... You can see a nice friendly moray eel which I spotted trying to hide in a cave in the coral. And just to prove we did do it there's a nice shot of us hovering (elegantly?) above the reef! It is really pretty down there - very silent and still... a totally different world.

Bangkok... Again?

This is starting to feel like a recurring dream. Our trip has certainly shown us that there are a few places you end up returning to again and again when travelling around in Asia... first Hong Kong, now Bangkok. And I suspect Singapore will be the same! OK, no problem – we like Bangkok, and Hong Kong is one of our favourite cities anywhere, but still, at this point our trip around the world feels like going around a big round-a-bout. But perhaps to some extent that’s Amit and Karyn’s fault for getting married in London. It’s a shame we couldn’t convince you two that a nice romantic wedding on the beach of a remote Thai Island was a good idea…

Anyway, this is just a brief stop in Bangkok before travelling down south towards the Thai islands on our way to Malaysia. I suppose this is the first part of our trip around the world that is on the traditional route – most people leave out China and Japan. And for the first time this year we might actually get to swim around in the sea, and hopefully learn to scuba dive before hitting the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Return to Bangkok

I think it would be fair to say that Bangkok has had a bit of a facelift over the last few years. We were last here in 2005, and stayed (as cheapskate students) on Thanon Khao San in Banghalamphu. Now we’ve returned to Bangkok by ourselves we’ve come back to this notorious backpacker haven (as cheapskate unemployed wasters). But we were surprised –it’s gone a bit more upmarket: they’ve actually paved the street and got rid of the potholes! This place has a lot of life - the street has a permanent market selling typically hippy-backpacker things: sarongs, tie-dye, sliver piercings, hair braiding, and of course plenty of tuk tuk touts! Perhaps the most interesting touts come out in the evening to invite innocent bystanders to ping pong tournaments...

Actually it’s not just Banghalamphu that has gone upmarket in Bangkok. The down town areas have changed completely as well. In the space of three years luxury shopping complexes have sprung up complete with all the idiotically expensive designer brands you would expect to see in Tokyo or New York. This place really does seem to be trying to reinvent itself, and with some success.

Some things do not change though. One of the most startling things about tourists in Thailand is that women are hugely outnumbered. And that a lot of the men are old (65+) and particularly ugly - and usually have really red sunburn all over their bald patches by the time you see them! As you might guess, they are often seen in the company of a sweet young Thai girl with whom they have, of course, quickly struck up a beautiful platonic relationship. Well, lots of the Thai girls we’ve met seem to want ‘English men’, so if it makes them happy…? but you can’t help but wince at the contrast in these couples.

Anyway, enough of Thailand for the moment. Now we’re having a brief holiday from our holiday, and returning to the UK for a week. My friend Amit has very inconsiderately decided to get married, so we’re having to go all the way home for it. Git. So we may see some of you a little sooner than March 2009!

Return to Bangkok Photos

Bangkok may be a huge, sprawling city, but it's evenings can be quite beautiful if you perch on a roof-top. Just forget that pretty colours mean pollution... we've seen lots of nice sunsets this year, haven't we?...!
The Thanon Khao San - probably the truest home of backpacking world wide. With one lonely Vicki trying not to be noticed by the tuk-tuk and 'Nice Suit?' touts while standing in the middle for a photo. Not an easy task!
But this place really comes alive in the evening, especially on the weekend. then it's difficult to move for the crowds, and the entire street feels like the inside of a night-club - thumping music, beer girls, cocktails, and of course the obligatory touts.