Singapore

Singapore has to be one of the smallest countries we’ve visited. Afterall, it’s just one small island – about 42 by 24km in size. With a few mini islets off its coast. That’s all. But it’s one of the richest places in Asia per capita.

OK, it doesn’t have the spectacular location of Hong Kong, or the intriguingly vibrant districts of Tokyo, but it is well worth seeing at least briefly. If you can get over the slightly restrictive nature of the place. This is ‘Fine City’ – tie your shoe laces in the wrong part of town and risk a $500 billing. Ouch! Now I’m all in favour of stopping littering and smoking in public places, but you’re not allowed to cross the road anywhere within 50m of a pedestrian crossing, and then ONLY WHEN THE GREEN MAN IS LIT! It might be 04.00 in the morning. There may be no cars moving within a radius of a mile. But you have to wait for the green man or they WILL get you! Oh, and leave the chewing gum behind – it is completely illegal in Singapore. Really. I don’t know what they do if you’re caught in possession, but I’d rather not find out!

Saying that, I don’t mean to be too harsh. It’s a nice city. Clean, modern, and with lots of thoughtfully planted trees and green areas everywhere. They really do make an effort to keep the place nice. And if you like shopping malls, Singapore is heaven. I’ve never seen so many. In fact, in central Singapore it can be hard to find a shop that’s not in a mall. There are hundreds of them – all modern, gleaming, and packed with expensive designer shops. Not a place to visit on a budget, especially as there are more than a fair share of Haagen Das and Ben & Jerry’s Cafes.

Singapore island may be mostly built up, but in the middle is a really nicely preserved area of rainforest. It has a pathetically sweet ‘Park’ in a small section of the forest, where very friendly paths lead you between huts and view points that are barely 10 m apart. But the bonus here is the monkeys – they are really tame, and are happy to sit only a few meters away from you (even Mothers with young babies – we watched one as she breast-fed a tiny snip of a young one)! The rainforest outside the park area is a bit more like it. You can walk through trails up to the summit of the highest point on the island – an impressive 163m above sea level! OK, it felt quite high after traipsing up the slope in tropical conditions and rainforest humidity. We’re not that pathetic. Really!

Anyway, now we leave Asia, and move continent (and therefore blog page) to Oceania. We’re a bit sad to be leaving, but we’ve spent nearly half our year doing loops around the continent, so I suppose it’s time to move on. I hope Australia is nice! The posting will be on www.catch-up-with-the-sun-oceania.blogspot from now on (as this site is running out of storage space for photos). And on the main page of course for general things. Like comments on leaving Asia…

Singapore Photos

Singapore waterfront - on a very nice day! Not quite Hong Kong Harbour, but still nice. Below you can see Gary in the same area - by some Chinese lanterns for a local celebration. The other photo shows him scrambling across a very scary bridge in the tame rainforest park in the centre of Singapore island. Ever the brave adventurer!


You can find some remarkably tame monkeys in the park! These two were very nonchalant about our presence, as you can see from how close we got when taking the photo! The Mum was far more interested in ensuring her son didn't have fleas...
A strange thing we've noticed in Asia is the use of fish to clean dead skin off feet. it's a luxury Spa therapy apparently. But we've never come across it in a shop window before! Look at all the little fishes attacking these blokes feet! It was fascinating to watch - quite a crowd of passers by like us gathered to gape and take piccys.

Pulau Tioman

This really is remote! Pulau Tioman is a reasonably sized island 2 hours by ferry off the East coast of Malaysia. And there’s really not much here apart from a jungle mountain, pristine beaches, coral reefs, and a few huts! All of which are very beautiful of course. To give you an impression - we are staying in one of the most developed regions of the island, Air Batang, but this village consists of a sparse row of huts and small houses on the line between the edge of the beach and the start of the jungle. It’s beautiful, and to our eyes almost untouched by humans, but still, this is meant to be one of the most built-up parts of the island! The main road here is actually a concrete footpath that motorcycles can navigate up and down – there simply aren’t any cars.

Which leads to pretty impressive local wildlife. When we left our room the morning after arriving, the first thing we saw was a group of monkeys playing only 10m away. They didn’t like us and backed away a little (to say 20m), and then continued playing as if we weren’t there! The same morning we encountered our first significant reptile – a monitor lizard over a meter long. It looked just like one of the cast of dinosaurs in a 1970’s B movie! They can actually get to the size of alligators apparently – the largest one we’ve seen was a 2m monster. And we’ve walked under trees filled with sleeping fruit bats, seen wild goats, avoided inch-long ants and chased weird unidentifiable mammals – humans are definitely outnumbered here…

We’ve also seen a bit of the marine life. We wanted to continue diving, so we spent 2 days doing the PADI Advanced Open Water Course, which involves some underwater navigation, a deep dive (to about 30m), and three other dives of your choosing. We opted for a wreck dive, fish identification, and a night dive. And on these we saw lots of lovely fish, coral and urchins as usual, but also a few turtles! Best of all, we came across a huge, almost spherical jelly fish (over a meter diameter) which had a school of small fish constantly living in it and swimming around it. The whole effect was spectacular and very beautiful. But oddly enough I think we saw our most impressive marine animals off the jetty while waiting for a ferry – four turtles surfaced to take gulps of air, while little squid chased each other and tropical fish before hiding under the pier. But all these were swiftly outdone by a large octopus which came along and settled on a rock for a while, before scooting off head first, tentacles following!

Continuing with the activities, Gary had his first chance of the holiday to play a round of golf. He was a little bit out of practice at first, but he soon got back into it. I was designated ‘caddy’ – which involved driving the silly golf buggy around and agreeing enthusiastically with his choice of club from time to time. A taxing job! We actually spent a lot of the time watching monitor lizards basking in the sun and families of monkeys playing on the golf course. It was a really pretty place: beautifully manicured, and situated on the coast, just by the beach but ascending up rapidly to the rainforest levels. Our favourite bit was the 7th hole as you actually had to hit the ball across a small bay from the tee to get to the green. Gary cleared the sea successfully, but got trapped in the largest bunker we’d ever seen – the beach!

Anyway, our next stop will be Singapore (apart from a night’s stopover in the fishing town of Mersing on the way back from Pulau Tioman), which should offer a good contrast to this coral-jungle island.

Pulau Tioman Photos

Air Batang (or ABC as its known for short). This is a view south, from the headland path which leads towards the next cove, Penumbra Bay. You can clearly see some of the coral reef in the clear blue water!

The beach by Telek (the main village settlement on Pulau Tioman) looking up towards Air Batang to the North. This whole island has a very pretty coast-line.

The 7th hole! We're standing on the tee, taking the photo. You can see the green in the distance, just the other side of the massive beach-bunker. Gary cleared the sea well, but couldn't quite make it past the beach. It was funny to see him traipsing through the sand to retrieve his ball! You can also see a nice wet weather front closing in from the sea - we sheltered in the nice golf buggy (silly things).
Monkeys! There were plenty on the golf course (along with lizards), although not on the fairway of the 7th hole oddly enough. This mummy-babby pair were elsewhere though - they were part of a group that actually walked right over our heads on power cables in Air Batang before jumping into the surrounding trees. Below are some more island residents! These monitor lizards were babys compared with the 2m monsters we came accross - they're only 1-1.5m long. But they posed for photos much much more readily, letting me get within a meter, whereas the big ones just ran away :( Which is probably why the big ones are so big - caution...

A visitor to the ferry jetty just as we were leaving the island! For some reason the pier is a popular place for turtles to surface to take a breath of air, before descending into the depths again and swimming away. We saw four in only half an hour! I was lucky and caught this one just as he took his gulp - you can see his head out of the water if you look closely.
And to finish off this selection of photos, how about a spectacular sunset? This section of Air Batang bay was just by our hotel, and offered dramatic evening views from the terrace of a very nice pizza place called Sunset Corner. A few hours later and the clouds on the horizon became an impressive (but distant) thunderstorm.

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!