Happy New Year

Just a quick post to wish you all Happy New Year from me and Triny in Sydney. Here's what it looks like:

Christmas Wishes from Sydney

Well, we’ve made it to Sydney and it’s Christmas! Although we’re not too sure – shouldn’t it be cold and raining? We’ve made ourselves comfortable at Caireen and Darryl’s house (big thanks to them) and are looking forward to preparing and devouring a ginormous smorgasbord on the 25^th.

Over Christmas and New Year we’ll be chilling out and preparing for the next phase of travel: campervanning it around New Zealand. Now that we’re in one place for longer than a nano-second, hopefully we’ll be catching up with you too!

By the way, here’s wishing you a very Merry Christmas and prosperous 2008!

We’ve had a fantastic couple of months, seeing and doing amazing things. We even came up with this list of tips to help others:

- Always check what the exchange rate is before you arrive in a new country and buy a packet of cigarettes for far too much money.
- Don’t take it personally if you’re a UK size 10 but a XXXL wherever you’re trying to buy clothes.
- Be wary of Russian policemen. Especially ones hanging around in plain-clothes near the Kremlin.
- Always trust Fatih on restaurant recommendations. But be prepared to dress smart.
- If you want to buy a watch or a Mont Blanc pen for 50 pence, go to Shanghai. If you’re after a cheap suit, go to Thailand. If you want any of the above but with a decent level of quality, though, go elsewhere.
- Take more pants and socks than you think you should need. Or be prepared to spend large amounts of time getting laundry done.
- Give up on any ideas of drinking wine in Russia, China, Mongolia, Thailand and Malaysia. Learn to like beer instead.
- Free upgrades are great. Take them whenever you can.
- Haggling is fun, but try to keep a sense of proportion. When you’re arguing for half an hour over 20 pence, you’ve gone too far.
- The Lonely Planet is your friend. Except when it’s wrong.

There’s plenty more tips that we came up with on our way round, but we forgot them all. Needless to say, they were really funny.

It's been a while...

Sorry we haven't posted much on here in the last couple of weeks, but, you know... holiday and all that. Anyway, here are some photos to make up for it. Too many of them to have many thumbnails on here, so you'll just have to click on these links to see them all:

Ko Samui
Penang
Kuala Lumpur
Singapore

Georgetown and KL

Malaysia’s quite a nice place, innit?

We’re in Kuala Lumpur now, and a few days ago we were in Georgetown on Penang. Talk about different. Georgetown is very much a provincial capital. Kuala Lumpur most definitely isn’t.

There’s not a huge amount to do in Georgetown. We had a look round the ruins of the old fort and the museum, but we’re both well past the point of wanting to see any more museums for at least a few months. We also took the train to the top of Penang Hill and walked back down, meeting lots of wild monkeys on the way. We even got snarled at by one of them when we got a bit too close to his family. We decided to leave them to it after that. At the bottom of the hill we walked past the entrance to the botanical gardens where there were even more monkeys hassling the tourists for food. All that and eating at a very nice street restaurant pretty much wrapped up Georgetown.

Oh, I forgot. While we were walking back from that street restaurant, we walked past a temple just as someone inside it started pounding away at a drum. As we were standing on the road wondering what it was, we were invited inside by someone who was walking in, and ended up watching a couple of people practicing their lion dancing. I don’t think they had been doing it for long, as they kept falling off the stools and benches they were balancing on and then falling around laughing at each other. Dead impressive, though, even if it wasn’t perfect.

We ended up flying from Penang to KL. The trains were fully booked, and the only other option was 8 or 9 hours on a bus, so we went for the 50 minute, budget carrier flight. Yes, I know it’s another flight in our train journey. If it counts for anything, I had less legroom on the flight than I would have had on the bus.

I think the short flight is why I had so many problems getting my head around the difference in the two cities. I spent most of the first evening in KL wandering round doing my best “wide-eyed tourist” impression. We’re staying in the Golden Triangle part of KL, which seems to be the big shopping part of town. Brand new malls that don’t close till midnight, monorail running overhead, people everywhere, bright lights and camera crews filming stuff, and street performers all over the place. Georgetown’s got a long way to go before it even starts to come close.

In between the rainstorms, we’ve been to the Petronas Towers (but failed to get there early enough to get one of the 1400 available tickets), been to the top of the KL tower, wandered round the edges of Little India and Chinatown and been to the cinema. We’re still planning to go to the Batu Caves before we leave for Singapore in a couple of days. Hopefully it’ll stop raining for long enough to let us get there.

Leaving Thailand

At the moment, we're sitting in the bar of the hotel we've been staying in on Koh Samui, killing time till we go to the airport to fly to Penang in Malaysia. Yes, I know I said we were going to Phuket, but we suddenly changed our minds on the train down from Hua Hin, since getting to both places involved getting off the train at Surat Thani.

Which is not a place we're likely to rush back to, really. It's very rough-and-ready, with almost nothing to do other than get on a bus or a ferry to somewhere else. Because the train from Hua Hin was an hour-and-a-half late, we ended up having to stay there for the night. We were awake nice and early the next morning to find a hotel on Samui and to get on the first ferry out of there.

Samui, on the other hand, is very nice. Sun, sea, beaches, smiling people and a very nice hotel mean that we'll probably be back at some point soon. The beach we're staying near isn't the best on the island, but most of the other beaches are a 20 minute, 80 pence pick-up truck ride away, so it's no big loss.

In half an hour or so we go to the airport here to fly to Penang. Flying does feel slightly like cheating seeing as we're supposed to be doing this by train, but having checked the UK Foreign Office site which advises against all but the most essential travel to or through the southernmost four or five provinces of Thailand and to make personal security arrangements if you do decide to go there, we've decided that a quick flight is better then the (admittedly remote) chance of getting killed to death by stupid people with bombs.

Anyway, I've still got 15 minutes of relaxing on a beach to do, so tata for now.

Thailand so far

We spent the few days we had in Bangkok in the China town district, visiting the reclining Buddah in Wat Pho and looking around Siam Square, taking a visit to the aquarium. Then we were ready to leave and see what the royal beach resort of Hua Hin was all about. The train journey was great, the best yet I think. We were in a cabin with locals that had windows which opened fully, allowing a great view for photos and a refreshing breeze.

The hotel complex was very plush – well, who said we had to stay in flea ridden bunk beds?! We were very lucky to be given a free upgrade to our own villa with its own pool and enjoyed a few days of luxury, soaking up the sun. The town itself thrived on the tourist trade, with tailor shops ten a penny and a liberal sprinkling of girlie bars. It amused us to see loads of 50 something western men with their Thai ‘girlfriends’ who appeared to be much, much younger. I could feel people’s eyes on me trying to figure out if I was Thai or not.

More photos

Here are a few more. Not many, I'll admit, but a few. Pictures from Bangkok here, and from Hua Hin here.