Malaysia, Singapore and the start of New Zealand

When I finally left Thailand and went to Malaysia, my first port of entry was the city of Georgetown on the island of Penang. Malaysia itself is a Muslim country and Penang is a really interesting mix of Chinese, Indians and Malay people. I got the impression that Penang is a strange sort of place. Maybe I owed my first impression to the bizarre hostel I stayed at, with the oddest mix of people I think I have ever come across. Bizarre is how I ultimately felt about the whole island, but hey, maybe I didn't give it much of a chance. I also discovered that Malaysia is not too easy to navigate on your own when it isn't tourist season. I made it straight across to the Perhentian Islands on the east coast near the Thai border after some difficulty. The Prehentian Islands were amazing- I think they were up to par if not better than the islands of Thailand. Actually, they were better. I took a speed boat from the mainland to the islands and we were going so fast over choppy water that we were actually airborne at times and completely drenched when we reached the shore 45 minutes later. Upon reaching the shore of the small island, I fell out of the speed boat (literally, first I fell backwards on my tailbone bruising it badly, then I stood up, regained some composer and then lost it and my dignity as I fell forward into the ocean). Luckily the restaurant directly on the beach where the boat dropped us was only half full... Everyone sitting there had a great view of my acrobatics and a guy named Laine from Toronto (I travelled with him in Vietnam/Cambodia), recognising my gracefulness, came running over from the restaurant to say hello and pick me out of the water. It was really good to see him and catch up on the last couple months. I went diving the next day with him and a couple others and my dive master, Alisha was great. We hit it off and I came back the next day to do a shipwreck dive. We went down about 23 meters and she showed us so many things- blue-spotted rays, giant barracuda (can't really miss those though... yikes!), puffer fish and many other things. I spotted a moray eel for which I was quite proud:) I hung out at the dive hut the next day too, played with their pet monkey Babu and did some snorkeling. The Coral Bay side of the Island is where I did the diving and snorkeling but I was staying on Long Beach, which is on the other side. There was a path that connected the two beaches that takes you through the jungle. Other than the giant mosquitoes that you needed an entire bottle of repellent if you wanted to get out with half a pint of blood left in you, you also had the ever so friendly monitor lizards that are about 2 meters long... nice walk though... really...

After the Perhentians, I went Taman Negara National Park in the middle of the country. A couple key phrases to tell you all I need to know about that trip:
110% humidity
Beautiful rain forest Good trekking
Lots of rodents/reptiles
Wobbly canopy walk 45 meters up (very scary)
Floating restaurants on the river
Hot
Humid
Hot and Humid, left after 2 days...

The trip out of Taman Negara to Kuala Lumpur was nearly impossible. I refused to pay the amount that travel agencies were charging tourists to get there and decided to do it myself. Well, this is kind of how things went:
- Took Bus A to Destination A
- At Destination A, bus was sold out to Destination B
- Commence Plan B: took Bus B to Destination C
- Bus from Destination C to Destination D, sold out...
- Commence Plan C: took bus from Destination C to Destination E
- Bus from Destination E to Final Destination (KL), sold out...
- Insert curse words here.
- Commence Plan D: get into taxi with three Muslim girls and head to KL.
- Arrive KL some hours later, dropped far, far away from where I wanted to go, get on the LRT (above ground train) and get to Chinatown.

KL was a cool city, but there wasn't too much to do there, or maybe the heat and 6+ months of travelling was beginning to catch up to me. I think Chinatown was where the most action/tourists are. I have seen a lot of different street food/vendors on my trip through southeast Asia, but nothing, NOTHING like KL. There was more variety than anything I have ever seen. Lots of Chinese, Malay and Indian food of every sort. I took the LRT to the Petronas Towers at night which were impressive. There are 5 levels to the towers, representing the 5 levels of Islam. When you stand at the bottom, you can't see the top.

From Kuala Lumpur, I went to Singapore to stay with Agustin and Alexandra, his wife. Agustin is my brother Jim's friend from high school and it was great to see him and Alex. A few years back, I was backpacking through eastern and central Europe and was in Krakow, Poland at the right time and went to their wedding. I hadn't seen them since then and I had a fantastic time with them in Singapore. I explored the city in one day, going to Little India and the financial district. It pored buckets but still was a nice and CLEAN city. I had heard before I went that it was incredibly clean, so I was on a mission to find at least one piece of trash on the street. I never saw any. None. They also don't sell gum in Singapore because people throw it on sideways, etc. It is a very organized, expensive and clean city.

After saying goodbye to Alex and Agustin, I went to the airport and headed out to New Zealand. Well, sort of... I went from Singapore to Darwin, Darwin to Cairns, Cairns to Sydney, Sydney to Christchurch. It was a long couple days. I was in Christchurch for the first few days and now am in Timaru, south of Christchurch by about 3 or 4 hours. I met a German girl here named Yana and she has a car! We are leaving tomorrow to travel down south for the next couple weeks. I am really excited. The people here are incredibly friendly. Last night at the hostel I am staying at, the owner served up fresh abalone he caught in the ocean. It was amazing. I had never had it before and it is normally incredibly expensive, but as he says, the ocean is his grocery store. Tonight, we are having green-bone fish another guy speared yesterday. I love this country already!

Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) Cambodia through Southern Thailand

Hello, hello again!
Let's see, where did I leave off? I believe it was in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I really enjoyed Siem Reap for many reasons. It was easy to navigate on foot, with a huge market in the middle and well laid out streets. The people there were great- very friendly and always had genuine a smile on their faces. There wasn't a big city feel at all, unlike Phenom Penh. There was a center there for the street children (which there are A LOT of unfortunately in Siem Reap). I visited the classroom there, played with them and watched them get their 'lice wash'. I wanted to volunteer my time there but it was unlike the shelters in Goa because none of the kids lived there and so they just dropped in occasionally for lunch and a quick wash and then they were out again begging or rag-picking. So other than playing with them for a bit, there wasn't much else I could do. A friend of mine, Chris from Scotland (who I had been travelling with since Vietnam) and I decided to rent bikes and ride to Angkor Wat to see all the temples. I think it was about 99 degrees that day and we had to stop pretty often to hide in the shade. It was pretty brutal. The temples themselves, built by the Khmer civilization in the 12th century, are truly remarkable. The only thing that put a damper on the experience was the tourists... specifically the bus loads of Japanese tourists. They were EVERYWHERE. Regardless, we saw a gorgeous sunset and temples galour. After Seim Reap, I caught the bus to Bangkok. That bus ride goes down in history as the worst bus trip ever. Besides the heat, the dust, the bumpy road and crapped conditions, it is notoriously a horrible bus trip, but to make it even more fun, our bus broke down. Not only did both back tires blow, but they only had one spare to put on. This took a good hour and a half, as we hacky sacked and waited on the road to get back in. You don't want to wander of the road because there are still many unexploded mines and bombs that litter the countryside. So after the spare was put on, we all clamored back on the bus, applauding the achievement of our brilliant drivers. The next problem occured about a minute later when they went to start the engine and it was dead. Out of the bus we go again for another hour or so! Finally, we get the ok and get back on the bus (no applause this time) and we go about 20 minutes and stop at a roadside repair shop. Everyone out again! This time it took about 2 hours because every time the reflated a tire, they would pop it. It took them awhile to get that right. In the meantime, I had a great time at a local shop with a family of Cambodians and some of the sweetest children I have ever seen. We finally got on the bus and what was supposed to be a 5/6 hour trip has now become a 15 hour trip. Chris and I arrive in Poipet (the cesspool of Cambodian/the world) and are rushing to cross the border and get on the last bus to Bangkok. We finally make it on and there were no more seats left for me, so I had to sit next to the driver in a foldout chair. I kept nodding off and didn't want to jeopardize the safety of the passengers by falling onto the driver, so I just crawled into the aisle and fell asleep. Desperate times... I said goodbye to Chris in Bangkok and headed south to Koh Phang Yang. I met up with a couple Canadians there that I had met in Vietnam. The island itself was beautiful, just as soon as you got out of Haad Rin, the Full Moon Party area. I rented a scooter and went up the entire west coast and watched one of the most amazing sunsets from a restaurant high on a hill overlooking the ocean. I left that part of the island the next day and went up the east coast to Haad Thien. It was beautiful there and the beaches were clean, quiet and lovely. I met a couple from San Fan, Zach and Rannie and a girl named Mary from Minnesota. I hung out with those 3 for the next week and had a blast. I left Ko Phang Yang for Ko Tao and started my open water PADI course as soon as I got there. My instructor's name was Jonas and he had done over 7,000 dives, so I felt like I was in good hands! I met a really nice Aussie named Elisha who was doing the course as well. Diving itself is an amazing experience and I can't wait to do it again here in Malaysia. You don't even realize how much is underwater until you are 18 meters down- it is simply another world. Elisha and I went snorkeling in Shark Bay too- I think we must have seen about 15/20 Black-tip Reef Sharks. It was great! I never thought I would ever swim with sharks, but there I was, not very far from them. They are docile sharks and are interested in fish, not us, so they just swim on by as if we weren't there. I met a large group of Germans in Ko Tao including a 'unique' guy named Chris (hi Chris!) and we hung out with them nearly every night. Germans and Sweds make up the majority of the tourists in southern Thailand- esp. Sweds! After Ko Tao, I went briefly to Krabi and then to Ko Phi Phi, a couple of the places hardest hit by the tsunami. You could see evidence because there was so much construction going on. I met a Canadian girl named Bailey on the ferry over and we instantly hit it off. We went on a half day snorkeling trip around the Phi Phi islands, including Maya Bay where the movie 'The Beach' was filmed. It was beautiful. Phi Phi itself was expensive and so after a few days, we headed to Ko Lanta, further south. The island is primarily Muslim because of it's close proximity to Malaysia. The two of us rented a scooter there and went cruising around looking for different beaches. I don't think either of us were truly impressed with the island since things were so spread out and you had to use a scooter to get anywhere. After a couple nights on Ko Lanta, I said goodbye to Bailey and headed to Penang, an island in Malaysia where I am now. It is a Muslim country and has a really interesting mix here in Penang of Malay, Indian and Chinese people. I like it here and wish I had more time to see more of the island, but I have to move on to the Prehenthian Islands on the east coast tonight!

Till next time~