We flew to Singapore with Singapore airlines, which must have been the most luxurious economy flight we have been on yet – a brand new plane with hot towels, great entertainment systems, toilets that were crammed with goodies
like perfume and moisturiser, menus with choices and even cocktails! We landed in an extremely hot and humid Singapore, and got a shuttle bus to the Robertson Quay Hotel, which turned out to be a great budget option with views over the river. Singapore is famous for great dining, so we immediately headed out for dinner to treat ourselves to coconut milk served in coconuts, peanut satay chicken sticks and delicious Chinese soup. On the way home we came across a flying club, performing a display of their LED kite planes – it was really enchanting with the city lit up in the background and music playing…we watched for ages and decided Singapore was a very cool city!
The following day we hit Chinatown, and being blonde and tall Rach turned heads everywhere we went! We spent most of the day eating unusual foods for next to nothing (grass jelly and the lychee and dragonfruit smoothies were a real hit!), exploring the bustling streets with their amazing craft shops and slipping our shoes off to explore temples that were heavy
with incense and full of orange-cloaked monks. We then hopped on the underground to Little India, which was much more chaotic, dirty and infused with a lot of smells (both good and bad!). We squeezed our way through tiny alleys littered with fruit and silk stalls, collapsed for an extremely cheap beer, ate with our fingers elbow to elbow with the local Indians in a tiny restaurant, tip toed through a messy fish market and Rach finished the day by being fitted for a sari dress. Rather exhausted we stumbled back to the hotel for a swim in the pool to escape the humidity – bliss!
On day 3 Rachel braved having her hair cut by a woman that spoke no English and was very keen to give her a drastic ‘bob’ – however all turned out well as it only cost about £5, looked great, and after walking out the salon she was mistaken for a film star by one of the cleaners, hurrah! Keen to mingle with the locals we got dirt cheap lunch at one of the hawkers centres, where Gaz had noodle soup with fish balls and Rachel got some
kind of soup with UFOs (unidentified floating objects) in it, which she barley touched! So we upgraded our venue a bit and headed to the superior Raffles Hotel, the place where the Singapore Sling cocktail was invented. It must have been the best cocktail we have every tasted, but at a whopping $26 we could only afford one! Later we decided to try the local delicacy of black pepper crab on the riverfront. Armed with allsorts of eating tools we set about making a right mess, but the white meat was so tender it was worth it.
Malaysia was next up. We had booked a bus to take us over the border to Malacca, but had no idea where to catch the bus from and we couldn’t find an English speaker. The taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong place, so Gaz sprinted off in search of the bus depot whilst Rach guarded the bags. We ended up trying to run with our backpacks on (very tricky!) and eventually came across the depot with only a few minutes to spare, stressful! The journey took 4 hours, with palm plantations stretching as
far as the eye could see. Malacca is a bustling small city with a colonial port, and our guesthouse turned out to be a treat (and only £10 a night!). The main street was packed with antique and craft stalls, and at such cheap prices we both ended up buying quite a lot of gorgeous wooden and bamboo things and posting them home, though Gaz sadly didn’t manage to get the huge sword he had his eye on. It was sweltering hot work shopping so we cooled off with coconut juice, and by evening there was an amazing sunset, so we scrambled to the roof of our guesthouse and looked out over all the other rooftops with mosque chanting and birds flying everywhere - very atmoshperic!
The following day we headed for the high tech Kuala Lumpur. We took a bus from Malacca and arrived in KL in the middle of a huge storm, with insanely heavy rain and lightning striking the tops of the skyscrapers! We managed to get soaked in the short time it took us to get out of our taxi and through the door of our hostel! On our first night in the city we waited for the rain to stop then took a walk into the centre. We turned out of our street and were confronted with manic traffic, huge neon signs, thousands of people all rushing about and a monorail whizzing over our head. It was mental but pretty exciting! We had a noodle-based dinner in a local restaurant, then decided to trek through the bar district to the centrepiece of KL, the Petronas Towers. We were totally awed by the sight of the twin towers lit up in silver lights soaring above all the other skyscrapers, and we used a fair amount of memory card space on the photos!
The next day we set out to see the famous Buddhist temple at the Batu Caves, just outside the city limits. We decided against a taxi and opted for the slower, but more exciting, public transport option – plenty of horn beeping, shouting and hand-waving from the Malaysian bus drivers! We arrived at the caves to find a lot of tourists and touts hanging around, but we found it was worth enduring the crowds. We ascended the 250 plus steep steps to the cave entrance, passing an enormous gold statue and lots of cheeky monkeys on the way up,
before heading inside to the sounds of traditional music and the smells of incense. It was very atmospheric inside the huge caverns, with shrines all over the place, bats flying overhead and yet more monkeys stealing tourist’s food! We walked back to the entrance and the skies opened, with heavy rain soaking everything. We hid in a little temple for a while before opting to take a taxi home – Gaz did some creative haggling with a driver and got (what we think) was a good deal!
We decided on our return that our five pounds a night hostel, whilst light on the wallet, wasn’t really that great, so we decided to splurge on a room in a luxury downtown hotel (a whopping thirty nine quid – brilliant!). Smiles all round as we swam in the pool, threw heavy things around in the gym, relaxed on the huge bed with cable TV, and generally lived the life of Riley for the rest of the day! That night we walked to the KL Observation Tower and were whizzed in a turbo lift, ears popping, up to 270m. There we got spectacular 360 degree views of KL by night, and really got to see the Petronas Towers in their true glory – a great experience! We stayed up the tower until it actually closed at 10.30pm, and were both famished on getting back to the city centre on the speedy monorail. We abandoned our plans to find authentic Malay food and munched our way instead through a McDonalds – whoops! The next day we left KL by taxi and headed to the airport for our flight to Phuket, there to begin our adventures in Thailand…
like perfume and moisturiser, menus with choices and even cocktails! We landed in an extremely hot and humid Singapore, and got a shuttle bus to the Robertson Quay Hotel, which turned out to be a great budget option with views over the river. Singapore is famous for great dining, so we immediately headed out for dinner to treat ourselves to coconut milk served in coconuts, peanut satay chicken sticks and delicious Chinese soup. On the way home we came across a flying club, performing a display of their LED kite planes – it was really enchanting with the city lit up in the background and music playing…we watched for ages and decided Singapore was a very cool city!
The following day we hit Chinatown, and being blonde and tall Rach turned heads everywhere we went! We spent most of the day eating unusual foods for next to nothing (grass jelly and the lychee and dragonfruit smoothies were a real hit!), exploring the bustling streets with their amazing craft shops and slipping our shoes off to explore temples that were heavy 
with incense and full of orange-cloaked monks. We then hopped on the underground to Little India, which was much more chaotic, dirty and infused with a lot of smells (both good and bad!). We squeezed our way through tiny alleys littered with fruit and silk stalls, collapsed for an extremely cheap beer, ate with our fingers elbow to elbow with the local Indians in a tiny restaurant, tip toed through a messy fish market and Rach finished the day by being fitted for a sari dress. Rather exhausted we stumbled back to the hotel for a swim in the pool to escape the humidity – bliss!
On day 3 Rachel braved having her hair cut by a woman that spoke no English and was very keen to give her a drastic ‘bob’ – however all turned out well as it only cost about £5, looked great, and after walking out the salon she was mistaken for a film star by one of the cleaners, hurrah! Keen to mingle with the locals we got dirt cheap lunch at one of the hawkers centres, where Gaz had noodle soup with fish balls and Rachel got some 
kind of soup with UFOs (unidentified floating objects) in it, which she barley touched! So we upgraded our venue a bit and headed to the superior Raffles Hotel, the place where the Singapore Sling cocktail was invented. It must have been the best cocktail we have every tasted, but at a whopping $26 we could only afford one! Later we decided to try the local delicacy of black pepper crab on the riverfront. Armed with allsorts of eating tools we set about making a right mess, but the white meat was so tender it was worth it.
Malaysia was next up. We had booked a bus to take us over the border to Malacca, but had no idea where to catch the bus from and we couldn’t find an English speaker. The taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong place, so Gaz sprinted off in search of the bus depot whilst Rach guarded the bags. We ended up trying to run with our backpacks on (very tricky!) and eventually came across the depot with only a few minutes to spare, stressful! The journey took 4 hours, with palm plantations stretching as 
far as the eye could see. Malacca is a bustling small city with a colonial port, and our guesthouse turned out to be a treat (and only £10 a night!). The main street was packed with antique and craft stalls, and at such cheap prices we both ended up buying quite a lot of gorgeous wooden and bamboo things and posting them home, though Gaz sadly didn’t manage to get the huge sword he had his eye on. It was sweltering hot work shopping so we cooled off with coconut juice, and by evening there was an amazing sunset, so we scrambled to the roof of our guesthouse and looked out over all the other rooftops with mosque chanting and birds flying everywhere - very atmoshperic!
The following day we headed for the high tech Kuala Lumpur. We took a bus from Malacca and arrived in KL in the middle of a huge storm, with insanely heavy rain and lightning striking the tops of the skyscrapers! We managed to get soaked in the short time it took us to get out of our taxi and through the door of our hostel! On our first night in the city we waited for the rain to stop then took a walk into the centre. We turned out of our street and were confronted with manic traffic, huge neon signs, thousands of people all rushing about and a monorail whizzing over our head. It was mental but pretty exciting! We had a noodle-based dinner in a local restaurant, then decided to trek through the bar district to the centrepiece of KL, the Petronas Towers. We were totally awed by the sight of the twin towers lit up in silver lights soaring above all the other skyscrapers, and we used a fair amount of memory card space on the photos!
The next day we set out to see the famous Buddhist temple at the Batu Caves, just outside the city limits. We decided against a taxi and opted for the slower, but more exciting, public transport option – plenty of horn beeping, shouting and hand-waving from the Malaysian bus drivers! We arrived at the caves to find a lot of tourists and touts hanging around, but we found it was worth enduring the crowds. We ascended the 250 plus steep steps to the cave entrance, passing an enormous gold statue and lots of cheeky monkeys on the way up, 
before heading inside to the sounds of traditional music and the smells of incense. It was very atmospheric inside the huge caverns, with shrines all over the place, bats flying overhead and yet more monkeys stealing tourist’s food! We walked back to the entrance and the skies opened, with heavy rain soaking everything. We hid in a little temple for a while before opting to take a taxi home – Gaz did some creative haggling with a driver and got (what we think) was a good deal!
We decided on our return that our five pounds a night hostel, whilst light on the wallet, wasn’t really that great, so we decided to splurge on a room in a luxury downtown hotel (a whopping thirty nine quid – brilliant!). Smiles all round as we swam in the pool, threw heavy things around in the gym, relaxed on the huge bed with cable TV, and generally lived the life of Riley for the rest of the day! That night we walked to the KL Observation Tower and were whizzed in a turbo lift, ears popping, up to 270m. There we got spectacular 360 degree views of KL by night, and really got to see the Petronas Towers in their true glory – a great experience! We stayed up the tower until it actually closed at 10.30pm, and were both famished on getting back to the city centre on the speedy monorail. We abandoned our plans to find authentic Malay food and munched our way instead through a McDonalds – whoops! The next day we left KL by taxi and headed to the airport for our flight to Phuket, there to begin our adventures in Thailand…
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