Koala Limpar

I have arrived in the city, and it is a welcome mix of bustle and relaxation....the relaxation part is that i am on the 12 floor of the Hilton hotel in KL, and am enjoying the pampering very much.

Upon leaving the airport though, I instantly felt as if the more relaxed nature of Langkawi has been replaced by the drive to make money. That is city living I suppose. When I enquired about a taxi fair from the airport to the hotel i was told it would be 60 Ringgits (about £10) and this was a major shock, as i had got used to travelling across Langkawi for only 20 Ringgits.

To be fair though, I did not really appreciate how far out KLIA (airport) is from the city. The taxi ride was a good 40 minutes drive and he was going some too! The whole layout of the city seems to be geared around creating space and as such everyone is considerably less stressed than their London counterparts.

After i checked in to the hotel, I thought I would make the most of my day in Koala Lumbar by popping up the KL tower. This really was quite impressive as I was about a 1000ft up in the air. From this vantage point, i could also see the Petronas towers, so i took a few snaps of the city from this vantage point.
The Petronas towers, as seen from the KL tower. It just goes to show how high up this thing was!! Apparently it is the 5th highest observation point in the world. For reference, all the other buildings around it are normal skyscrapers.

At the bottom of the tower is a patch of jungle in the middle of the city, which has been preserved, rather than just hacked down in the name of commercialism. There was a free tour of this, so i went along and met a few fellow Europeans - the Swedes on the tour, being fair haired, took the brunt of the mosquito attacks, which was a welcome relief, as i had forgotten my can of Hoffmeister!! This was a short but nice tour, we saw monkeys, which the tour guide seemed wholly unimpressed by, but us Europeans were snapping away like Japanese tourists. Then at the end of the tour, the guide excitedly pointed to the distance proclaiming that there was a dog. I took a token snap to make her feel better, but it was soon deleted.

The monkey is nicknamed by the guide as David Beckham, because he has a Mohawk hairdo a la Becks. See made a joke that the monkey could not play football, and was not impressed with my comment that "neither can Beckham".

After that i walked down to the Petronas tower, which houses a shopping mall the likes of which i have never seen - think of the size of Lakeside, but on 6 levels. It has every shop imaginable, and quite a few that i could not have dreamed of. Every single designer store you can think of was in there (even Marks and Sparks); Louis Vitton, Christian Dior, Rolex, Paul Smith, Gucci, Armani, Chanel to name but a few - Lets just say i know a few people who might blow their bank accounts if they ever got here!! :D
Unfortunately i could not get up the Petronas Tower, as it was too late, but to be honest, I have heard that the observation deck is not as high as the one on the KL tower, so I don't think I have missed out on that much.

Tomorrow morning I head off by train to Singapore. It is an early start, but should mean I get in to Singapore by early afternoon, so I can do a bit of mooching around. Looking forward to travelling through the Malaysian countryside.

Speak to you all in Singapore.

The tour begins......tomorrow

This is my last day in Langkawi for a couple of weeks (i have to return here to avoid racking up some missed flight charges by the airline taking me home). I am going with Sam to Kuala Lumpur and so that means i can see her off back to Lond0n and then start on the tour proper.

Last night she gave me my birthday pressie (not that!!), which is completely brilliant. At some point in the near future i get to go into the woods with some birds and have a bit of fun!! OK, it is a falconry day - where i get to have Peregrines landing on my arm and flying of to catch food. To say i am a little excited about this is an understatement, especially after seeing those eagles earlier in the day!!

Today has been a day of shopping for gifts and generally tying up some loose ends. I have just booked into the KL Hilton for tomorrow (how posh am i?), as it will be from that city i will take a train down into Singapore (6 hour train ride should get those creative juices flowing). Beofre going though, i am hoping to pop into the Petronas and KL towers just to tick them off the tourist list.

I am sort of minded to go and see orangutans in the wild by nipping over to Borneo, but this would be a deviation from a fairly smooth tour. Not sure yet, but this is a good reason not to plan ahead, as if i had, i would not have that option!

OK, that is all for now, speak to you all in Kuala Lumpur.

The Wedding and Mangrove tour

The time had come when i could put it off no longer, and i had to stand there and deliver a best man speech (or something which came close to resembling one). To be fair to everyone, they l applauded me at the beginning which really made me feel more at ease, and i managed to deliver it without too many stutters or cock-ups, which was a relief.

The wedding itself was lovely, set on a beach front with perfect white sand all around. I was only entrusted with the rings 5 minutes before the actual ceremony, which is probably a good thing, as i would have probably covered them in a layer of sweat, so sweltering is it out here.

This is the the arch under which my friends were married. I am afraid my photography skills can't really do it justice, but it was a stunning location with some beautiful islands in the background.

Anyway, after delivering the speech, i sat and consumed an immense amount of alcohol, so come the end of the evening i don't even remember ordering the room service that i did, but i do have a vague recollection of Sam forcing a few chips into my drunken mouth.

This morning was lovely. As part of the wedding package, the bride and groom could invite a few people over to the villa they were in for a special breakfast curry (traditional Malay breakfast).

After that we went out on some boats along the river to see bat caves, eagle feeding and a fish farm.

The bat caves were lovely, it was a cave and it had - erm - bats in it. A lot of bats. I can imagine my mum running out of the place screaming, such is her phobia for our furry little friends, but it was great.

Here be bats! Mum, you might not want to look at that picture!! I personally thought they were rather cute, as they would ruffle about when the silly tourists flashed their bright lights at them, as if to say, "do you mind, i am sleeping" - even the bats in Malaysia are polite!

The fish farm was really interesting, it was a flotilla on the river, which seems to hold a few fish in some large nets. Upon seeing us, a kindly old lady came out and showed us a few of the fish. The angler fish (ones that shoot water out of their mouths to hit flies on branches) were great fun, i was sticking some bread to the side of the tank and watching their precision at dislodging it. Also, if you hold the bread out over the water, they will jump out and grab it from your hand, which is pretty cool experience. Finally, i dangled over the edge with a large piece of bread in my mouth, and received a fish kiss!!

The eagle feeding was spectacular, we went to a place where there were at least 50 eagles all soaring over the water and were frantically taking photos to capture this spectacular sight. Each bird has a wingspan of over 6 feet and they are truly amazing creatures to see swooping down onto the water and picking up fish. I was pretty awestruck at this to be honest.


This photo was actually taken by Sam, but is so cool, I have nicked it for use in the blog (my camera fogged up in the humidity). This solitary bird does not do justice to just how many other birds were soaring up in the sky, but this gives an idea of how close they come to you, we were no more than 10 metres away from them picking up food.

The final part of the tour involved parking up on a secluded beach for a few moments to enjoy the scenery and it was from here we could see Thailand in the distance. Then it was off back to the jetty.

We have just been out for a large group meal, and it was a slightly sad feeling as this is the last time we will all be sat in Langkawi together. Quite a few of them are going home to England tomorrow. However, I have had such a great time, and everyone seems to have got on really well together.

Next couple of days will be spent trying to sort out the tour.....still not booked anything yet......

Here comes the bride.....

Less than 24 hours to go until the wedding and here i am in an internet cafe pretending to search for more best man speech material for the wedding but, in reality, i am updating my blog. Nothing like leaving things to the last minute in order to get the old adrenaline pumping!!

It has been a bit more sedate day today, although it was a little bit embarrassing when i woke up this morning at 8:55am to the dawning realisation that i was supposed to be at the wedding rehearsal at 9:00am. I have never got dressed so quickly in my entire life and was pootling down the road in my hire car like nobody's business. Only being 10 minutes late was pretty good going considering, but it was still a bit awkward to see the bride and father of the bride sitting down waiting for me to arrive!!

After the rehersal, we all had a big pool party which would have put the Wedding at Cana to shame - I have never seen so much food in my life!! The curries in Malaysia are absolutely lovely, and as an added bonus, the apartment complex the pool party was held in has a set of coconut trees, so a couple of the residents kindly cut down some coconuts and we drank the water from them. This beats anything that you can buy in Tesco (although that is not saying much!).

After that, we visited a night market with some friends from the UK to sample the delights of shopping on a market at 10pm. This was a little bit disappointing as the goods on offer could well have been on sale in St Neots, the only difference being that these are a fraction of the price.

The bad news is that the night before the wedding, our hire car has broken down and is currently sitting on some street near the night market. For interest the car is a Proton, which, i am reliably informed, is a Malaysian make of car - everyone here drives one, or more precisely, everyone that can't afford a proper, working car drives one. Still after a few phone calls, i think this should be sorted out tomorrow.

OK I really need to get writing that speech.....and put those asbestos trousers on!! Tune in next time to the next exciting installment of "Mouseburger (on tour)"

The next step is always the hardest

It has been a hectic couple of days, and so much has been crammed in to such a small space of time. So far we have done

Underwater world - sort of like the sea life centre in the UK, but on a slightly smaller scale (i.e. they only have one crab on display). It was your standard fare, but the animals they have on display as exotic, are actually things like our common seals, which is quite interesting.

Bird Paradise Wildlife Park - Before you ask, no, my grammar has not gone out of the window, that is actually how the park is titled! The place seemed to mainly house a menagerie of birds, with some reptiles and monkeys thrown in for good measure. Going against the grain of all best practice in zoo management and respecting the creatures, the zoo allows visitors to hand feed the animals with an assortment of fruits and nuts. This is great fun for the casual tourist like myself, and it also means that the zoo doesn't have to fork out on feeding the animals themselves!

I admit though i really upset a monkey when he tried to grab the whole bag of raisins from my hand and i wrenched it back out of his....he didn't half moan at me!! Also, i had the chance to hold a baby python, hand feed a load of budgies and hold a sea eagle and a tiger eagle. The chap in charge of the birds of prey was an elderly toothless gent who, upon finding out we were from England, proceeded to tell us of the time the Duke of Edinburgh visited the zoo, when he was aged 9. He then mentioned something about needing his teeth looked at and was "hawking" for some Ringgits from us. The strategy worked, as, still on a high from the holding-the-sea-eagle-experience, i parted with 2 Ringgits (about 30p) and he was delighted. The only downside to this place was that about half way around, a cunningly placed barrier titled "zoo personal(sic.) only" forced us to use the only other route, which seemed to guide us through what can only be described as maze of Hampton Court type complexity with salespeople trying to sell us alabaster objet d'art at every possible turn.

Canopy trekking - which is essentially like Go Ape, only about 6 or 7 times as high. It is run by a rather nice German called Jurgen who has set up home on the island. Obviously being of Teutonic descent, some old habits die hard and there was more than one occasion where he had to reprimand us "English swine" for not following his orders! The worst part of this whole experience though was the trek into the jungle, which involved climbing over 700 steps. At first i thought, "that is not too bad" but by about 400 steps, i was in agony, and by 600 my heart was close to bursting! However, it was all worth it, and being a big fan of jumping out of trees a la Tarzan, i was in my element. Although i admit the abseiling out of a tree that was over 40 metres high was quite precarious at times, it was a hell of a buzz once you landed!

In the jungle, the humidity is such that, i must have sweated over half a stone on this activity alone.........the sad news is that this was subsequently piled back on again when a large group of us went out onto Mangos - a secluded beachfront restaurant, where I tucked in to massive T-bone steak.

This is an image of the zip line we had to go down. The perspective on the camera does not really do it justice, but it is over 120 metres long and is a good 10 metres above the tree tops too. I know a few people back home who would not have like this one!!:D The thing about this zip line is that once you resolved to go down it, there was no turning back from the large abseil out of the tree i mentioned earlier; that is the only way out of the tree (apart from falling, obviously)

The above image is a view from the top of the tree. The vague red dot you can see is a helmet of someone far down below.

Cable Car ride into the mountains - This was a hell of a cable car ride, Langkawi is a small island, but it also has some fairly impressive mountainous regions (all of which are rain forest). The cable car ascends from sea level to the top of a 700m high peak which commands spectacular views of the whole island and the rain forest below. The steepness of the ascent almost defied logic.

We were a little bit worried as there was cloud cover on the top of the mountain, which might have obscured our view, but as if by magic, by the time we got to the top, all the clouds cleared and we had some incredible photographic opportunities.

The above picture shows Langkawi as viewed from the top of the mountain. Words can't describe how cool this is, as you are looking around and you are surrounded by the distant howls of monkeys and jungle wildlife. The village you can see is where the Cable car departs from and the rock formation in the bottom centre is the Seven Wells waterfall (see below)

Seven Wells waterfall - A mildly impressive waterfall down the side of the mountain that the cable car goes up. I say mildly impressive, because anything less than Niagara falls is generally lumped into this camp by me. Once again, there was a massive amount of steps to negotiate before getting to this - surely the Malaysians have the foresight to install escalators!! The ascent to this was slightly notable for the overly friendly Iranian chaps we met along the way who insisted on having their photographs taken with me (lets hope that photo doesn't come back to haunt me!).

The other side of the waterfall is a rather nice jungle trek, which allows you to get a flavour of the environment we had seen from the Cable car. All it means is you have to negotiate a rather narrow bit of the waterfall to get to the start of the jungle path. Like a seasoned tracker, i took off my shoes and socks and prepared to walk through the water. Sam, was being a little more cautious and looking for a place to cross safely - women are such wusses!! I turned to her to snort my derision at her general cowardliness, by stating it is perfectly safe to cross here, when a sudden gust of wind (or that is what i am claiming) tipped my balance and i fell into the waterfall drenching myself head to toe. This was slightly concerning, as i had my camera in my pocket, but fortuantely it did not get a drop on it, one of the few parts of my body that remained dry!! As i write this all my money is slowly drying out on the window sill of the hotel.

Other bits and bobs - We were interested in visiting the Black Beach, thinking it to something similar to the beaches in the Canary Islands, but were disappointed to see it was mainly due to the large cement works across the way dumping all their effluent out into the sea...suffice it to say i didn't go for a swim there.

On a more general note, i have penned a few lines of this best man speech (which is progress) but i am quickly running out of time. This was hit home to me when i was told there would be a rehearsal tomorrow at 9am! This is all getting very real now...

The next couple of days will be spent on more administrative elements surrounding the wedding - getting married in Malaysia is more complicated than an Icelandic crossword! I have only seen a glimpse of the hoops the bride and groom have had to go through, but even after that amount of time i would have been tempted to say "sod it, let's just live in sin".

Langkawi Nights

Well, after approximatly 20 hours of travelling, we arrived in Langkawi late last night. I have to confess being absolutely shattered, and was alseep before my head hit the pillow. The flight over was not too bad, although it got a little bit bumpy around the bay of Bengal area, which meant we had some pretty scary turbulence for 3 hours.

The contrast between life in Malaysia and life is England is stark; Heathrow airport was packed, with people cattle herded into queues. Kuala Lumpur airport, which is a major hub for all of Asia was almost empty, so much so that i was worried i was in the wrong place for my connecting flight. However, one thing that was reassuring to see was the first symbol i saw getting of the plane at KLIA (that is Kuala Lumpur International Airport for us jet setting types) was for Burger King!!

As we came into Langkawi, there was a spectacular vista on the horizon of an epic lightning storm, which i would have enjoyed a whole lot more had it not been for the fact that i knew that was in the general direction of where we were heading! The first thing I noticed about Langkawi was the heat. It was 9pm, and yet the moment i stepped out the plane it felt like i was being blasted by a thousand hairdryers.

The whole temperature over here is markedly different to anything i have experienced in the UK. As an example, today is supposedly cloudy, but all that does is retain the heat on the island, so it is actually even hotter than quoted (it is high 30s). I am drinking plenty of liquids though, and most of those are non-alcoholic too so i should not suffer dehydration. I am hoping i might even get a tan!

OK, that is all for now.....i need to go and write that best man speech......;)

Malaysia, here i come

Ok, it is now just over 24 hours until we depart, and i have to admit some form of nervousness. That best man speech has still not be written, and time is getting short....nothing like leaving things until the last minute. Also, being a typically unprepared person, i am almost certain that i am forgetting something important. This seems a little bit surprising to me, as my case is crammed with clothes, pills, books and all other sundries which a seasoned international jet-setter should bring along, but nonetheless there is that niggling doubt in the back of my head.

Of course, it is futile to try and think what this missing item is, as experience has taught me that i will only remember what this thing is when i am 20,000 feet over France, at which point it is considered bad form to ask the captain to turn the plane around in order for you to pop home and get your favourite teddy.

However, one thing I am slightly excited by is the prospect of some grainy TV screen the size of a fag packet in the back of the seat in front of me (I really need to get out more!) I hope they have a good selection of blockbusters (not reruns of the TV show starring Bob Holness) for me to watch, and not a selection of Bollywood style musicals. There is a timed and a place for those, and a long haul flight is not it!

Anyway, that is all for now, i will leave it there. The next post i make will be from Langkawi :D

Selamat malam

Photo Test

Ok, i have managed to link a pic from the internet to the blog, now i am checking on the feasibility of uploading images i will take on my travels to the blog, to work out the best way of acheiving this.

Apologies to any of you who have this blog on an RSS feed, this particular post is rather boring, although it does include a snap of my laptop. I have 1 gig of space on this blog, which is not shabby by any means, so it will allow me to post a few snaps of the tour.

1 week to go

Ok, at precisely this time next week we will officially be on the behemoth with wings. I only have 4 working days to go before i leave this sceptred isle for something altogether more exotic. To say i am excited is a bit of an understatement. For the benefit of the groom, i now have 1 minute of top quality best man speech penned. If he wants me to fill 15 minutes, i am happy to repeat it a few times, although by the tenth reading, i suspect that the audience might not be laughing at the joke about the chickens!!! :D

There has been more progress on getting things before the holiday.....i have purchased a laptop for my travels, which is what i am writing this blog on at the moment. It is swanky and lightweight and I hope it will make me look like a budding travel writer while i make my way around Asia.

I have also managed to get my anti-malarial tablets, £40 for 16 pills is somewhat expensive, and reminds me of my student days, but compared to the alternative of raging fevers for months, they are a necessary purchase.

Now, all that remains for me to get is -

Suitcase (quite important that one)
Shoes for wedding (i am getting worse than Imelda Marcos!!)
Sandals (see what i mean)
Satchel (for carrying around gadgets)
Shorts (i mean combats)
Some other things i cant thing of right now.....

Still i have a week to go, which is plenty of time!!:D