Further Wanderings

After the Cameron Highlands, Kuala Lumpur was a bit of a shock.  Hot, sticky, big and busy, KL was everything that Tanah Rata wasn’t.  But somehow, despite the change of scenery, we were still felt a bit lackadaisical during our time there.

Part of this came from the fact that Malaysia was such an easy place to travel in.  Public transport was good, everyone was used to tourists (especially in the areas we were visiting), and virtually everyone spoke at least a bit of English.  After the rigours of places like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Sumatra, it almost felt TOO easy to be exciting.

Another source of the feeling came from the nearness of our trip’s end.  During our stay in KL, the day 2 weeks prior to our return to NZ came and went.  Since booking our tickets we’d been focussing more and more on the END of the journey, and finding it correspondingly tougher to focus on the present.

The Masjid Jamek Mosque (a bit redundant, as Majid means mosque in Malay), Kuala Lumpur

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It’s always so nice arriving in a city and already knowing your way around.

Since we’d spent a day on the island of Penang in transit between Thailand and Indonesia, we had no troubles finding our way to a nice hotel, getting booked in and setting about enjoying the place.

Lens at the Penang Lighthouse [read on]

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 While getting IN to Indonesia was no problem, onward travel presented some minor difficulties. First came negotiations with the bemo (microbus) driver about our fare.  Then came finding an ATM for him to stop at so we could pick up some ... [Continue reading this entry]

Wow. Didn't think I'd be doing this again so soon. In this instance the countries involved are Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, and we didn't even use air travel! We had some minor problems purchasing our train tickets for the Bangkok-Malaysia journey ... [Continue reading this entry]

Upon returning to Bangkok we set about achieving two important goals: 1. Have as pleasant a rest as possible in between two big spells of travel (back from Cambodia, on to Malaysia.) 2. Eat as much yummy Thai food as possible during ... [Continue reading this entry]

The Angkor ruins are a HUGE series of buildings (mostly Hindu/Buddhist temples)constructed between the 9th and 15th centuries AD.  They were built by the Khmers when they were at the height of their power and their empire encompassed most of ... [Continue reading this entry]

Following our surprisingly simple journey into the country, and a very pleasant night in Battambang, we woke up nice and early to catch a bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. When I'd visited Cambodia about 3.5 years before the roads in ... [Continue reading this entry]

We took the train from Dhaka to Chittagong, and actually had a very pleasant trip. Despite sharing many characteristics (thousands of rickshaws, curious residents, busy markets and building facades) Chittagong was clearly not the same city as Dhaka. ... [Continue reading this entry]