P-J's Trip Home - Bali, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur
This page will concsist of the three countries i visited before reaching Thailand.......
Bali - A five day holiday
After leaving New Zealand I flew to Sydney to meet up with Kathryn before we flew together to Bali. Our flight left Sydney at about 6.15pm and we landed in Bali at around 10pm when we did get off the plane wwe had to wait another hour to get through immigration before getting our bags before joining anoth queue for a taxi, its a good job we are English and queuing is second nature. The taxi ride to the hotel was daughting to say the least due to the fact that the only rule in Bali for driving is to drive on the left, and they dont always stick to that! Our taxi driver, along with many of the locals, was quick to ask if we were on our honeymoon, at first Kathryn was abit stressed about it but she soon found the funny side to it all, i of course thought it was hilarious and was quick to ask for Honeymoon discounts!
The Hotel we satyed at was incredible, considering how cheap it was. We stayed in a town called Seminyak which is about 25mins from Denpasar where where the airport is. Our room was on the ground floor within 5 steps of the pool and more importantly 30 seconds from the restaurant where we got free breakfast! The room consisted of a large bedroom with a King Bed, Fridge, Tv which i could watch the footy on and a huge bathroom with a walk in shower and a bathtub with room for two!
The beach was only a 10 minute walk away and was long and beautiful, all along the beach were fancy restaurants belonging to the resorts, but they did allow us to use there sunloungers if we bought some drinks which seems a reasonable deal, or we could rent some sunloungers on the beach from locals for cheaper but you were easy prey for the touts selling sunglasses and sarongs. The waves at the beach were big with some swells reaching 10ft high, i would have rented a surfbourd if it wasnt for errrr a bad knee i had ;) but we did try surfing the waves just on our bodies, after coaxing Kathryn into the sea as she isnt too keen on it she managed to get ontop of a 10ft wave while i was stood at the bottom of it! We did this a few times but the fun came to an end when kathryn had her bikini bottoms ripped from her and i had to fetch her sarong so she could leave the sea with some dignity!
On Thursday we took a day tour with our own private guide in a car with dinner included. We left the hotel at 8.30am and our first stop was at a place called Batubulan to watch a traditional balinese performance called the Barong and Karis dance. The dance was more like a musical play with some very funny bits and some traditional dancing, outstanding costumes and live music. After the play we headed to a village called Celuk which is a silver and gold handicrafts centre. We were taken to a small factory where they handmake silver jewellry, and then inevitably shown around the huge shop with several enthusiastic salesmen promising a 'good price for you' or a 'discount for the lovely couple'! The silver they make in Celuk is 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper which is better thn most european jewellry. We drove through a couple of other villages, stopping at one to look at local paintings and another village called Mas which is famous for wood carvings. One of the carvings was of a huge eagle, taller than most men, that took two carvers over one year to complete! We then drove to a coffee and herbs farm where we sat and had a coffee or tea with the owner who asked us different things about England and Australia compared to Bali, and he told us about how he keeps racoons on the farm to eat the coffee seeds so that once they pass through the digestive system they can make a very expensive coffee from their poo! After having a coffee break with the farmer we headed up to a village called Kintamani where Mount Batur, and active volcano and Lake Batur can be seen. The volcano last errupted in 1994 but fortunally didnt kill anyone. and isnt expected to erupt anytime soon. We had our lunch at a restaurant in Kintamani before making our way through Ubud and towards the temple of Tanah Lot. On the drive through we were priveledged to witness a Crementation Ceremony where they still burn the body on a fire, although they do use flame throwers otherwise it would take four days rather than a few hours. We also stopped off at the Tegallalong gardens which are a network of Rice paddies in a valley, each plot is owned by a local who grows and harvests the rice every four months. Just before Tanah Lot we witnessed some Bali women harvesting some rice in a paddy, they get the rice by bashing the stalks onto the ground. Tanah Lot is the oldest temple on Bali, over 400 years old, and the temple of the sea. It is situated on a crop of rock just off the shore and is surrounded by the sea when the tide comes in. We stayed here for sunset, though it was ruined by the many tourists and the clouds that filled the latter of the sky. After a good buffet dinner we headed back to our hotel.
Singapore - an Island City
We set off from Bali at 2200 and arrived in singapore at around 0030, fortunatley we were out the airport and in our hostel beds by 01130. Our hotel was a recebtly renevated 7 storey hotel that was strangley the only building surrounded by some grass on this block! But it was very well situated being close tpo Little India and having a train station 2 minutes away. When we got up on the first morning the sun was out, so we got ready to explore the city unfortunatley while we got ready a thunderstom blew over and the heavens open with torrential rain lasting 2 hours, not the best start!
Oncwe the rain cleared we headed out into the city, our firts stop the famous Orchard Street where there a loads and loads of top brand shops lining the street, though we didnt want to temp ourselves bankrupt so we just walked past them all! Next up we took the train to the main trauin station to buy our tickets to Kuala Lumpur before we headed over to Sentosa Island for the evening. Sentosa Island was used by the British as a Military Island but since it was given back to Singapore the government has turned it into a Holiday Resort Island, so there were several things to do. First of all we took a cable cart fom the main island over to Sentosa which gave us a good view of Singapore, once we got to Sentosa we were at the top so i convinced kathryn that the best way down to the man made beaches was to do the Luge! She was very reluctant at first but once she started going down that hill she was squeeling like a happy pig! Once on the lower part of Sentosa we walked around a couple of the beaches before going to the Aquarium. the aquarium was really good and had creatures neither of us had ever seen let alon heard of. After the aquarium we made a mad dash back to the luge and down again to see a laser light show at one of the beaches. The show was incredible, well the actors were crap and their singing hurt our ears but the visual effects were incredible as they sprayed water into the air and used that as a projection to show animated fish and people floating in the air!
On Sunday we headed over to Singapore Zoo where of course it rained and we got soaked but we are born wet so there is nothing wrong with living wet aswell! The zoo was probably the best zoo i have been to, not only did it have a large variety of animals but the animals had so much space and freedom compared to other zoos. After the zoo closed at 1800 we went next door to the Night Safari where we had some dinner before entering the safari and going to see a show called Creatures of the Night. The show was to show people the nocturnal animals and how they behaved, and it also had an extremely energetic and funny woman running mkaing it a really good show, even thougfh some of the animals didnt behave and kept doing the wrong things! After the show we jumped on a tram to take us around the Night Safari. It was really dark but the spotloghts lit up the areas witht eh animals in so you could see them at play, or in the case of the lions just lying down chillin'!
On our final morning we walked to Little India where we decided we might aswell have curry seeing as we were in the right place. So we walked into this restaurant where we got rather a few stares as we were the only white people in there and clearly didn't have a clue what to order! In the end we just pointed at a picture on the wall and ate everything with our fingers just like the rest of them! In the afternoon we went to the train station to catch our 3.30pm train to Kuala Lumpur. This would have been alot easier if my back hadnt of gone as we were putting our packs on at the hostel, but it was good fun watching Kathryn carry both rucksacks and i'm sure some of the asian men would have been enviuos at how well trained i had her haha
Kuala Lumpur - Malaysian Capital
Our train from Singapore was delayed an hour until 4pm but of course what this really meant was which we didn't leave the station until 5.30pm. After only moving for about 45mins the train we reached the immigration services and had to disembark to get our clearance to travel over to Malaysia. Once we did get to into Malaysia we stopped at the first stop, which i presumed was to pick up some more passengers but after an hour we got suspicious and got off the train to stretch our legs, and mayb find some food, what we did find out was the train had broken down and we were likely to be here for 2 more hours! Once we got moving again it had been over 3 hours of sitting around and we were starting to get very hungry, the malaysian woman in front of us let us have some cake before the train people brought us round some food, followed up by some more food two hours later! Our train eventually rolled into Kuala Lumpur at 0500 and we arrived at our Hostel around 0530, only 8 hours later than we had told them we would arrive!
We eventually awoke the next day at noon and we slowly got up and set off around Kuala Lumpur. We spent the afternoon wandering around the street markets, central market and Merdeka Sqaure. We ate a late dinner ans afetr all the alking and lack of real sleep we were exhausted, but before we hit the sack i eventually persuaded to get Kathryn to come see the Petrosa Towers at night rather than the next day. The towers used to be the worlds' tallest skyscrapers until 2004 and they are a real gem in Kuala Lumpur at night where the are lite up by thousands of lights and some searchlights!
On our last day in Kuala Lumpur we headed over to the Kuala Lumpur Tower to have a 276m 360 degree view of the city, it would have been alot more impressive if the darn rain clouds wernt still hanging around but the view was still good, and i used the binochul;ars to good effect by watching women swim and attempt sunbathing at roof top pools! We still had some time before our bus to Thailand, so after a really good sreet lunch of Beef noodles we headed over to the Batu caves, which is a cave that has been turned into a temple. This meant getting on a public bus and hoping we got odff at the right stop! We did make it safely but as we looked up to start the 272 stpes up to the cave mouth the rain started to float down sloly at first before opening up fully, fortnuatley we had reached the top before they really opened so were inside and dry. The Batu Cave is really cool and huge with several small temples in it, there were also loads of monkeys that enjoyed sharing my raisens with me! We then decided to brave the bad weather and make the trip back down the steps, both our legs were like jelly once we reached the bottom but we were in luck as the bus we needed was waiting at a red light so we rain and got on, just in time!
We then ahd to get our bags and head to a bus stop to catch a VIP bus, we originally were going to take the train butfor some reason that idea was not too appealing! the bus itself was a big coach that had been refitted with big comfy reclining chairs so we didnt have too much trouble falling asleep! We left around 2130 and arrived at our first destination in Thailand Hat Yai at around 0700 and found a cheap, if not creepy with its mental institude style hallways, accomodation and got a few hours kip.
Next Page....Thailand......
- Posted by d1d2d3_pj on 06/05/2008.
