We took the ferry from Langkawi to Satun, leaving Malaysia and returning to Thailand for the final time on this trip. Our destination for this part of the journey was Koh Samui, we made the decision to head north to Trang first instead of heading to Hatyai which is the more popular option. We reasoned…
Langkawi – Hawaii of the Andaman
Not sure where I read it, and I’ve never been to Hawaii, but I think I know what they mean when they describe Langkawi as the Hawaii of the Andaman. It has a relatively modern infrastructure for this part of the world and it is very beautiful both in terms of it’s landscape and the…
Penang – Georgetown, street food and street art.
The bus from KL to Georgetown cost about £14 for the two of us and took about 5 hours in reasonable comfort. The final part of the journey being over the remarkable new bridge that joins the island to the mainland. Sitting on the northwest coast of Malaysia, Penang is the area that includes the…
Kuala Lumpur – towers, tours and pause.
The Petronas Towers are a breathtaking sight and we were lucky enough to be staying in an Airbnb that was close enough that if you opened the window (not advisable on the 32nd floor!) you felt you could almost touch them. They are very reminiscent of a pair of Chrysler buildings. We had a tour…
Borneo – orangutans, monkeys and bears (oh my!)
Before we travelled to Borneo it’s probably fair to say we didn’t know much about the place. Borneo is the name of the island but separate parts belong to Malaysia and Indonesia as well as it including the whole of Brunei. We just visited the region of Sabah in the north east of the island…
Malaka – Melaka, Malacca or Mallaca
I guess that when you have been colonised as many times as this place it’s not a surprise that you answer to many different names. The Dutch, Portuguese and British have all ruled over this once vital port town. Today it is reinventing itself as a tourist destination half way between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur….
Singapore – sights, studios and supertrees
Singapore is completely different to everywhere else we have visited so far in South East Asia. The standards of cleanliness and lack of crime are fairly well known, even to the point of being ridiculed, but after the countries we have spent time in this was actually a welcome relief. Other countries have all had…
Bali – Seminyak, Sanur and Ubud
We decided back in September to spend the festive period in Bali. We reckoned there wouldn’t be many opportunities in life to repeat this and also with its proximity to Australia it would probably have a more Christmassy feel. It is strange experiencing this time of year away from home, friends and family. Even though…
Siem Reap – temples, temples and … well more temples!
Siem Reap is the town where people visiting the Angkor Wat temple complex generally find their accommodation. Not surprisingly it is a busy and tourist filled destination. It is expanding at a rate of knots and the expansion is being funded largely by hotel chains and other commercial partners. It has a Hard Rock Cafe,…
Battambang – bamboo and bats.
Battambang sits approximately half way between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. It doesn’t have the tourist pull of the latter or the commercial focus of the former, but it does have a bamboo railway! The infrastructure of Cambodia is still suffering from the years of the Khmer Rouge which included the decimation of it’s railways….
Phnom Penh – past, present and future.
Cambodia is a country most people know a bit about, usually from memory fragments of news reports. We were the same so unsure just what to expect when we arrived in Phnom Penh. It wasn’t the greatest welcome as the visa officer ‘áccidentally’ gave me the wrong change for our visas, luckily I noticed I…
Krabi – Ao Nang, Krabi Town and Ko Lanta
w We left Phuket by ferry from Phuket Town headed for Ao Nang, I’ll own up now and say that I actually booked the hotel thinking it was in Krabi Town, not realising that as it was in Krabi Province most of the hotel websites treat it as an outlying area of the main town….