Jon and Anna's Asian Adventure

Leeches!

jonanna — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:36:00 GMT

Over the last few days we have become leech gatherers (Wordsworth would have been proud). We've just spent 3 days in the Malaysian Jungle at a place called Taman Negara. While we were there we shunned the oragnised tours as being too exspensive and commercial so we decided that we would go it alone.........

The Lonely Planet claimed that there was a jungle Hide 5 hours walk away from the village where we were staying. The idea is that you walk there and stay overnight in the hope that you will see tapirs, monkeys, wild elephants, monkeys etc. We thought ourselves to be pretty fit so we reckoned on it taking under 5 hours to get to the hide - which was called bumbum kumbang!!!! ha ha

7 hours later covered in sweat, suntan lotion and leeches we finally arrived at the bloody Hide! It was really hard work as there was a lot of ups and downs, we had to pull ourselves up and down hills on ropes! Also we convinced ourselves (well I did anyway) that we were lost and I was petrified of it getting dark and us having to try and sleep in a random place - we hadn't seen any other people for about 5 hours. Anyway we made it in the end and once we had picked off any stray leaches we settled down in the Hide for the night.

The Hide was like a big tree house with large holes in the walls which functioned as windows. It contained about 5 sets of wooden bunk beds with no matresses - pretty comfortable! We were th eonly people staying in it, so it was prettys scary! It was so noisy, there was insects making a complete racket and things were scurrying around us. There was also bats in the Hide with us! We stayed up for a bit in the hope of spotting some animals but we were so nackered from our walk that we ended up falling asleep and not seeing much. Oh well, it was an experince in itself.

On the walk there we did see some monitor lizards, monkeys and wild boar and lots and lots of insects - huge ants, spiders etc.

When we woke up in the morning we really didn't want to have to walk the 7 hrs back to the village so we walked to the river and after a while we managed to flag down a passing boat (by this point I was nearly crying with relief!) The boat was full of Malaysians and god knows what they thought of us, we no doubt stunk and looked pretty dishevelled!

Oh well, alls well that ends well.....

Anna

Singapore

jonanna — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:29:00 GMT

We have arrived in Singapore. We are staying in a place called the Prince of Wales pub. Sounds like a pub you would get in Magaluf. The city really is very clean, and the transport around the city is easy. The place we are staying is in the Little India area. We were expecting everything to be pretty expensive but the food is so cheap. Everyday it is the choice of either Chinese or Indian for dinner, which is fantastic. We are eating in big 'food centres' where there are lots of hawker stands. We have had naan breads, masala chicken, Peking duck, oyster sauce noodles steamed dumplings - not all in one dinner mind! The major downside is the price of beer, one beer is like the cost of 2 or 3 meals (still only 2 quid) so we haven't been drinking.
Our first day in s'pore we went to the asian civilisation museum, blagged in as students and stayed a whopping 4.5 hours in there. Spent the rest of the day wondering around Raffles place and China Town. It was Chinese New Year (I think) so there were fireworks and a festival atmosphere with dancers, people on stilts and dressed as dragons/lions.
The next day we went to the Zoo. We saw lions, siberian tigers, monkeys, orang-utans. We watched some of the feeding shows which were good, especially the polar bears.
Jon

You can tell Jon wrote the above, as its mainly about food! Anna

Sri Lanka

jonanna — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:50:00 GMT

Just arrived in Singapore after spending 2 weeks in lovely Sri Lanka. Spent some time on the beach, went to Unawatuna and then on to Mirissa beach which was really beautiful - palm fringed and empty. Unfortunatly the sea was quite rough so we couldn't do any snorkeling, which was a pity. The snorkeling is meant to be really good and its not uncommon to spot sea turtles. The 'Lonely Planet' advises not to try and sit on the turtles backs as this apparently agitates them. Its probably for the best that we didn't see any, as I would have had a strong urge to hitch a ride - I think its only a natural urge for anyone who has seen the film "Finding Nemo'. It looks fun.

Anyway we did get to do some swimming and we played in lots of big waves which was fun, until they turned you upside down and pulled your pants down.

After the beaches we headed to the 'Hill Country' in the middle of the Island. Went to a village called Ella where we did a bit of walking through tea plantations, then it was on to Nuwara Eliya, which was a British hill station. Its full of privet fences, bungalows, churches and a couple of manor houses. Unfortunatly when we were there it was also full of rain. It was really grey so we couldn't really appreciate the views but we did stay in a nice colonial bungalow and got waited on hand and foot so we managed to enjoy ourselves in true colonial style. Visited a tea factory there and we also went to the annual Nuwara Eliya races which was an experience - the race cource was ankle deep in mud/water, but as far we know all the horses got round intact.

We climbed Adam's Peak which is a sacred mountain for Hindus and Buddhists and its bloody steep with over 10,000 steps. We set off at 2.30 in the morning so we were up at the top for sunrise. It was worth it for the view as we were way above the clouds but it was very painful on the knees on the way down. Felt like we couldn't complain too much though as there was loads of old women and men with no shoes on doing the pilgrimage up there, they made us look pretty soft.

Then it was on to Kandy where we drank beer out of tea pots (due to the licensing laws) and then we spent a night at Negombo beach before heading to the airport.

Had a great time in Sri Lanka the people we really friendly. We would always get the public buses around, we'd just hail them down and somehow the Sri Lankans would always make sure we got off at the right stop. We'll also miss the food, we ate a lot of 'rice and curry' which involves anout 8 dishes, you would often have to order it about an hour before you wanted, someplaces wanted two hours!

Although it was sad to leave it was getting a bit dicey towards the end as the Tamil Tigers have stepped up there 'campaign' and while we were there was quite a few bombs including one at Colombo train station and one on a local bus that killed 26 people. The place is full of army checkpoints and when we were on the buses they would sometimes be stoped and searched. So we are pretty glad that we got out of there in one piece. Definetly would like to go back!

Anna