Malaysia

We are currently in Chiswick (London) staying with Charles (Lindas cousin) - more on this later.

We spent a week in Malaysia, mainly in Penang which is off the western coast close to Thailand.

Fisrt impressions were - Very Bloody Hot, very nice peaople, great food, lots of banks and lots of development. Nearly everyone speaks english and all the signs are also in english.

We arrived at 9pm and stayed near the airport at the Concorde Inn. The next day we caught the shuttle bus back to the airport and took the train into Kuala Lumpor. Spent the day walking around town checking out the markets, food and had a look at KL bird park. The bird park had some amazing birds. The Toucans were a highlight although it was all a bit sad as most birds were kept in cages.

We caught the overnight train north to Butterworth arriving at 5.40am (we had a sleeper cabin). A short ferry ride took us to Georgetown (Penangs city), then a taxi to the Hydro Majestic at Batu Ferringhi (north coast). The hydro was being renovated - much of the foyer was opened up the morning we left, the pool was due to open the following day. We spent a day walking around Georgetown which was founded by Francis Light (on behalf of the East India Company). His son founded Adelaide. Walking anywhere in Malaysia is very hot work and I was ussually soaked in sweat within minutes. Walking in Malaysia is also fairly dangerous as there are no pedestrian crossings and in many cases no footpaths. The footpaths that do exist often have huge holes where a man hole cover has rusted away or the concrete cover over a hole has broken (obviously no public liability here). We also went to the night markets at Batu Feringhi where u can get a latest release dvd for 4 ringit (about $1.40) or a flash pair of sunnies or a rolex (genuine of course) for a few dollars. We have many movies to watch in our campervan!. Food in Malaysia deserves a mention - its very cheap - a meal might cost 3 or 4 ringit!! and ussually you could tell whats in it!!. We had 1 meal over the rd from the hydro at Miami Beach where 30 locals died and 7 are still missing from the tsunami. The little girl at the restaurant (shack right on the beach) is world famous as the "floating mattress baby of Miami beach" - the first wave came in, smashed the back wall down and took the 22day old baby (on a blow up mattress) out to sea. 15 minutes later the second wave brought her back inside another room of the shack and when the 2nd wave withdraw it shut the door so the baby stayed inside. They had heaps of news articles from all over the world.


We had a 6 hour bus ride back to KL to catch the plane to Heathrow. We had brekkie at 3am on the plane and spent the day looking around Chiswick with Charles before heading to bed at 10pm - so a very long day.

I'll get Linda to post some comments re London.

I hope everyone is enjoying Work

Regards
John