Lady-Boy?

Malaysia Part 2

Despite the fact we were in Kuala Lumpa (home to the Petronas Towers) for longer than Penang I ensure you this will be a shorter post, because quite frankly, with the lack of internet/ how lazy we are we'll never get this thing up to date if I don't get posting now.

Basically, we got to Kl after the chaos in Penang and right off we had troubles with Taxi's again; none of them would do it metered (the journey) to our hotel, all were stating a flat fee of 30 Ringget which albeit isn't much we were sure the hotel was near so they were gonna be ripping us off, also more annoying was the fact every taxi had this on the side;

This is a Metered taxi - Haggling is illegal

I'm sure that's meant for us the customer not them the driver.

Anyways we got a taxi for alot less finally to our hotel, which was well placed near the happening center of KL and we made our base before we descended into the chaos.

Within a few hours we had immersed ourselves in the most complicated, frustrating and most awesome (there it is again) mall yet, where I'm sure we spent hours (accumalative of the three days) wandering round and still having no bearing on what floor or section we were in. In the course of the days we managed to pick up some awesome baragains including but not exclusive to;

Velvet Underground T Shirt for 3 Pound
Rocket T Shirt for 4 pound
Zippos for like 18 pound each
New Sungalsses - 30 quid cheaper than at home.


Basically a run down of awesome events will be the best way to summarise Kuala Lumpa, the final leg of Malaysia;

• Sirus got winked at in an enticing manner by a transvestite, he was tempted
• We got lost in malls for hours, again
• Accidentally purchased half a pint at 6.50 a pint, schweet (stupid alcohol prices in Asia and happy hour prices)
  
• We found some of the best clothes shops in Asia/the world
• Ate Laksa, look it up.
• Saw the Petronas Towers, and the KL tower (which we believe to be taller; conspiracy)
• Saw a performing monkey on the back of a pink moped, and had the man threaten us if we took photos, he looked like he'd genuinely kill us
• Offered a foot massage, and a 'body massage'
• Physically accosted (and stroked) by prostitutes on the street, (not like that though, we're too poor)
• Considered gay by the local pimps - 'Lady.....(no interest shown by either me or Sirus).... Boy?
• Oh and also considered gay by the check in guy who gave us a 'double bed'
  
• Given business cards by pimps - Gold lettering on perforated card, (enough to make Patrick Bateman jealous), (Cheers Kent)
  
• Let ourselves become peeping Toms and watched the hotel across the street intently to see if anything 'good went down' Think the best we got was a bloke getting head, though we can't be sure he stood with his arms on his waist alot...

Me outside a brothel (It's on the main strip and I'm walking by it alright?!)
The woman on the left is a pimp not a prostitute, most prossies are pretty bangin'!

That's all for now folks, not sure if me or Sirus will do the next update, which involves Hong Kong, Kowloon, Macau, Gambling, and Prostitutes (again). So Stay Tuned...


We're in Aus atm, and it's awesome.

He's Not Married, He Has No Ring, Don't trust Him, I'm not Joking

So yeah, this is the 'long awaited' Malaysia related blog post, I've been threatening to post. Sorry It's taken so long

PART ONE

After Sentosa, in the evening and after we had eaten (this time on our own without Matt and Audrey) They ran us to the bus terminal where we boarded our 'superior,premier super coach thing' It was pretty nice, we sat at the front with a little extra leg room Audrey had blagged for us.

Anyway the coach journey was pretty interesting, weird, scary and fuckin' annoying. Basically within 10 minutes I realised that my mp3 player had completely fucked up and couldn't read any music on either it's own memory or it's external, schweet. Me and Sirus just went to sleep, as after all it was a 10 hour journey, we'd set off at 9 in the evening o it was an overnighter. after the excruciatingly painful immigration and bagge checks (taken place at different terminals, so off the coach, back on, downn the road 2 seconds, back off on etc) At around 2/3 in the morning I awoke to have the driver tell me soemthing unclear about a taxi or some-shit, I wasn't interested and drifted back off to sleep. At 7, the driver mumbled 'Penang' our stop. I had luckily drifted from my sleep and managed to wake Sirus up collect our stuff and get up, we did however then ask the driver ' Are we being taken to our hotel' Like we had paid for and had been clearly stated in our travel documents Alas however, NO.

Right basically the 'taxi' talk was because the driver couldn't be bothered to take us all the way and decided to offload us inot an un-marked taxi, qho he proceeded to pay, at 7 in the morning and slightly out of it I was in no mood to complain/argue etc. So we got in and off we went, withing 30 seconds the river had;

A, Almsot killed a moped driver

B Reversed up a triple carriageway- the wrong way to talk to a taxi driver mid drive

C, Run a Red-Light

Basically the taxi driver told our non-taxi driver that the hotle was alot further away than the coach driver had told him it was, and had fobbed him off with money, so back to the coach we went, after a strong interchange of words and money we were back on the road and far more aware of what a shit and scary sitaution we were in. With Clenched fists I made sure to question everything our driver told us and make sure there was somewhere to run if he tried anything.

At one point the driver attempted to allay our fears with a pleasant family story about his daughters and wife, Alas I discovered it all to be a lie, hence the title. So I swiftly texted Sirus the following;

He's Not Married, He Has No Ring, Don't trust Him, I'm not Joking

Anyways despite my fears he did actually take us to our hotel, and didn't (Luckily) try and rinse us for more money than he'd been paid.

This Is Him In the White (We saw him in town later that day)

The Hotel was AWESOME, swimming pool, resteraunt nice views, the whole lot, and for a budget price. We checked in and went for a nap before heading out into Penang

In Penang there is literally shit all to do, we wandered alot, enjoyed people watching and spent most of our time jostling with the traffic, as pedestrians are less than second class citizens here, and there is no code of conduct for pedestrians who wish to cross the road and drivers don't understand the concept of 'driving laws'

Anyways here we met some colourful characters;

• The Tinnest man in the world who we think was a rickshaw driver

• The Most awesome (again) lady who made us our lunch for 60p Seen Here;

• The Most elderly Asian couple in existence
• A man who believed me and Sirus to be gay (This (un)fortunately happens alot) who proceeded to offer to buy us lunch and show us the sights
• A ten year old Kid Ride a moped, on the pavement and then onto and into, the road seen here

• The most insane taxi driver on the face of the planet, no-one will ever beat him, ever- I'll explain further later.

After our interesting day out in Penang viewing the (Very few) sights and enjoying the undeveloped hap hazard nature of the underbelly of the city, we caught the free hotel shuttle bus back and chilled at our hotel as at this point it had started to rain. Sirus wrote a love letter whilst I slept, though it wasn't for me, what gives man?????

The Taxi Driver

This deserves it's own section as nothing on the face of the planet could prepare you for the degree of insane driving the taxi driver we had the following day subjected us to.

Having checked out and ensured we were in the hotel at 8.50 for our transfer at 9 for our next coach jounrey, we began to panic at 9.14 when our lift still hadn't arrived despire our coach leaving at 10, check in being at 9.30 and the journey to the coach depot being 30 minutes drive away (at least).

So after 3 phonecalls to the bus company the driver eventually turned up at 9.35, aware he was late and we headed on into town.

Now Asians aren't great at time keeping but when they're in a rush they love to rush. So in we got with our driver, into a car thirty years old and barely recognisable as a car, let alone a taxi. The Thign was falling apart and the air-con unit was pumping white smoke into the car.

Now off we set, on average our driver broke a driving law every 2-3 seconds including, but not exclusive to;

• The Speed limit - We averaged 80, the whole time (even side roads)
• Lanes - What lanes?
• Traffic Lights - Again what traffic lights?
• Other Drivers - What other drivers?
• Indicators - Cars don't need em

Basically we almost killed at least 5 moped drivers and avoided in excess of 10 serious crashes with other drivers / other objects.

The worst occasion was when on a two lane road our driver attempted to, at 80kmph drive between a car and moped, decided against it, backed off and almost killed the moped driver to the side, this was the only time of at least three, that this manoeuvre had actually failed.

We made it to the depot in 15 minutes, checked in and surprise surprise had to wait till gone 10 for our coach onto Kuala Lumpa.

The journey was pleasant enough and took only a few hours - I'll do a separate post for that later today.

Ben Our, Also currently in Aus, chillin' in the sun :)

Mob Of Asians

Sorry...

For no updates recently, we went to Malaysia and internet was scarce and then in Hong Kong it proved even more difficult to get any sort of wireless. Ben's been promising to do his write up on Malaysia, but he hasn't. As soon as he does, we will move onwards and upwards and get this back up to speed.

Love Love Love

Sisi.

x

This side of Paradise

On the Thursday before we left for Malaysia we decided to head to Sentosa island, a joyous funland situated just off of Singapore. Before heading to Sentosa we hit up Zion foodcourt for some awesome dumplings. We headed down to Sentosa via the MRT and got off in surprise surprise ANOTHER mall,

God they love them here, this one was called Vivo city and actually laid out in an easily understandable way (for once) It did however take us the good part of an hour to find the cable car station which was bloody closed anyways.....

Here we indulged in a local pudding delight; their version of ice cream which looks like this;

And yes those are bits of sweetcorn (wtf!) and the red things are red beans, which are rank, and on the far right you can just see black squares, those are bits of black jelly, weirdd, ice cream bit was alright mind.

After huffing and puffing our way around the mall looking for the best way across to Sentosa we settled for a taxi which took us to this awesome beach that was effectively paradise and looked like this;

And yes those are monks in the background, one spent 20 minutes with us telling us how he was going to become the leader of his people and appointed by the King to take over this epic Temple in two years time that his minions are currently building whilst he checks out babes on the beach (jokes). But yeah he was awesome, told us he dropped out of Berkley to be an awesome Monk, check it.

We spent about an hour and a half here (would of been longer if we didn't have to get back for the coach to Malaysia) and I went for a swim and caught some rays, Sirus on the other hand had not brought swim shorts and instead of catching rays was burnt to a crisp;

Rad tan lines dude.

Anyways after frolicking on the beach like young lovers do we headed back towards civilisation and headed down some sketchy cycle/walk path which lead to the other side of the island, where we saw we could walk back to Singapore and Vivo as it 'wasn't too far' (it was). Anyways we followed this path, it ended, we climbed a sheer face hill onto the roadside path and followed this all the way to the bridge, here we jostled with traffic as we made our way from one side of the bridge to the other, as the path was blocked by construction work on one side, crossing three lanes of traffic going either way is ALWAYS fun. Anyways, we got 3/4 of the way across when the path literally completely ended;

Leaving to the side and into the industrial park was not an option;

So across the lanes of traffic once more and onto a path that did lead back to Singapore and Vivo, where a friendly notice informed you that the bridge crossing for pedestrians wasn't finished, oh right, brilliant, worth putting it at both ends or.....?

We headed off home after our awesome adventure to paradise land, and packed for our mental trip away to Malaysia, which was awesome/insane. Stay tuned.

Ben, for once

We're still Alive

Sorry for the lack of updates,

we've been in Malaysia for the last four days without the internet

Stay Tuned for tall tales and life threatening scenarios from Malaysia land

Ben & Sisi Out

Hogo Boos

Just one of the higher end products in Little India

Post rain hiding, we finally got out, and onto the MRT to a place that has been

recommended to us, by a real life guide book and our host, called Arab Street, super excited we were expecting an area full of culture and exceptionally beautiful sights, it turned out to contain terribly scary staring men in a run down mall and a lot of traumatisingly unpleasant scents trailing most streets. We wandered toward some yellow stalls, full of Chinese tradesmen and women.

Mango, Pomelo, Papaya and Breadfruit among other assorted fruit covered a huge

area of wooden stalls, we'd run upon a double decker market, so walking in

excited by cheap fruit juices we slowly discovered the madness of it all.

Before having to do 4 laps of upstairs to find our way back down again, we fully

experienced the insane market and all the cheap watches it had to offer :).

Wanting to find Little India we head out of the market and onwards across the

indistinguishably brown river, where we found it, the smell of all sorts of curried

treats is unmistakable. Jewellers, awful cd shops, shops of rubbish and restaurants having the only plots here, we settled at the latter and ate- was amazing.

Money -our waiter for the day was lovely, smiley and bad at pronouncing non-

eastern names. The food was superb, so we tipped him.

?

So all in all a pretty amaezing day, received a fantastic e-mail, ate outstanding food as always, got home safe and now Ben is sleeping. Going to Malaysia tomorrow evening, might not have my laptop for that one, but the updates are sure to come at some point.

You have no idea

h

o

w

long this took.

Love Love Love

Sisi

x

In Singapore, it rains.

Wake up, look out window, torrential rain. When it rains in Singapore, it rains hard. No messing around. Full on equatorial downpours.

View from our window this morning courtesy of Ben

It stopped for about 40 minutes at around 10am, which is when we went out to catch breakfast at the closest mall's food hall. We tried to order from somewhere but they weren't serving yet at 11am, because they just love starting late here. We settled on Stewed Beef Noodles for breakfast, with a Watermelon and Papaya juice for myself and Benny went for Honeydew juice. It was, as everything is here, amazing.

Our fantastic breakfast

and Ben looking cheeky

We were pretty confused as to what to do with our bowls, so watched the locals for a while, and noticed they just left them and walked off, so we figured we'd do the same, but before we could the transsexual/transvestite (we're still not sure which) cleaner guy/girl came and took them for us. We left the mall to go get the MRT to Little India, but it started to drizzle a little again, at which we took the action to walk back to the apartment, as we arrived the clouds held back no more, and dropped an un-salinated version of the Pacific and Indian ocean combined upon Singapore. Which is why we're back here right now, no surprise Ben is asleep. As soon as it clears up we'll head out though.

I'm aware this is effectively just a food blog of what we've eaten, BUT we went to this Thai restaurant last night, it was phenomenal.

Love Love Love.

Sisi

x

Legs Hurting

Another early start, 'cause that's the way to do things. Although waking up around 8 does mean waiting around till about 10:30 for most shops and food halls to open, but we do it anyway...we're just crazy that way. It literally took us about an hour and a half to decide where to sit down and eat. Now there are three mains reasons for this:

1. We had to wait for all the shops to open anyway so that we could get a full scope on what exactly they were offering to our taste buds.

2. There is such a vast number of food halls, restaurants and cafes that it is very close to impossible to choose where to go to eat, because you don't want to miss out on anything awesome.

3. We got lost, again, in another mall. Well actually it was sort of like 3 malls, maybe 4, I'm unsure, we were lost. Basically the Singaporese are like Prairie Dogs, they have a huge network of underground tunnels going down on around 4 different underground levels, they connect a lot of the different malls together and help you cross the busy roads etc. So we did not see sunlight for about 45 minutes whilst we were walking aimlessly back and forward through these underground streets.

Eventually we found somewhere, that neither of us really wanted to go, but our legs were already tired and it was only 11am, so we bought 2 sugar cane juices, Ben had some pastry things and I indulged in 'crispy chicken with chili, peanuts and rice'...for breakfast, it was incredible, of course.

After this we venture off to China Town, via the MRT or underground tube service as you may know it. China Town was pretty crazy loads of markets selling useless and stolen products, and not as many restaurants as we were hoping, so after seeing some temples we went back to the centre of town and decided to walk to the botanical gardens.

It was hot, and a mission to walk there, but only really because of the heat. We had to stop every few malls, just to get that refreshing, artificial ice breeze from the air conditioning units. We got some lunch too, Singapore's famous Chicken Rice, turns out it's just chicken and rice, really not all that exciting but delectable all the same.

The gardens were lovely once we finally arrived, a wide variety of different plant life and a generally really nice atmosphere. We even made friends with a Terrapin in Swan Lake and a Monitor Lizard in Symphony Lake, they were lovely guys. We only made to about half way through the gardens as they were really quite large and we were really quite hot. So we turned around walked back and walked all the way home talking about girls, films and everything ever. We swam immediately upon our return, and now Ben is asleep (he likes his afternoon naps) and we will head out to dinner soon.

OH YEAH! We had Japanese for dinner last night, it was amazing, amazing and amazing. Raw fish and sesame seed ice cream are insane and yet again amazing. Anyway, maybe Ben will not sleep between 5 and 7.30 one of these days and I won't have all this free time so he will write something up, until then my dears I apologise for my typing once more.

Love Love Love

Sisi

x

Slinging it in Singapore.

Today we awoke early, Ben at 7, myself at 8. After a evening filled with the consumption of fresh chili and black pepper crab we were ever so happy to go to bed. We headed straight out this morning, just to walk around and get to know the place a little more. We headed to the closest mall (there is an outrageously dense population of malls here(no honestly SO SO SO many), each one being usually at least twice the size of Churchill Square, this particular one had a mere 9 floors.) and after waiting for it to open it's food halls to us we went and got breakfast. Which looked a little like this -

This was a pre-made delicacy, that you simply pick up and take to the till, which is something we failed to understand to start with. It cost s$1.20, along with a coffee and Asian cake thing with some pretty enigmatic berries on it, it all came to about £1.70! God cheap food is awesome.

We got told last night by out host that we must go and check out The Long Bar in The Raffles hotel, which is supposedly where the famous 'Singapore Sling' cocktail was created originally. So we walked along, visiting ever more malls, until we reached the hotel. When we got to the bar, I was a little wary of the price of the cocktail and not really liking alcohol at all I just sat down at a table whilst Ben ordered. He came back, followed by the waitress with 2 Singapore Slings in her hand, clearly she wasn't familiar with the meaning of the word 'one'. They tasted like that pink chewing gum you have when you're a kid, with a kick of what we decided to be white rum. We looked at the menu at it turns out that a SS at The Long Bar is only s$25...which in GBP is around £12!! But it was worth it just to say we'd done it, and they had free peanuts on the table anyway, so we rinsed them fully to even out how much we were paying.

After that we did a whole load of walking, got lost in a mall 3 times, and then got completely lied to by an information woman, who is there to give information to tourists...bitch. We ignored her instructions anyway and walked a different direction as our gut feelings clearly knew more about the layout of Singapore than she did. We came back to the apartment, scared the maid, swam and spoke about girls or a girl, and that was our day! Ben has just woken up next to me (gosh that sounds gay, and the picture of us drinking pink cocktails doesn't help), so I'm sure he will add to this at some point so you can stop putting up with my terrible typing.

Love Love Love

Sisi

xx

Slummin' it in Singapore

It's a New Dawn, It's A New Day, And I'm Feeling Good

Dinner was pretty much the greatest thing ever.

End Of Day One - Ben

"Can't believe you flashed a whole plane full of people!"

Soooo Ben and I have finally set off for our travels. We left at 11am on Saturday morning, and now after a leg crampingly long 12 and a half hour flight we are in Singapore. My laptop says it's 7am, but the world outside says it's 3pm. Ben did flash a whole plane full of people...just with a camera, not his body. Still he got a fantastic picture of me asleep, CHEERS Ben.

Anyhow, we're in Singapore and it's incredible. In our own words- 'It's like England, but without all the bad stuff and loads more good stuff', we're pretty clearly very jet-lagged, but what we were trying to get across is that it's awesome. Some woman juiced some sugar cane for us, was amazing, despite the lingering after-taste of chlorophyll. Apart from that we were treated to a very un-asian lunch by our far too generous host Matt, whose £1million apartment we're staying in,in the centre of SG.

Sorry for my ramblings, Ben's asleep next to me and he's much more of a blog guru than I am, so expect better things from him in the future. I'm going to go play in the giant private pool, with added jacuzzi feature, and then maybe have a game of tennis on the private court here, could even lift some weights in the private gym... you get the picture.

Toodles.

Love Sisi.

x