Going Batty in the Batu Caves!

Thiapusum is a Hindu religious festival celebrated at the end of January (or early feb in some years). In Malaysia it's celebrated in Penang and most impressively in Kuala Lumpur where upwards of a million people make the pilgrimage to the Batu Caves 18km north of KL, and climb the 272 steps whilst carrying burning pots or covered in piercings that would not look out of place in a Clive Barker story. Google pics of the festival and you will understand!

All this occurred on the 27th Jan this year, your intrepid reporters bravely went to the caves on the 28th ( mostly cos we don't like large crowds and neither of us fancied being set on fire or perforated by hooks and chains!).

The area of the caves is pretty spectacular with some amazing scenery but... The commercialisation of the area was not pretty with loads of rubbish and dubious liquids running down the streets (although we had just arrived after a million people had just left so I'll forgive them if they hadn't finished the clean up yet!).

We set off up the steps towards the caves, stopped to avoid people still carrying burning bowls of fire, took some photo's of the numerous monkeys sitting around (plotting to steal your sandwiches at a moments notice) and finally made it to the top!

The caves are huge with numerous pigeons and bats flying through them. Gemma is not a fan of "wing'ed things" as she puts it, but put on a brave face and continued through the cave. Half way into the main cave, climbing the last few steps one of the bats expressed its own dislike of "Gemma's" by crapping on her from a great height! She took this as a sign to get the hell out of the cave and we made a sharp exit. I told her it was good luck but she seemed unimpressed!!!!

We stayed on in KL for a couple more nights, sampled the park and some of the more open areas of the city which were really impressive.

We are now in Melaka a much smaller and quieter port town on the SW coast of Malaysia. We are staying in a brilliant little guesthouse in Chinatown and have been chilling here for a couple of days. Will post more about it later but so far this is the best place we have stayed! It's got a sort of laid back Cornwall village vibe ( although there's still no sign of a beach!).

Until next time!

G+D

Penang! Where's the beach?!!!

Rule 1:When travelling round the world ensure you have triple checked your pre booked flights and haven't forgotten about any changes to airlines/flight times that may have occurred prior to departure.

Rule 2: After finding that the airline you "were sure" you were booked on has no record of the booking. Don't wait 4hrs until the UK offices of the travel company that booked the flights opened and then have a go at them, demand that they book you on the next flight to Penang or "there will be he'll to pay"!

Rule 3: When travel company patiently explain that they have an email sent in October detailing the change of flight and a reply from you which acknowledges this change. Do eat humble pie, Do feel like an idiot, Do apologise to your wife and offer to stay in plush hotel in Changi airport!!!!!

That was the start of our Penang trip!! We did get to stay in the Crowne Plaza for a night and get on a flight the next day!

Penang is quite a contrast to Singapore, it's noisy, crowded, dirty, exciting, overwhelming, filled with amazing food and very very retro! When you get off the plane you grab a bus up the island to Georgetown and instantly feel like you've been transported back to the 1940's. Old colonial buildings rub shoulders with shabby hotels and turn of the century raj style buildings. Our hostel was next to the shady part of town, firmly in backpacker country with loads of hostels around the area. We ended up in the Banana Hostel in a twin room with a private bathroom straight out of one of the Saw films, but for £18 a night you do get aircon, free wifi and Tv!!!

First port of call was to sample the food that Penang was famous for. We headed to the Red Garden food hawker area. There were about 20 different stalls selling all sorts of Malaysian, Chinese and Indian  food with loads of different seafood, giant crabs, prawns and tons of rice and noodle dishes all for between 5 and 10 ringetts each (£1 - £2)!!! We ate there a lot, trying loads of different stuff as you can see in the photos!

After eating loads we went in search of the beach.. We even hired a car and went round the whole island in search of a white sandy beach with the requisite palm trees and hammock! Although the island has some stunning scenery it is not endowed in the beach department and we came up empty!

Driving in Penang is a bit like taking part in an attack on the Deathstar! Your car is the rebel alliance and everyone else is trying to take you out! A billion mopeds fly through red lights, go the wrong way down the road, sneak across you when you are not looking. Those with cars and trucks also don't care about anyone else on the road! This is a little off putting at first but after 15 minutes of fighting the situation and tutting every time someone cuts you up you get into it and find that not only is it fun it actually works, no one gets killed, everyone gets to where they need to go!

3 days in Penang is enough, we then took a bus to Kuala Lumpur, 5hr journey in an awesome coach and are staying in great boutique hotel in Little India called the 1915 hotel. We went to see the Petronas Towers and both of our reactions was "it doesn't look that tall". We didn't go up the tower cos it costs loads but spent the day walking around the parks and shops in the area!

We have 2 more days in KL and the Thaipusam festival is taking place with around 2 million Hindu's on a pilgrimage to Batu Caves on the outskirts of the city. We are deciding whether to go or not!

We haven't nailed down where we are going after KL. after the disappointment in Penang a beach is a priority! So either Port Dickson or Melaka probably!

See you next time (hopefully more tanned and relaxed after sitting for 4 days on a nice beach, seriously even Port Talbot has a beach!!!!)

Singapore on a budget

Just a few quick thoughts on things to do if you have a few days to kill in Singapore but very little cash!

Singapore is really expensive for lots of things! Alcohol is very expensive, around S$30 for a cheap bottle of wine in a supermarket (15 quid!), Food in restaurants is on par with that of any major city cost wise as are hotel rooms but there are a few things that are cheaper than in the UK and a few things to do that are free!

1. Public transport, the MRT (underground railway) is amazing but also cheap! get a EZT card at a station (its like an oyster card in London) and the largest fare that you will get is from the airport to the centre of town which is S$3 (1.50) and buses are even cheaper!
2. Walk around the City, its not that big and is easy to get to all the major districts (although it is bloody warm) you can get into the numerous shopping malls to take advantage of the air con!
3. Go to the Gardens by the Bay and the Botanical Gardens, they both are free and pretty stunning.
4. Eat at the Hawker Stalls, the food is mindblowing we ate at Lau Pau Sat near the financial district which is a massive Hawker area under cover with over 100 different food stalls. Just check out which stalls have the longest queues and eat there! You can get a cracking meal for S$4 (2 quid). Beware though, we thought we were eating healthily all noodles and rice but a lot of the food is fried in Lard!!!
5. Get a Hostel rather than a hotel, The River City Inn was really clean with free wifi and breakfast the only downside is the smallest room they had was a 4 berth so be prepared to share if there are only a couple of you!
6. Visit Little India on a Sunday night. Its the night all the Indian residents get paid and all the men take to the streets to party! Its packed and appernetly the closest that you get to feeling like you are in Mumbai without being in Mumbai! The food is amazing!
7. Walk around Chinatown and visit the big Buddhist Temple, its huge with a museum and lots of statues.

There you go, no pictures but hope this helps anyone who is travelling in the near future.

Singapore!

Singapore is great city, super clean, friendly people, cheap local food and some stunning cityscapes. We have spent the last 3 days staying at the River City Inn Hostel in a 6 bedded room (it does feel like living back on centre!) The hostel is fantastic with all that you need including a free breakfast and free WiFi!!!!

We have spent the last 3 days walking around all the districts of Singapore. China town is really busy as its the Chinese New Year here and is all decorated up to celebrate.

Went to Raffles and Gemma completed her secret mission for Jo Morgan!

We munched lots of different local foods, best so far, was a mixed Satay grill from "Satay Street" nom nom nom!
We met up with the Shirra Moores, they took great care of us and showed us round colonial singapore, fed and watered us and in the end put us up for a night cos we were a bit too pissed to find our way home!!!
It's definitely the rainy season here at the moment, it absolutely nailed it down with rain all day yesterday, Dave forgot to take an umbrella so we both got soaked under one umbrella walking through the Botanical Gardens (although its still 30 degrees so you do dry off quickly).

Off to start our Malaysia leg of the trip tomorrow flying to Penang, we are both really looking forward to it.

Tonight we are meeting up with Sammy again and going to Little India for a curry (Daves hoping that they do Cheese and Onion Naan bread and special mix Korma)!

Catch up next time from Malaysia!!!

Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Someone stuck a boat on the top!

The financial district at night

The MRT, always clean, always on time and air conditioned!

Chinatown Hawker stalls (Legendary Hainiese Chicken)

A kind local family with Gemma that took pity on us and took us in for the night. It was good to see you lot again!

Chicken prior to being Hainiesed!



London Eye on Holiday! Just by the semi permanent Grand Prix track



Gemma at Raffles, just walk in like you own the place, they'll never know that you are not staying there!

Leaving on a Jet plane....

Blimey, the last week or so has been pretty full on!

We hired a van (and a Justin) on Thursday to move the big bits of furniture to the container. its amazing to think that your entire worldly possessions can fit into a 20ft shipping container with a bit of packing and ingenuity that a Tetris grand master would be proud of!

Life in a Box!!!

We had a night out on the town in sunny Ross Vegas with a bunch of top friends, Dave tried Coffee Tequila for the first time (thanks Martin) and Gemma got on the Vodka Red bulls so that Saturdays planned packing and finishing up was a much slower affair thanks massive hangovers!

The Usual Suspects, thanks for a great night!

We finally closed up the house and set off from Ross on Sunday, to drop the cats off at their new home for the year in Worcester with Kate and Adam (they seem to have settled in nicely).







 Headed down to Hitchin for a night at Justins, got snowed on and am now sitting in Nunhead, London writing this the day before we fly and looking forward to a night out at Daves favourite restaurant Franklins on Lordship Lane, East Dulwich.

Aah! The Great British Winter, we'll miss you!

Big day tomorrow so we'll post when we hit Singapore!!

Packing up and moving on

When planning a years trip round the world there is an inordinate amount of stuff you need to get sorted! The important things to remember are: a) Don't Panic and b) it will all work out in the end!

The first thing you have to do is come up with a rough list of destinations and a budget that you can live with for the year.
We settled on the following:
Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Bora Bora, Costa Rica, USA and Canada.

We then got quotes for flights from various round the world flight ticketing companies (we did try organising it ourselves using Expedia or Kayak but it worked out hugely expensive). The company we used in the end was www.roundtheworldflights.com who were excellent and really seemed to know exactly what they were doing and understood the reasons why we wanted to go to certain destinations.

Packing the house up, boxes, boxes and more boxes

This then helped us decide on a travel budget of £50 per day (for all accommodation/food/transport for both of us).

Once we had settled on the route and budget and timescales we put more meat on the bones, started contacting friends overseas by Facebook to let them know when we were likely to be near them.

Our next plan was to write a massive to do list and just keep adding to and ticking off items as we went. Key things we had to think about were (in no particular order):

• Whether we were going to sell or rent our houses out.
• Where were the cats going to live for a year?
• Ensuring all debts were settled before going abroad (this involved selling vehicles/ clearing credit card accounts etc) to reduce our outgoings.
• Handing over and finishing off work projects
• Organising Cash/Visa's/insurance/contacts
• Getting Jabs for those destinations.
• Finding storage for all of our stuff for at least a year.

The first box into storage!

The only 2 definite things that we had to fit into our itinerary was a friends wedding in Perth (Western Australia) on the 10th February and we have to be at the Grand Canyon from the 3rd - 19th December 2013 for our own privately organised Raft trip down the Colorado river, just a small added pressure to organise before we leave the country on the 16th Jan!!!

Where have we got to as of today?

Well... Storage has been organised and we are in the process of packing the house up and moving it into a 20ft storage container

All the above points have been completed.

We have managed to pack our traveling kit into 2, 40l rucksacks weighing just over a stone each!

We are now just catching up on all the little jobs that you need to do e.g.: getting international driving permits, picking up cash for the trip, getting haircuts and catching up with friends before we leave!

Tech for the trip

Catch you next time

Dave and Gemma