I am right here in Asia

I am right here...

in Asia

We travelled about:  

21,447 miles

Travelled by: 

Bus, train, airplane, coach, boat, speedboat, LRT, 'inclined lift', minibus, tuk tuk, taxi, nearly motorbike before I chickened out, on a tube down a river, extreme lift up the Menora tower and our poor feet.

Visited:

3 countries in 3 weeks (not including Dubai) Thailand, Laos and Malaysia

Top things to do:

Riding and bathing an elephant

The weekend market in Bangkok

Tubing in Vang Vieng, Laos

 The Full Moon party in Koh Phangan

Eating at all the random little cafes with no English people in sight

Getting in a tuk tuk for free

The sleeper train

Drinking Chang beer

Trying to sleep in a hammock

Eating Thai pancakes with bananas

Staying in the beach bungalows of Koh Phangnan

Sunbathing on a boat

Hat Yai Thai fried chicken

Penang food (Chinese, Indian, Thai, Malaysian.. eveything!) 

Batu Ferringhi water sports

Lok Key Si temple in Penang

Wheelers Guest House in Kuala Lumpur

The Menora tower and Petronas towers of KL.

Malaysian sweet coffee

The Kuala Lumpur markets and surrounding shops that are all mental

Egg fried rice/special fried rice for a pound (or less)

Sleeping in a hut in Laos

The people you meet for just one drunken day

Until next time :)

Day 21: Goodbye Asia we will miss...

those kittens

Day 21: 

three countries in three weeks comes to an end

It was our last day in Asia and as our hostel was putting on a free meal in the evening, we decided to spend everything we had left during the day! We bought lots of presents and a few treats for ourselves too.. we went a bit mental for panda stuff. Therefore, we deserved a big lunch. We dined like kings in the food court. The food court in the Kuala Lumpur market is where loads of little stalls set up around some tables and you literally can eat from any of them... or ALL OF THEM. We ordered some fresh watermelon juice (my favourite whilst out there) and chicken in a foil wrap. I don't know why, but the last few days my stomach had been having a rough time with all the spicy food or something like that and so I felt ROUGH. So as a treat Josh suggested we went for a fish spa.

I have seen many of these fish spas in England now and they are everywhere in Thailand but as Josh has a bit of a food phobia then we always avoided them, but I had to give it a go! Its like being tickled at first and then you kinda find it relaxing. Josh's feet were also like a free meal for the fish who love dead skin (kinda icky right?) so they swarmed his heels like it was crack! Afterwards we took our smooth feet back to the hostel where the food was being served out. 

The hostel had this amazing roof top bar and seating area so we were enjoying the view... oh and the KITTENS!! There were four baby kittens that were adorable, I think I even suggested to the owner I might smuggle one away with me and his was happy to sell it to me! ha ha. We ate this amazing potato curry and met lots of people from our hostel. Wheelers Guest House is the best hostel ever!

But then it all came to an end....

When heading to the airport we decided to go for the cheapest option of a bus that you can catch from Kuala Sentral (the main coach and train station) which is accessible by the LRT or other bus routes. The bus to KLIA is once every half an hour and takes about an hour but only costs 10RM compared to the 35RM for the train (although I think the train only takes 30 minutes and your baggage gets taken directly to the airport too... a bit flashy!).

At the airport a nice lady gave us great seats with lots of leg room and as we had 70RM (left over that we had saved for the train if we couldn't work out the buses) we had a proper pickle over what to spend it on. I was desperate for a burger king as, although Asian food is incredible, my stomach was begging me for terrible greasy food and I feel ashamed to admit it, but I just wanted chips! About an hour later after walking around the duty free shop like craziessss we found a bottle of cranberry vodka for 60RM and therefore I could afford a BURGER KING CHICKEN MEAL. (Can you see the delight on my face?) 

And there we have it... the entire ASIA tale.

Next stop... Vietnam? YES PLEASE.

Day 20: sweaty day

Day 20:

Otherwise known as the day of... sweat, butterflies, sunshine, fishes and a drunken cry

This was our second to last day and after a little lie-in we ventured to our usual bakery for a morning breakfast of banana cake and other delicious treats all for about 20p. We then decided to walk to this park in the centre of the city as it was such a sunny day. There we stumbled across the butterfly park and realised after a while that because this park had a combination of sunshine, a wet mist (humid, humid, humid fun) and a netted greenhouse style roof it made for a sweaty betty day. We saw some bad ass butterfly tempt a turtle and then fly away and some HUGE fish, but the best bit was obviously the huge amount of butterflies that enjoyed sitting on my finger.

Afterwards we must have looked very very sexy. Luckily, a ribena flavoured ice-lolly was all I needed but we then started to walk to look for more food. We were heading towards the park when we found this amazing local market place that smelt incredible and lured us in! Having such a wide range of foods placed in front of us we asked an elderly man what to have, in the rough English way of just desperately signing at the man about how hungry we were. He offered us some testers and we ate FANTASTICALLY. We ended up having some sort of spacey rice with vegetables that his lovely wife was freshly cooking in a MASSIVE pot. The whole meal also cost us about £2 and we were treated like celebrities when all the locals approached us to see how we liked their cooking, not an English person in sight. We then walked around the park and saw deer and rowdy chickens.

The evening started as the day before, with rain. However, in KL this just makes the evening cooler and makes getting food hilarious. We tried playing cards and waiting for it to clear up a bit but after a while we made a dash for it... straight across the road to the reggae bar. This bar offers drinks for girl backpackers for less than a pound, I made it my challenge to drink as many as I could. Unfortunately that led to me having a proper drunken cry about being upset to leave and meeting some more people in our hostel over beer! I ended up eating chocolate wafer biscuits and wanting to stay travelling forever, however maybe in a place without so many moquitos?? Seriously, I still got more bites even on this day... in the middle of a city. I think at this point I was just cocky and some mosquito went to town on my un-mosquito-repellently skin

hello christmas at home

These ones are just a little cheesy

But, this weekend when I was going home we had to set up the christmas tree and have a wee photo moment. Plus I got to surprise my litttleee sister for her birthday and got to eat tasty tasty duck nom nom nom

ho ho ho

excuse me whilst I talk about fish

 Yes, that's what I said.

Its been a while since I did a tank update AND I know its lame but we do have a whole fancy flock now. 

So... please look away NOW because I will be wasting about 2 minutes of your precious life by naming my fish. Yes, I am going to do this.  

That means we now have:

Sheldon - the snail. Likes sucking glass then letting go and being pushed around by the filter.

Lenin - the shrimp who is now our oldest 'fish' at that grand age of 3 years old. He is the best.

Stuart, Stuart, Stuart - Cannot tell the difference between this bunch but they are eager when food is about

Meatloaf - he is a massive slut of our tank and enjoys rubbing up against innocent fish

Rafiki - named Rafiki because he looks like he has a red bum

Barnabas - Named after the character in Captain Pugwash (R.I.P. this year). Apparently Barnabas is the most aggressive of the pirates, but in reality just as harmless. He is quite rebellious and grumpy, and is perhaps marginally more intelligent than Willy. I have no idea who Willy is? He has a glorious tail and is a pirate... what more could you want?

Felix - Looks like a Dalmatian

The Brain - Has such a massive head that he never uses. He does not understand the filter and keeps getting whizzed around by the air stream. He also sleeps in the vase and we don't know why

Iron Fish - possibly the prettiest fish of our tank. Josh also likes to call him Rusty. That means he has two names and we really did discuss this.

Banana fish - This fish enjoys his reflection so much we never find him far from the side of the tank, checking himself out.

Wow. I hope you have not had a stroke during that or it would have been the last thing you would have seen, ha ha. RUINED YOUR DAY

the media

This is going to be a wordy one

I though it was about time I shared my wee little opinion on the world of the media, especially as it hits the front page. (Oh and today is the big day of my interview!) So here is a few things I am super cool and thinking about.

I have recently seen the 'hollidaaays are coming' coke advert. This always makes me (and everyone else in the world/ on facebook) the happiest person. But I have to think, bravo to that marketing campaign. It is one advert that changed the colour of Father Christmas' clothing to advertise its brand and that now sparks the first excitment of Christmas.

Jeremy Clarkson has been made to apologise for wanting to shoot protesters from an interview with the One Show. If you read that sentence out loud it doesn't look serious. I mean, if you took that as anything but a joke then you really have to question what has happened to comedy as we already have to be careful of everything we say. Oh and then that terrible video of a lady shouting on a tram came along and we all realised it was still out there. 

The News of the world and following inquests. Phone hacking is wrong. I know that if anyone looked at my phone they would probably think I was boring/fickle/drunk 90% of the time/loved up with anybody I text.

When anyone starts University they get a Facebook account. Its one of those sites that distracts and interacts. I think most people watched the The Social Network film, I happened to think this was a little bit like a fictional documentary, which is never really that useful. However, I am not ashamed to admit I will almost instinctively log on every time I find laptop and I really love flicking through photos of past nights out and sharing funny cat videos on my best friends walls.

The Metro is my morning and afternoon read, when the pennies are being scraped together in order to buy lunch at least its free! I also find its one of the only newspapers which can combine the headlines "Eurocrisis" and "Pension protests" with one page later saying "Man collects most gnomes". I think its nice to know not everything in the world is bad.

The new blogging sensation. Now, if anyone has reached this point and is still reading... hello! I think blogging is pretty nifty. I don't ever presume I write anything worth reading, in fact that is why I love pictures, but I like the fact I am sharing. SHARING IS CARING. 

Twitter. I feel somehow with twitter my training wheels (like on your first bike) are not off yet as I still am discovering everything out there. I mean, the other day ARGOS tweeted to someone. Argos can tweet? This is a sentence I never thought I would use. After all, I enjoyed one comedian's view that Argos was actually a shop with a wizard sitting in the back (where the warehouse should be) magically creating items people order and then projecting a number onto a flashy board. Although, Argos really does take the fun out of shopping when you wait for your items in a doctors-surgery-type seating arrangement.

You tube and the brilliant Rude tube programme, where I enjoy animal clips so much and ones with babies enjoying heavy metal that I once cried with laughter at a baby ripping up paper. What are the chances?

One word, Jordan. Seriously now... why is she famous? Big boobs. Oh yes, and the most clever person at marketing herself in the whole of the UK. I have seen trailers for the fact she now has a television programme about being signed with her. I am generally confused by this. The poor person has no hope.

Finally, flashy phones. The Internet and everything in one device. I am afraid I will still be sticking to my average size phone with normal buttons and fairly tame features but Josh is so in love with his phone I think the other day we tried to find a restaurant with his googlemaps app, open the door in the dark with his torch app, look up a video about how nice the place is with his you tube app and uploaded a photo of our dinner with his facebook app... ROMANTICCC app. (lame pun)

LIKE.