Fotodump friday

It's been a couple fridays since we've posted.  Southeast asia is just so much fun!

Katie's:

A sign in one of the Singapore malls we wandered around.

Getting off the bus in Kuala Lumpur, walked by this gated courtyard of sorts with awesome graffiti on the walls.

At the Batu caves, a monkey eating half a coconut.

At Paradise cottages on Koh Chang, this was the courtyard where we ate dinner at underneath the huts.

Andy's:

This seems like ages ago now, but this was at the beginning of the subtropical rainforest walk we did on Fraser Island.

KL Twin Towers by night.

Katie posted about this before, but I had to post it again because it was so great. We first saw this boat take off from a dock near our ferry and I just thought the engine was smoking (because a lot of them do), but it turned out they were cooking on the boat. Incredible.

The temple we went to in Bangkok with Milky.

Sunset from the beach in front of our bungalow on Ko Chang.

View from inside the mosquito net.

Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok

We had originally only planned to stay in KL for two nights but because our awesome friend Joelle put us in touch with her awesome friend Fareeza we decided to stay an extra night. Fareeza was kind enough to meet up with us at a TGI Friday's of all places because the American Embassy in KL was having an event at the restaurant. We all had a free soft drink and then headed out for dinner.  We ate at a mamuk (stalls on the side of the road) that had Malaysian Indian food - it was great.  They ordered mee goreng and chai tea for us.  It was basically fried noodles with spices, some sauce and prawns (shrimp). It started raining on the way to dinner so our tentative plan for a driving tour of Putra Raya was pushed back to the following night.

On Wednesday we decided to head to Batu Caves (just north of KL). The train fare from KL Sentral to Batu Caves was 1 MYR/each to get there and 2 MYR/each to get back, which amounts to $1 USD roundtrip. Batu Caves are some huge limestone caves that were discovered and has spiritual significance for Hindus (if you are interested, check out the Wikipedia page).  For lunch we ate at a vegetarian indian restaurant right by the caves. We had the vegetarian medley with rice served on a banana leaf. Fareeza had advised us the day before to try this and also that when we were finished we were to fold the banana leaf towards us if we liked the meal and away from us if we didn't.  It was tasty, but could have done without the small ants crawling on the leaf.

After the Batu Caves we headed back into the city and spent the rest of the night using the free internet and resting (the night drive was canceled because Fareeza's mom was sick).

Thursday morning we got up early to catch our 7:30 bus to Butterworth. After an unexpected bus change just before the Penang bridge as well as an unexpected petrol fill-up on the second bus, we made it to Butterworth around 1 PM. We had a quick lunch at one of the many food stalls at the Butterworth bus station, then walked a few minutes over to the train station to catch our 2:20 overnight train to Bangkok.

The Thai border is about four hours from Butterworth and all of the visa activities went down smoothly in a train station at the border. While waiting to get our Thai visas we spoke with an Australian woman who had been to both Laos and Cambodia. The conversation was a torrent of information with little context, but it was good to talk to her nonetheless. Back on the train and off to Bangkok!

At or not long after the border crossing the restaurant car was attached and someone came around to take dinner orders. Much to our surprise the menu prices were all in Thai Baht (duh) but luckily they allowed us to pay in Malaysian Ringgits - then we realized we were running low on cash. Whoops. We ended up sharing a vegetarian Thai meal for dinner and had enough cash to get a couple of liters of water as well.
After we finished dinner the attendant came around and assembled everyone's bunks and put sheets on them. Katie and I opted to spend an extra dollar or two and have two bottom bunks which we read were wider. The bunk wasn't quite long enough for me, but was very wide and I had no trouble sleeping. Around 9:30 or 10 we were lulled to sleep by the clicking, clacking, rocking and swaying of train.

I woke up bleary eyed and somewhat disoriented around 7:00 AM and then it dawned on me - oh yea, I'm on a train. It was probably one of the better nights of sleep I had had recently and with a quick check on my phone I saw we were much closer to Bangkok.

The Texan expat sleeping in the bunk above Katie awoke not long after us and the attendant came by and converted Katie's side of the carriage back into seats. After a few hours of some beautiful Thai countryside we arrived in Bangkok.

Onto Malaysia

We caught the bus from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  It took about 6 hours, including the 30 minute customs stop.  There are several public transportation options to get around the city, we took the LRT (above ground metro) about 10 stops to get to our hostel and it cost us each 1.90 RM (ringget) which is about $0.33. 

For dinner we walked in a direction with lots of lights and found Chinatown.  A stall with a bunch of different meats and vegetables on skewers caught our attention and we chose 7 skewers with chicken, mushrooms, tomatoes, eggplant and okra.  They were grilled with barbeque-like sauce.  We sat down at a little outdoor plastic table, ordered an orange juice, which was 2 whole oranges, sugar syrup blended up fresh, and ate our skewers.

The cart of skewers

In the morning we had breakfast vouchers for the cafe in the hotel we're staying in and we hung out in the hotel reading and getting ready until around noon.  First stop: Low Yat to look at camera lenses.  It was a large indoor retail place with lots of stalls selling all sorts of electronics and was generally overwhelming.  For lunch we walked across the street to have roti canai (indian bread with a dahl dipping sauce).  We headed into the large expensive mall called Paradisa afterward to check it out and had a blueberry muffin and brownie in a coffee shop.  We were meeting smoe people at TGIF but had just enough time to walk to the twin towers (previously the tallest buildings in the world, until Taipei 101 or whatever was built, but it is still the tallest twin towers).

The expensive shopping mall from the bottom floor