Our last stop in Malaysia was the island of Penang and it's capital city of Georgetown. As with Melacca and Singapore, Penang was acquired by the British East India company as a trading post back in the day and Georgetown itself was planned by the company's main man in the area - a chap called Sir Francis Light, who also ran the town until he died. Because of it's fair winds, and duty-free trade the various influxes of people over the years have given Georgetown ...

Tea. Everyone's seen it, everyone's tried it, and most people would agree that it's great. Including the Malaysians, who grow lots of tea up in the Cameron Highlands. We arrived at the main town of Tanah Rata and were immediately struck by how much like the Lake District it is. A small town, surrounded by cloud topped hills and crammed full of coffee shops. The other striking thing when you clambered off the bus - saying a quick prayer of thanks to the God of w...

Simon's despatch: Melaka Melaka is an historic port town on the west coast of Malaysia. It's rather handy for trading as it's at the origin of the SW monsoon wind for 6 months and then at the end of the NE monsoon wind for the other 6 months. If your ships are sail powered it means you can nip over from China, unload, wait from 6 months to 1 day depending on your planning and luck, then catch the next monsoon winds home again. As Indians and Arabs can do a s...

Kuala Lumpur (or KL to us, darling) is a busy city. Compared to sweet little biscuit-tin-top Melacca, stepping into KL was a bit like stepping into a metal music gig after a gentle afternoon of Pimms and string quartets: loud, hot, overwhelming and exciting. Our first night we hunted down some new culture in the form of a free display of traditional dancing. It was fun - the dancers' enthusiasm and happy mood was infectious, especially when they laughed at ea...

Next stop Malaysia and Tioman island. After planning our New Zealand leg in meticulous detail for two months before we actually went, I can say with some confidence that we're getting more laid back about logistics. After watching a film, we arrived back to our hostel in Singapore at 12:30am on our last night there and prepared to plan our way to our next destination. On the off-chance, we asked the hostel receptionist if he knew how to get to Tioman. He was a k...