.ExternalClass .EC_hmmessage P {padding:0px;} .ExternalClass body.EC_hmmessage {font-size:10pt;font-family:Tahoma;} 23rd August, Last day in Iksan. No sleep thanks to several goodbyes. Little functioning all day. Panic over laptop not being sent safely (I jammed it into a box full of forgotten clothes and bubble wrap and gave it to a friend claiming that the weight was due to books! Informed that our Korean manager has done us a "favour" and reserved seats on the airport bus for 3:30pm. Note, it probably takes about 2-3 hours at that time in the morning and our flight is at 11am. The original plan was to leave an hour and a half later than that to catch some sleep. I didn't get it.

Hit some baseballs in the batting cage in fury. Laugh outrageously at the attempts made by Sara. Swings like a jelly fish! :) Go for the " last supper" at a galbi restaurant. This involves cooking beef on a inside bbq and then placing the cooked meat onto some lettuce leaves and various other ingredients and shoving it into your mouth!

At this point my head is feeling heavy. The lack of sleep is constantly catching up with me; a race I simply can not win but I can fight! Eyeballs drying up but sipping on good old Hite-uh(the worse beer I have ever tasted!) we finish up and head to the trusted Rumboat for fare well cocktails. A couple of " Titanics" are sunk, say some goodbyes and then remember I have yet to activate my credit card and buy travel insurance! I have a funny feeling I might need those! Just a little bit of a funny feeling! Sort that out in a jiffy (thanks Sara) and then pack up Rufus( my laptop) in my bundle of forgotten clothes.

Anyways, return to my room after off loading all my belongings to Sara to send etc and attempt to lay down and relax grab a couple of winks before I pass out. I fail. Before I know it the 2 alarms I had set beep to warn me that it's a couple more minutes before leaving Iksan time! Jam everything I have possible forgotten an put it into my back pack. It weighs a ton. Already, I know that a bunch of this crap is going bye bye at the first opportunity!

Stumble out door. CAREFULLY WALK DOWN STEPS. Avoid topperling constantly! It's dark and quiet. I feel sneaky leaving Korea at this hour. I'll get over it. Meet at ET Land for the last time. No tears. Get into my last Korean taxi. Press the "eee" at the end of the words to ensure he takes us to the right destination!

Arrive at Interchange. Wait. Hop on bus. Fall asleep/ Wake up. Fall asleep. Repeat pattern as a kind of ritual. It's fun apparently!? Wham bam 6:30am outside Seoul airport. A 4 and half hour wait. Great. Waste time. Check in. Buy essentials (adapter, spare memory for camera and mascara.)

Jen and I eagerly await to board the plane. Finally it's time. Still no Shannon though. Hmm where is she? Not before too long (10 minutes until they close the gates) the purple ranger charges towards the queue happy to make the flight! :) There she is "f*** guys..." deep breathing.

Plane ride maining involves head drop, tapping on the shoulder to eat the meal, lazy reading. Sleep. Catch up where you can!

10 minutes until we land and it still hasn't sunk in that we're going to Malaysia and travelling until November. I guess I've been spoilt until now. Forecasts, thunderstorms. Lovely!

Land. Lose Shannon. She was only a couple of steps in front. Find Shannon an hour later. Bloody hell. Hop onto the express train into Kuala Lulumar (KL). Get off and wander around trying to find our blasted hostel. A short walk in the thunderstorm we accidently bump into our hostel. (With the help of locals whom by the way speak English perfectly well. in Malaysia there are so many languages that English has to be spoken pretty well just so they can communicate with one another!)

Sent to our room; prison springs to mind when trying to decsribe the room. I've never been there but I'm pretty sure it'd look something like that! Beige walls, flowery curtains and a small brightly painted picture on the wall with pink flowers to lift the mood of the room! No cover sheets. Freeze you will.

Our location is in the cheap part of town. Chinatown. First night=first meal. RM 20 3 dishes yummy. Over priced? RM 20 = $6.80.....ish. Head towards the Reggae bar...surely that's got a decent atmosphere? Nice place but less reggae than one would have hoped for! Plenty of locals, no burkas but the scarves are in full swing!

Sereved by a "Shim"....is it a girl or a boy? Pretty set on it being a boy, but my oh my what a pretty girl he is!? Really good looking it's almost threatening! Accept it and don't freak out it's all good. A few Bob Marley tunes then a bit of Peter Andre and Shaggy is exactly what I was expecting?!

Monday 25th August

A semi early rise after a welcomed deep sleep! Breakfast is had at a type of buffet place. They hand you a plastic plate chuck on some steamed rice and you spoon anything you like on. On completion you take your plate to the "Godmother" a round old woman, resembles something like a toad, sits on her plastic chair and awaits the food goods. She stares at your plate for a moment examing with her eyes what exactly you have on your plate and grunts. Turns to the other fella besides you and says something in a language that I do not understand. " RM4 please lady" thanks GM I can deal with that, that's within my budget!

Gobble that up and attempt to find the mosque. According to the map it isn't too far away. But a little bit of leaning in the wrong direction we find ourseleves on a highway with no paths. Of course Shannon insisits on shorting the journey to the other side by running across. I see life as more precious than that and continue to walk down the highway until I find a safer position! Still pretty dangerous the entire way. KL (as the locals call it) has a funny way of bunging high ways in loops where and when they feel with no crossing under or over. This mistake cost us a couple of hours and sun burn. Sorry, MY mistake cost us a couple hours and me sunburn. Mostly to the chest and face. Brilliant. Serious thought though...I've burnt these areas before, mostly in the last month or so...so why is it that my skin hasn't surrendered and said "yeah, ok, you want a bit of sun I'll do you a favour and brown and bob's your uncle"....why hasn't it done that? b******! The pros to the mistake were that we can now give a complete account of how the malaysian people drive on highways and what they [highways] look like, also we walked passed a Refugee camp. Got some funny looks walking round there I can tell you!

We cave eventually and ask yet another local who advises us t oget a train for RM 1...we do that. Let's just get there! A short walk from the station and we see the umbrella formation that much closer than previously. For so long we had been aiming for that turquoise gem but seemed to be getting no where closer to it. Some satisfaction was now coming. Thankyou. Underground, overground and we're there. Find the appropriate entrance and we're sorted.

Take off our shoes and handed a purple/lilac robe. Hood included. Girls must cover pretty much everything with exception of the face. Feeling really rather liberal in the robes we enjoy flouncing around on the tiled floor with our bare feet. Awesome feeling. The building was stunning. Built in 1965 it was created mostly to ensure that everyone that stepped inside felt as though they could relaxed. It obviously worked as there were many people casually laying on the floor here there and everywhere. I liked that. We had a guide type of men that expected no money, and got no money.He briefed us fairly extensively about what Islam was all about. Can I remember it all? Can I remember what happened yesterday that well? The answer is no. A wealth of information gushed in our direction. The main things I think you need to know (and what I remember) is that they pray towards Mecca. The mosque and every other one is designed so that you pray in the correct direction. Ala, their God is niether he or she. Ala is never plural. Mohammed was the first prophet (?) and this particular mosque had decorations in theme of these two. Our guide, whose name escapes me, informed us that each mosque is designed however. The most important thing about a mosque is that they face towards Mecca and that the woman are behind the men as men can not control themselves and their thoughts. Apparently, women can.......perhaps it's time that they spoke to some women and their thoughts on the matter! Friday is the big day where it is complusary for the men to come to the mosque to pray. Up to 15,000 will turn up to pray in KL. If the women fancy praying that's absolutely fine but if you think you're going on the the carpet on the grounf floor you can forget about it. Your place is up in the stalls woman!

Lounging around in a jedi esque robe was more than I had hope for a lovely price of (in fact it's my favourite) FREE. It's almost tempting to go again!

Within the mosque area there is a Planetarium, Bird park, Orchid Park, Butterfly Park and some other things. All of which are now closed thanks to our delayed start! Whoops. Something to do tomorrow!

Go back, wash up. Search for "Little India". A place, according to the Lonely Planet (LP) which has an abundance of Indian restaurants that you can enjoy. Taxi drivers a) fail to understand the location where we're wanting to go
b) fail to put on the meter (we read this in books and online but still couldn't believe it
c) overcharged
d)took us to some random place that wasn't too far yet claimed it was "very far" to charge us a little extra.....

Therefore, the area we landed in was Brickfield. A few Indian restaurants and fewer people that could speak English that well.After a cheap meal and completely over stuffed we head to the"bar" street nearby the Pertrona Twin Towers. These places are outrageously over priced and the reason for our 1 drink and that'll do attitude. Near 10 pounds for a tiny jug of beer of which I managed to break one glass full of it...sober...Needless to say I was a little peeved! That was an early night!!

Tuesday 26th

Head back to the Planetarium which was shut the previous day. It's chucking it down and the steps up to the entrance are dangerously slippery, not good when wearing the cheap "Made in Korea" flip flops that really should only be worn indoors on carpeted floor! Manage to survive the steps only to be told that we can't see the show but we can see the exhibit. We settle for that and enter. It was actually pretty good and only1 Ringet. School trips came in and it was a welcomed scenario when the kids didn't all start screaming because they've seen a foreigner! In fact it was us that was doing more of the staring! Squeezing into the example space shuttles and sleeping quarters was much fun!

It was just to wet to do anything else that day apart from eating from local stools and researching border crossings in a decision to either head to a lush island or go to the jungle. The food has been surprisingly good for a half decent price. The beer? Expensive....damn religion! Met a couple from America that have been travelling around the world. Hangout with them and knock back some vodkas at the Reggae bar...the must be place in Chinatown.....according to the Lonely Planet...

Wednesday 27th

A late start.....the plan is to go to the Pertrona Towers and make a decision to go to the jungle or the island. We tried several methods to figure it out. 1) Old fashion brain power.....that didn't work 2) picking numbers that were allocated an option....3)ask strangers to pick a number 4) ask strangers for their opinions 5) ki bi bo. After many times we decide jungle...go to book....it's full...so, we're heading to the island...In order to get there we have to book bus tickets....course of action....find out where bus station is...get there....find the right/cheapest bus....get home...smooth sailing to the bus station but then loads of the places are booked up...apparently there's a national holiday...Independence day...research would have been good before the trip....1 seat on one bus....2 seats on the other....


Thurs 28th HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHANNON!

Plan of action: Orchid Garden, Lake Garden, Twin Towers. Orchid garden was full of lovely flowers and monkeys. Lake garden was big but kinda disappointing. Lucky it was free. Twin towers.....well, it's something to cross off the list NB.Put it on the list first. The skypass bridge which is called has this really big deal around it. The queue was long before the shutters were even open. They give you VIP stlyle passes. Did I feel important for the entire 20 minutes? Sure, I did. They show a movie with dramatic music and a guy that does the thriller trailors for cinema. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate good architecture as much as the next person but I also feel queezy when it gets cheesy.... Huge elevator takes us up to the bridge. 41 secs.....I think it moves 5metres every 3 secs or something like that. The exact number escapes me. The bridges main purpose (aside being a tourist attraction) is an exit for one building to another incase of fires etc. I won't bore you with other details that I found interesting.....it was pretty cool though.

I ate out of my first banana leaf today. It tasted good and I didn't have to feel the guilt of wasting plastic packaging. I'm a changed person now. We also tried a stange pastry type thing. It looked like a pork pie but inside was some quide of green sweet marzipan coconut tasting stuff with a hard boiled egg yolk in the middle. Sounds strange? Tasted strange but not in a bad way. Don't feel the need to buy it again.

Time passes and it's now time to catch the bus to Kota Bharu so we can get out of KL and get to somewhere luscious! Bus station area is posh and smart. Hang around the mall for a couple of hours as we misread the clock! Damn it. Finally the time comes and we're at the bus station for the correct time! Bundles of people in scarves is a strange sight to see. All different colours. Taking a picture of the area got me some frowns. It was hot and so busy and the fumes from the coaches seemed to fill the place to the roof. Herds of people chraged to the buses. We waited for ours. The 1 person bus (Shannons, she lost the ki bi bo) arrived and was ready to depart. Bye Shannon...we waited longer. 30 minutes late the bus comes. Throw bags on. The bus is smart and shiny. Engine starts air con comes one....it's freezing. It's freezing for 8 hours over night. I tried my best to get him to turn it off. He refuses. I now know what it'd be like to live in Greenland without paying my heating bill for 3 months.Tough night.