11.03.2008 - Arrived in Kualar Lumpur after the very comfy six hour bus journey from Singapore. Very happy with our hotel for a tenner a night which seemed like 5 star luxury after staying in the smelly dorm in Singapore. PLus the fact that we haven't had the luxury of a private bathroom or TV in our room since leaving Sydney almost 2 months ago!!

Explored the city by monorail and KL tour bus, but not overly impressed after coming from Singapore. The Pentros Towers (as featured in the film Entrapment) were spectacular and the city had a bit of a buzz because the Malaysian Grand Prix was due to take place but apart from that nothing too special to report!

After 4 nights we decided we had definitely had enough of city life...we havent sat on a beach since Fraser and that was almost six weeks ago!! (we know all you guys sat at home are thinking 'you poor things!')

Boarded another bus for the five hour journey to the island of Penang - although this journey was not so comfortable as we had to sit on wet seats for the entire trip!!

Penang - Only spent three nights here as what we have failed to mention is that with Malaysia being a mainly Muslim country not many people drink so the price of beer is worse than in Australia - far too expensive for our budget! So after exploring the island on a rented bike, visiting a war museum that was actually built by the British as a military fortress and taken over by the Japs in WW2 and used as a torture camp (very interesting but eerie!), managing to find a decent curry in Penangs Little India and spending our evening with chickens runnig round our feet at our hostel bar listening to the Malaysian band trying to sing popular English songs, but not quite knowing all the words we ddecided it was time to move on! It was a good few days though!

Langkawi - A short ferry trip North of Penang and we reached the DUTY FREE island of Langkawi! For anyone who come to Malaysia and likes a drink this place is for you! In Langkawi you can get a can of Tiger for as little as 3 ringgit (48p) whereas we have previously been shelling out 16 ringgit (2 quid 60)

We stayed on the main strip here with plenty of restaurants and bars lined up along the beautiful white sandy beach and gorgeous blue waters. There's a host a watersports to choose from - we hired a jet ski one day and it broke down after about 30 seconds, but we manged to get quite far out so had to wait for someone to come rescue us. We again hired a bike on Langkawi to explore the island which is beautiful - not too much development apart from at the tourist beaches.

Langkawi is a fantatic holiday destination and easily our most favourite place in Malaysia (not just because of the cheap beer) it's a beautiful island - and the guesthouse we were staying in had a cheeky monkey resident that would keep coming to the bar and stealing things when the staff weren't lookiong!! very amusing!