Landed in Sinagapore after a lengthy flight from Auckland. Didn't get on with Singapore at all really. It could have been the presense of a SCREAMING kid in the hostel or it could have been the somewhat soullness nature of the place. A booklet described the top 20 things to do in Sinagpore and 18 of them involved shopping or eating out. We bought a camera and then we (we?) managed to delete all the pictures of things we actually had managed to do - summed out Sinagpore for us really!

When trying to re-book another hostel we thought we might just as well get the bus to Melaka in Malaysia about 200 miles and 2 quid's ride away. The stay here was much more to our liking and we relaxed in the Chinese centre not doing a busting lot!

After a few days we moved on to Kuala Lumper which was a lot more frentic and altogether pricier. Highlight was going up the Petronas towers and lowlight was Kym being comically beaten-up by a 3 foot high Hornbill (bird) for her tuna sandwich in a restaraunt inside a huge aviary. That said I went under the table as well bloody thing was huge! Next time it came we were ready and we swung at the thing with Kym's handbag much to amusement of the staff.

Moved up to Georgetown in Penang for a few days and spent a few days in hotel luxury and space sorting our unfeasably heavy backpacks. Ate at the ridiculously cheap food copurt with the locals to try and save some money - providing we didn't get swept away by the floodwater of the latest daily storm or the massage girls attempting to indicate strange techniques. Still in Penang we moved onto Batu Ferringhi on the north shore of the island for 4 days of beach holiday nothingness spoilt only by the head religous chap (ohh diplomacy) in the local mosque warbling through the loudspeakers at 3am for 2 hours every morning!

After a great 3 weeks in Malaysia we booked ourselves onto a cheapy flight into Bangkok for Christmas.