16/11/08 Travelling from Penang to Kuala Lumpur today. On the journey down here we passed a field with a cricket match being played on it, and another field next to it with rugby posts in. I was quite surprised to see it, but I suppose it could have been an International School, and Malaysia is part of the Commonwealth after all so the British influence would come into play. The landscape was a lot more mountainous and forested than Thailand and Cambodia. We arr...

13/11/08 Our first full day in Georgetown. It's a UNESCO World Heritage City because of the amount of historical buildings which remain, and the inhabitants' unique culture has been more preserved here than in the other two Straits Settlements of Malacca and Singapore. The Straits Settlements was a British colony which existed from 1826 to 1946 - until 1867, when it became a Crown Colony, a Governor of the Straits Settlements was appointed by the British East Ind...

29-30/10/08 Most of the 29th was spent in an internet cafe (offering free internet) above the place from which we bought our tickets to Koh Tao, waiting with all our bags for the coach which was due to leave at 6 pm. We had lunch at a nearby Middle Eastern cafe, and some early dinner at the travel agent cafe downstairs from the internet room. The journey down went alright, though I didn't manage to get any sleep. We arrived at Chumporn at 2.30 am, and had to wait...

24-28/10/08 These days were taken up with wandering around, shopping for presents and posting them, working out where we were going to next, and once we had chosen Koh Tao (to meet up with Dave's friend Mark, who was on holiday there), buying our bus/ferry tickets to there. We did go out to the area of Patpong on the evening of the 27th - quite an 'interesting' experience! We had a look round the Night Market, which was similar to the one on Khaosan Road but with...

20/10/08 Today was taken up with driving from Siem Reap to the capital, Phnom Penh, though we did go out in the evening to a tapas bar run by a charity that rehabilitates Khmer street children and trains them up as waiters, chefs etc. The food was really tasty (mushroom & leek spring rolls, herb & garlic bread, fried beef & oyster mushrooms, and fried rice with vegetables and either beef or chicken), though Dave didn't like the spring rolls or the oys...