Our way to Bangkok:

We checked in at Auckland airport for our scheduled flight to Sydney, still not knowing where we would finish our day. After arriving in Sydney, we went to see the BA office, and were told we could fly to Singapore, which we did that evening. Once we were in Singapore late that evening we went straight to our hostel.

Singapore is a very hot and humid place, as we found out when we walked to the train station to book our tickets to Kuala Lumpur. After booking two seats on the night train that evening (Singapore is also expensive-we needed to leave quickly!), we set out to make the most of our only day there. We walked into the centre through Chinatown. We saw lots of sites, the law courts and government buildings, the hedgehog-like national theatre building, and the Singapore Flyer (think London Eye) stopping frequently for cold drinks because of the heat. We also walked past Raffles Hotel and through a park before heading back to the hostel to pick up our bags and catching the bus to the train station, where we got on our train, 22 hours after arriving in Singapore.

After a near-sleepless night on the train we arrived in Kuala Lumpur early in the morning, and made our way to the hostel, where we had a brief nap and then headed out to see the city. We went to see the Petronas Towers, then a mosque and several other impressive buildings and on to the Central Market, where we spent a while haggling prices on souvenirs and also had a "cute fish spa" which entailed putting our feet in a big fish tank and letting the fish nibble off the dead skin-it was a strange experience-very ticklish and the benefits were dubious, but it was good fun! We then went to a very ornate Hindu temple, before later going to a Reggae Bar to watch the football.

The next couple of days in Kuala Lumpur involved more sightseeing, and on our last day we got up early and queued to go up the Petronas towers, which we did as far as the Skybridge. Even at this point on the towers, less than halfway up we were already much higher than most other buildings in the city, and could see a long way away! In the afternoon of our third day, we headed to the station to catch our train to Butterworth, near the Thai Border. The train arrived in Kuala Lumpur 2 hours late, and after a journey of about 8 hours arrived in Butterworth just in time for us to get the last ferry to Penang, where we were staying that night.

We got up in the morning, and after having breakfast and buying snacks for our next train journey found we had one hour to look around Georgetown, the capital of the Island of Penang. In this time we saw temples, historical buildings and guilds as well as having a look around the Penang Museum, before taking the ferry back to Butterworth to catch the night train to Bangkok. Before going to sleep, we crossed the border into Thailand, and found that just as we thought our problems were over (we were arriving in Bangkok the next day, and the airport protests were by now finished) we had another to solve; we were only given a 15 day visa, instead of the 30 days we were expecting and needed.

We arrived in Bangkok the next day, 3 hours late after the train had apparently gone a different route to usual! Having missed 5 days in Bangkok, we decided our best choice was to go straight up to Chiang Mai, where we would arrive only 1 day late and could get back on schedule. We booked our tickets on arrival, and had 3 hours before getting on the next train, relieved to finally be in Thailand.