Hello,

Since the last entry we have been very busy skipping between Malaysia, Sumatra and The Philipines where we have arrived today.

From the Cameron Highlands we moved on to Kuala Lumpur (KL), the capital of Malaysia. KL is a very nice modern city with excellent food and lots of entertainment. Its a lot cleaner and more modern than most of the other capitals we have been to and we really liked it. I think it helped that it wasn't too humid as I think that puts a lot of people off spending time there. Best shopping malls we've ever been too aswel! Spent our days wondering around the city eating cheap chinese and indian food and also visited the Petronas Towers (second largest building in the world) but you could only go up to the bridge between the two towers which was half way up.

Flew from there to Sumatra on Monday and had a fun three hour bus journey on some of the worst roads in the whole world on one of the worst buses you'll ever see! We were the only westerners on the bus so were the center of attention. Met our tour guide Erwin on the journey, or rather he purposefully met us. It was a good thing actually as he took us to a nice guest house where there were Thomas Leap monkeys running around outside our room and over the roof etc and he turned out to be a really nice bloke who took us on a two day trek the next day into the very lively Sumatran jungle. despite being bitten about a million times each by mosquitos, it was a fantastic experience and we loved it. The site of wild orangutangs swinging through the trees towards you is pretty incredible. Most get close and just hang in the trees checking you out but one that is known to the guides as being aggressive started to come after us but Erwin soon lead her away with bananas! We also saw a huge male one who let us invade his territory for a few minutes, long enough to get some good pics, and then made enough noise to make us head out of there rapidly! Slept out in the jungle, literally, with no walls, let alone mosquito nets, spent the night lying awake petrified of what might be about to crawl into my sleeping bag, not to mention the fact that there are tigers in the jungle we were in (albeit far much further into the jungle but they can walk!)

Spent the rest of our time looking around the village where we were staying, Bukit Lawang. The village was destroyed by floods in 2003 when over 200 people were killed, including tourists. The place is now very quiet whereas before it was a really popular resort with hundreds of tourists coming every week. They are starting to rebuild a new village up on the hill but there's a long way to go yet. We also visited the orangutang rehabilitation centre where we saw the orangutangs who they are trying to put back in the wild being fed up close.

They look so weird and almost humanlike that we were sure at times they were just locals in animal suits.

Anyway, left there yesterday and flew back to KL where we had a lovely overnight stay at the airport before flying to the Phillipines the morning. Off to buy a bus ticket out of here now as the city we are in is as sleezy as you like, full of fat old perverts with tiny little Phillipino girls on their arm (for a price of course). So before all the single Hatherleigh boys rush off to the travel agents (Giles and Eddy), we'll say bye...

Not sure the internet connection is going to be up to much in the rest of the country so there may not be a lot of updating in the next 3 weeks. Will try.