"I'm so pissed off with this jungle, I'm going to sleep on the sofa"...Malaysia

Kuala Lumpar

We arrived in Kuala Lumpar without much of a clue about what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go in Malaysia. The only thing we'd written on the Malaysia page in our notebook was "Don't stay in China Town" so naturally, as we pulled up to our hotel for the first two nights, we found ourselves right slap bang in the middle of China Town...good start!

The Chill Inn Hotel where we were staying was ok, we're not quite brave enough yet to get involved in dorms or shared bathrooms so we had a private ensuite room which was compact to say the least. It also had a bed which you could feel every spring on the matress so we slept on top of the duvet and on towels in order to maximise padding. It did have aircon though which has become one of our most important requirements and surprisingly, it even had ESPN so I got to watch the Manchester Derby. It does puzzle me somewhat how a hotel can have airconditioning and satellite TV as standard yet our request for towels and toilet paper were met with amazement. Towels we managed to get, but toilet roll - nope - the woman simply said "no, not got any" and that was that. It was almost as if we'd asked for diamond encrusted bed sheets!!

First day in Kuala Lumpar we decided to head to the Golden Triangle, the hub of shops, entertainment and restaurants and try and find some sort of travel agents to help us decide where to head next. Our initial attempt to find the mororail station wasn't the most successful, we just ended up walking around in circles for about an hour before giving up and getting a taxi. Whereas we'd got to Bangkok quite quickly, Kuala Lumpar was proving more tricky than trying to find the way out of Basingstoke Car Park, now that's saying something!

We did a bit of shopping and then headed to Times Square, a huge building containing a shopping centre, college, hotel and also an indoor theme park. It was mainly aimed at youngsters but there was a roller coaster. Not quite Busch Gardens but it went upside down and from Lodge's mmeeeeeee's I think she thoroughly enjoyed herself. However on the next ride she didn't have as much fun. Now you see this theme park wasn't very busy so rides only ran every ten minutes or so, this meant we strapped ourselves in to a ride not having seen it working and without having a clue what it did. It turned out to be a massive swing which swang you all the way around at high speed for a very long time, then, just as we thought the hell had come to an end, it reversed and did it all over again in the other direction! Lodge wasn't a fan and spent the entire ride shouting "IIII hhhaaaatttteeee ttthhhhiiiisssssss" at the top of her voice. After that, we stuck to gentle train rides and the children's car driving track. Following our adrenaline rush, we headed to KL Tower (this time working out the Monorail like pros) but as we got there a storm set in and visibility on the observation deck was poor so we went for dinner instead, went to an internet cafe to work out our plan for the rest of our time in Malaysia and then headed to bed.

Second day we found getting our bearings a lot easier and headed back to the KL Tower. We went up to the 45th floor observation deck, visited the mini zoo (which surprisingly, Lodge was scared of most things) and I had a ride on a pony. I say ride, he walked around in a very small circle in a car park but it was fun all the same. Lodge was again being a wimp, I never knew she was such a scaredy cat about everything. We also visited the Patronas Twin Towers, booked our accommodation for the rest of Malaysia and Singapore, had lunch with Kenny Rogers (sort of) and had our first glass of wine in four weeks. The evening was topped off with out first Skype chat with the families (and Nat) even if the biggest thunderstorm and rain downpour did make our quest for finding an open and working internet cafe and absolute mission - two taxis, a monorail, two shopping centres with no internet, one closed internet cafe, one with no microphone or camera, one open but no Skype, some frantic dashes in the rain and a close call with a cockroach and a lift! But it was worth it to see everybody, especially Harvey!

Valentines in Penang...

For the second year in a row, Lodge and I spent Valentines Day together...how depressing. But on the bright side whereas we were in Camberley last year, at least this year we were in Malaysia. We had a five hour bus journey from KL to Penang (during which Lodge was convinced she was sitting next to a terrorist) and then arrived at our hotel, the Mingood, which was much nicer than expected and even came with toilet paper! As we headed out for dinner, the heavens opened and it started absolutely hammering down so we found refuge in the nearest pub. The pub turned out only to be offering a five course Valentines special which included some very weird sounding things(we can't quite get to grips with the Malaysian food) or snacks. So we celebrated Valentines Day with a glass of wine and a jacket potato with baked beans, the only problem was the beans came ten minutes before the potato! We did make friends with the pub DJ who was amused at our attempt to play pool, he invited us to sit as his reserved DJ table - how VIP. This is where we met Tony and Kumar. Tony, about 45, afro-rasta looking fella and Kumar, old and thumbless, befriended us and bought us a drink - lucky us. Needless to say we quickly escaped them, not before Kumar kept giving us his thumbless hand to shake, and we headed home. What a Valentines Day!

Knowing we had an early start (seriously, we're meant to be on holiday - I had more lay ins when I was at work!) neither of us slept very well. Lodge's tv timer habit reached new heights and I had to get up at 4am to turn the bloody thing off, not before I woke to find her asleep across the end of the bed. I thought she was watching the tv so I said to her "Lodge are you awake?" to which she responded "I'm so pissed off with this bloody jungle, I'm going to sleep on the sofa" then got back into bed, the right way and went straight to sleep. I thought she was weird when she was awake!! We weren't in the jungle and we didn't even have a sofa.

Langkawi

From Penang we headed by boat to the island of Langkawi, the only problem was we'd made and Evreux style cock-up with our hotel (for those who don't get the Evreux reference, it relates to a hotel my Dad once booked for a golf holiday only to find when they got there, it was 140 miles away from the golf course, dumbarse!). Cenang beach, which we thought was going to be a 2 minute walk away, turned out to be on completely the other side of the island, a 20 minute taxi ride away, doh! We decided to move nearer the beach, our original Motel had no windows (which annoyed Lodge), coloured sheets (which annoyed Lodge), was on the top floor (which annoyed Lodge) and had a resident cockroach (which scared Lodge) but we found a much nicer, bigger and bug free room right on the beach to move to. It was perfect - on the ground floor and it even had windows (although not blacked out windows as we first thought, we really must remember to draw our curtains in future!).

Langkawi Cenang beach was beautiful and probably one of the nicest beaches we've vistied so far. It was quite a quiet town in the evenings but we took advantage of the tax-free alcohol. Honestly, this wasn't the only reason we went to Langkawi but when a glass of wine is cheaper than a coke, it's rude not to!

We spent three days relaxing on the beach, ate some good food and drank some good wine in preparation for the busy three days in Singapore we had ahead...