Hello!

Merry Christmas!!

We are currently in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysian Borneo. The past couple of weeks have been a very different festive period to what we are used to...

After leaving Ko Lipe in Thailand, we island hopped into Malaysia and spent our first two nights in Georgetown. Although the town itself was pretty grotty and awash with transvestite prostitutes, we had a great time with the locals who owned our hotel. Our last night there involved Malaysian X Factor and several bottles of whiskey. At one point the resident elder took his shirt off and proceeded to smack his belly like a gorilla in time to the music!

The next day, with a headache, we took a bus to Kuala Lumpur where we found a nice little hotel in Chinatown. Despite it not being the best place we have visited, we ended up spending four days there,
partly because we didn't feel like traveling for a bit and partly because we quite enjoyed looking around the local markets. Whilst in KL we also visited the huge Petronas Towers (the tallest buildings in the world at one point) and the Aquarium, which was a lot of fun.

Being honest we would have to say that the small amount of peninsular Malaysia we saw didn't impress us very much, especially after coming from Thailand. However, there were a few highlights including the very friendly locals and the incredible bus system. The two standard coach journeys we went on involved luxurious vehicles with massage chairs the size of armchairs and had names like "The Eagle" and "Lionstar"!

On the 23rd December we made our way by bus to Singapore. What a contrast from Malaysia! Singapore exceeded all our expectations. We were met at the bus stop by Olivia's lovely great aunt Rosy and her "Rolls Royce". Olivia's second cousins, Alex, Tanja and Lionel were always incredibly generous and worked tirelessly to ensure we saw as much of Singapore as possible during our stay, with activities including boating and fishing around the islands, visiting the amazing zoo (on Christmas Day) and kayaking around the mangroves. It was also really nice to meet Claudio and Ashley who were visiting from Spain and Bolivia! We had a fantastic festive period culminating in a great game of monopoly which got completely out of hand and will certainly not be forgotten in a hurry!

Borneo is very hot, humid, rainy and the people are very friendly. We are leaving to go on a 10 day tour on the 31st and should be climbing up Mount Kinabalu the day after new years day.

We are looking forward to it and will write again when we return to Singapore.

We hope everyone has a happy new year!

Ps. Olivia is losing her toenail