Our view on Asia so far...? It's very hot, the food is amazing and so cheap and if you look hard enough you can find paradise hidden amongst the craziness!

We arrived in Singapore on Sunday 2nd slightly earlier than scheduled and made our way to our hotel on a shuttle bus. We walked into the lobby in our shorts, flip flops, wild hair and backpacks to be greeted by our fellow patrons in their chinos, polished shoes and ties who dipped their copies of the FT and raised their eyebrows at us... we were booked into the Conrad Centennial, the posh executive arm of Hilton in Singapore! Our room had a MASSIVE comfy bed and complimentary fruit and chocolates - slightly different to what we have become accustomed to of late! After settling in (i.e. eating the chocolates!) we then headed along the river to a Hawker Market. There are Hawker Markets all over the city - they serve very cheap and very delicious food in a busy (and sticky - as we were further north from Broome, things were getting very tropical!) hall. Neither of us knew what we were ordering but we pointed at a picture and weren't disappointed!

On Monday, after walking down to the train station to book our train ride up to Kuala Lumpur, we then caught the bus to Singapore Zoo, described as "world-class" by the Lonely Planet guide. It was pouring with rain when we arrived, but luckily that cleared as we started to make our way around the zoo. Particular highlights were the feeding of the white tigers, the amazing polar bear which we stood and watched for ages as it swam around its pool and the orang-utan enclosure which you walk through with them above you! At the end of the day we decided to watch the "splash safari" - a show with the penguins, manatees and the star of the show, Carlos the sea lion. When they asked for volunteers towards the end of the show, Chelle's hand shot up, so she was pretty disappointed when the compere picked 3 kids from the audience! But after the kids had done their bit on stage with Carlos, the compere asked for two adults to volunteer, and guess what, he looked straight at Chelle and picked her from the crowd! Her task was to throw a frisbee to Carlos for him to catch with his mouth... she succeeded, but had to suffer a fair bit of flirting from the compere so was quite red-faced by the time she sat down! That evening we went back to the Hawker Market to try some of their satay sticks from one of the many stalls cooking them outside. We also decided to try one of the colourful desserts - again not sure quite what they were. Chelle decided (as she likes to do) to order something totally bizarre - it was a heap of ice with condensed milk and sweetened kidney beans poured all over the top! I decided to stick to something more mainstream and ordered a mango and ice-cream dessert, but then as I made my way to the bottom of it, I discovered it not only had kidney beans in, but also sweetcorn!! Not quite as mainstream after all!

On Tuesday we were up at oh-my-god o'clock to catch our train to Kuala Lumpur. Despite several delays during the seven hour journey, we arrived on time (what a good idea First Great Western - build some contingency into your timetable!) and made our way to Hotel Sentral - our stay for the next two days. Whilst we settled into our room on the 15th floor of the hotel we were able to witness our first Malaysian thunderstorm - we were to find out that these are pretty much a daily occurence due to the massively humid tropical conditions. Once the worst of the storm was over we ventured out for dinner. The road the hotel is on is a hustling bustle of little street stalls and shabby looking restaurants so we decided to hunt out an authentic KL dining experience here. We plumped for an indian place which was buffet style. We explained to the Malay staff in our best high volume English, hand moving and smiles that we didn't have a clue what any of the dishes were so they ushered us to a table, placed a couple of banana leaves in front of us and laid on a bit of a "taster menu" banquet! We had chicken and curried fish, with a whole host of condiments, sauces and rice and attempted to eat with our fingers, resorting to forks when it was clear from our hands and faces that we didn't have a clue what we were doing!

The following day, after queuing for an hour or so to get two of the very limited tickets to go onto the Skybridge of the Petronas Towers, we took ourselves to the Malay district of the city called Kampung Baru for a wander of the streets. Despite their proximity to the modern Petronas Towers precinct, this area retains the classical feel of a Malay town, made up of shanty style bungalows and huts and bustling market streets. we stumbled upon the Chow Kit market in full flow and were immediately emersed in exotic Asian sights, sounds and smells. The dark narrow passageways under the umbrellas of the stalls wove a complex maze guiding us past bizarre fruits (like the bright purple dragonfruit), stacks of stinking dried fish and little kittens playing amongst cows hooves and quails eggs. It became obvious from the stares and shouts of "hello miss" that Chelle was getting that we'd wandered far from a well-trodden tourist trail. Maybe bemused by my inane grin and wild westerner hair and the fact that Chelle was taking photos of everything, two butchers busy with their cleavers took a break and insisted I go behind their counter for a classic photo opportunity! This was just the sort of Asian experience Chelle and I had hoped for! When our noses had had enough (the dry-fish smell was quite overpowering after a while!) we took ourselves over to the Chinatown district where we had some fragrant roast chestnuts and tried some dragonfruit. We then walked to Merdeka Square, where colonial rule ended and independence for Malaysia began in 1957, signified by the raising of the Malaysian flag which stands in the centre. We then went for some traditional Malay food at a place called Old Penang Cafe (slightly more expensive than the street cafes with a total bill of around £8, but it had the much desired air-con!), before going for our tour of the Skybridge - the corridor linking the two Petronas Towers which is 170 metres from the ground.

Our train on Thursday wasn't until the evening so we decided to visit the Orchid and Hibiscus gardens and butterfly park within an area called Lake Gardens. In the humidity it was sweaty work just strolling around but the butterfly park in particular was great fun, although the static display cases of Malaysian wildlife at the exit was a bit too much for Chelle (the case of spiders included the gigantic Malaysian bird eating spider and Cameron Highlands tarantula!) We then legged it back to the train station to catch our 13 hour sleeper train (air con bunks cost us £10 each!) to Wakaf Bharu on the east coast.

After a bumpy nights sleep we caught a taxi from Wakaf Bharu train station over to the boat port of Kuala Besut which was about an hour and a half away. We then stumbled bleary eyed on to a speedboat for a seat of your pants 30 minute rollercoaster ride across the Perhentian straits, finally stepping foot onto our desert island getaway home of Petani Beach House... and oh my god had we struck gold - this place was literally paradise. The Perhentian Islands are pretty remote - only accessible by boat from the mainland and the only way to get around the island is by boat or foot. Petani Beach House, where we were to spend four nights, is on the smaller of the two islands, Kecil, and consists of five simple huts just metres from the sea shore and a further sixth beach hut cafe. The waters in front of the resort contained some great reef full of tropical coral and fish and the only thing separating our hut from this 30 degree tropical sea was a line of coconut palms with an array of hammocks and sun-loungers to laze on. And all this for just £20 per night!! We slipped straight into "Petani Pace" and spent the rest of the day in the hammocks, before walking the few metres to the beach cafe for our evening meal.

The following three days involved much of the same - chilling in the hammocks and in the sea broken up by a walk over to the main village on the island (where burgers were being sold for just 70p and we saw a huge 1.5m Monitor Lizard in the bushes!), a morning kayaking around the island to Coral Bay for some great snorkelling and the sampling of fresh coconut just fallen from the tree!

So it was with a little sadness and some trepidation that we woke on Tuesday with a journey across the Thai border and through the unstable south Thailand provinces to Surat Thani ahead of us. We were up early and had pancakes filled with tropical fruit (a favourite of ours from the Petani Beach Cafe menu!) before we boarded our speedboat taxi back to Kuala Besut on the mainland. There we found our taxi driver, Zul, who was to take us on the two hour journey to Rantau Panjang, the Malay border. Once there we walked through passport control before climbing upon one of the Tri-shaws. These consist of a bicycle attached to a side car, so some poor chap had to pedal along with the weight of not only himself in the 30 plus heat, but also with our weight and that of our huge backpacks! He took us a few hundred metres to the Thai side of the border, called Sungai-Golok, where we had to climb off briefly to show our passports again. We then climbed back on the Tri-shaw and continued the journey to Sungai-Golok train station - luckily only about 1km away! There we boarded the train to Surat Thani - a journey that was supposed to take around 9 hours, but actually took around 11 hours! We arrived in Surat Thani at around 11pm, then immediately were rushed onto a shared taxi (an open air kind of cattle truck). The driver was trying to get two of the other passengers to the jetty for them to get a night boat over to Ko Samui so he drove at break-neck speed whilst we clinged on in the back! We were very pleased when we finally arrived at our hotel at around midnight - a large fairly modern hotel where we paid around £17 for a room that included buffet style breakfast!!

We took to the buffet yesterday morning with gusto - filling our plates with the extremely hot thai green curry and other weird and wonderful foods which really shouldn't be eaten first thing in the morning! We were then picked up and taken to an office in town where we were to get a mini-bus to Donsak Pier, which was about an hour away. There we boarded the ferry to Ko Samui. We arrived about an hour and a half later and were ushered onto a shared taxi (that we had to share with about 10 other people - but at least we had seats - three guys had to stand and hold on at the back!) to take us to Chaweng. We finally arrived at the Pandora Resort, our hotel for four nights, late yesterday afternoon. After dropping off the bags, we went to explore. The main beach and town are just five minutes walk from the hotel, so it didn't take us long to realise how different Ko Samui is from the Perhentian Islands! We were quick to suss out what we were after - we've found a beach bar that serves great cocktails just minutes from the hotel (Thai stick already being a favourite - Thai rum with ginger, lemongrass and a load of other good stuff crushed in with it!) and a great little authentic place to eat with dishes like beef with chilli and basil served with rice for 80p! I think we'll be alright here...!