Singapore & Malaysia

After arriving in to Singapore at night we went straight to our hostel, and were glad to get out of the heat and into our air conditioned room. After a good nights sleep we ventured out into the city where we spent the first day trying to get used to the city, and find out what was available for us to be doing, and seeing. The one thing that we had been told was a must do was the night safari. Basically going to the zoo at night where you see more activity as the majority of the animals are nocturnal. So we booked for the same night, and off we went. Arriving early ( 6:30 ) we had an hour to kill before the zoo opened, and as we wandered around we found a stall where you could get a fish spa... the fish are called doctor fish and they feed on the dead skin cells on your body. So we soon had our feet dunked in to the water, and the fish began feeding. The sensation is like having your feet tickled, and as you can see from the photo's Arlene is quite tickly...The rest of the zoo was good, although being in an enclosure of bats as they are flying all around you is scary, especially when it's almost pitch black,and the bats are up to half a meter in length.
The next day, we decided to take a hop on hop off bus around the city. Our first stop was to little India, where after some aimless wandering we found a nice place for a spot of lunch ( An indian washed down with Tiger beer for only £5 ). Next we went to Raffles hotel where the Singapore sling was invented, and as you do we had to have one. ( £14 each, thieving b@$ta*ds !!!) but you did get free monkey nuts which you are allowed to throw the shells on the floor. ( the only place in Singapore that you are allowed to litter ) Next stop was the Merlion park. The Merlion is the fictional animal that represents Singapore, and is a lions head on a mermaid body. So after getting some pictures we were back on board the bus and heading to our final destination of the day, Orchard Road. Orchard road is the main shopping street in Singapore, and after wandering around the shops where you need to barter for the price of anything we headed home, tired but knowing that here is somewhere we will definitely return to when we have the money to actually buy things to take home. The next day we headed out to Sentosa Island which is a mix of beaches, rain forest, and activities such as the luge, and chairlift. It was a good day and the light and fireworks show at the end of the day was spectacular.

On the whole Singapore is a beautiful place, and somewhere we will come back to...

From Singapore we headed by train up the coast and into Malaysia. Our first stop was the capital, Kuala Lumpur. We ended up in an area called Bintang, which was full of hustle and bustle, and gave us a flavour of the city. We headed out to Petaling road (Chinatown) where all of the fake clothes, bags etc were and so found ourselves bargaining for things, for example going from $120 ( £24 ) for a Malaysian football top down to $50 ( £10 ) and the banter was brilliant, as we haggled with the stall owners. The next day we booked to go on a day trip to an elephant sanctuary. On router we were stopping at a deer park, which neither of us were that excited about, and thought that it was just a way to pad out the day so that they could charge us more. How wrong were we... the first thing that we got to do was feed the deer. This resulted in 5 or 6 deer surrounding us as we fed them frozen potato wedges, but as they became impatient, they started going up on their back legs to get at the food, which the led to them almost jumping all over Arlene as she tried her best to get them to behave. After watching this and seeing what happened to Arlene, as soon as there were more than 4 around me the wedges got flung on to the floor and i escaped without being attacked. Next we were feeding and holding all sorts, silver pheasants, and their chicks, snakes, bearded dragons, ferrets, and finally we got to feed a sun bear. At the time we were just excited to be able to feed a bear and we weren't that concerned about our safety, but looking at the pictures once we had finished, we saw just how big its claws and teeth were. The bear was licking condensed milk off of our hand as we sat next to it. This was the highlight of the day for us both. After that we went on to the elephant sanctuary. The elephants here are all relocated from across Malaysia where they are loosing their natural habitat, and therefore starting to move into areas where farming is taking place So to protect the crops, and and retaliation from the farmers they elephants are brought to this area of rain forest. We were allowed to feed the 3 baby elephants, a mix of peanuts and sugar cane, while we took photos beside them. Then we watched as they bathed in the river with their handlers. Once they were clean we were allowed to ride on them before going for a swim ( well dunk ) with the elephants in the river again. On the way back we stopped off for 5 minutes at batu caves. This is a holy place for Hindu's and has one of the most impressive statues that i have seen. It is dedicated to Lord Murugan, it is the focal point of Hindu festival of Thaipusam in Malaysia, and stands over 40 m high. We didn't have time to go inside the cave, but we were told by our guide that inside there are other ornate Hindu shrines.