Singapore & Malaysia Part 1

I jumped on a plane to Singapore on Tues 7th Sept, and headed straight for the cheapest area – Little India. Due to being silly, me and James miss-timed our flights and I had one day by myself before he arrived. So I went to sample the amazing local curry! I had a “Banana Leaf” which had all the veggie dishes and some chicken piled onto a banana leaf around a massive helping of rice – very tasty!

When James arrived we again tried the awesome curry before venturing out into main Singapore. We spent a day wandering the streets, saw some Hindu temples and others, found a very nice park and ended up on Orchard Road in the big shopping malls.

Esculator up to the Park...

Crazy big mall in Orchard Road

We left Singapore pretty sharpish to save some cash so got a bus (very luxurious one at that, as all buses in Malaysia seem to be!) to Melaka. We arrived in Melaka on Friday 10th, which happened to be the start of a 3 day festival celebrating the end of Ramadan. So the town was pretty packed with party go-ers! We spent the first evening squashed into the nightmarket in Chinatown and enjoyed the crazy party atmosphere.

Tasty "meat on sticks" in China Town

Did a little sightseeing in the town then met up with Kat and her friend Josh, for a few drinks and a catch up (I met Kat while on Koh Tao).

Sights of Melaka

They kindly took us to a nearby waterfall the next day and a very random crocodile park! Trekking up next to the waterfall

Poor little crocs in the Malaysian "zoo"

After Melaka we moved across to the East coast and started a few weeks of island and beach hopping that were awesome fun and very relaxing. We started on the Tioman island, off the coast from Mersing. I think the best thing about this island was the cats… also the stunning beaches and clear blue sea I guess.

2 of many many cute cats!

We wanted to do the 3 hour trek across the island through the jungle to Juara, but just as we were preparing to leave the rain came down so we had to give up on the idea. After Tioman we stopped briefly on Cherating beach. It was very quiet here, I think it must be really good in the wet season when the surfing starts though!

A bit of swimming in the beautiful sea

Then we got to the Perhentain Islands and stayed on long beach.

View towards the "posh" end of Long Beach

Here we did our Open Water Dive course with Nic at Matahari divers. This was great fun as I thought it would be! Saw lots and lots of fish and coral, and some blue spotted stingray. I took part in a Project AWARE cleanup dive on the Saturday (25th) which was basically litter picking underwater! But was useful for me to get straight back in the water after the course and practice my newly learnt skills!

Matahari Dive school - spent a fair bit of time here!

The nightlife on this island was the best in Malaysia I think: Lounging around on mats on the beach with a cup of monkey juice and coke (Monkey Juice being the cheap rum sold only on the island), playing with fire poi and listening to some chilled out Reggae music!

Doing a bit of snorkelling and practising our dive signals!