Kuala Lumpur over and out!

21/04/2013
Our hotel room is small but ok except the walls are on the thin side with not much sound proofing. Our neighbours, last night, decided to sit up all night yelling at one another, as Asians tend to do, so we had a bad night and had to complain to the hotel management this morning.
We spent the first couple of hours in the Central Market where we bought some good authentic stuff. Then in the Petaling Street market we bought a designer leather handbag and some top of the range polo shirts, all very good fakes and at the right price after a bit of good natured haggling.
 For the afternoon we hired car and driver to take us on a tour of the city which we thoroughly enjoyed. Our man took us round the usual tourist sites ending up at a chocolate factory where we skirmished with a million Japanese. With the population of Japan divided up between Cairns, Bali and here the country must be empty.
One of the highlights of the tour was getting up close to the giant Petronas Twin Towers though we were probably too close to get good photo’s, I had to lie flat on my back to get the towers in the frame. Until recently these towers were the tallest buildings in the world. We visited the Royal Palace where more hordes of Japanese pushed and shoved to get their photo’s taken next to the palace guards, they can be a very ignorant race at times. At the war memorial their objective seemed to be, who could strike the most stupid pose for photo’s in front of the statue depicting those who died in the wars.
Our evening meal was another in a cheap and cheerful oriental eating house. Watery chicken soup, fried rice, bbq’d duck with a chilli sauce for less than £2 each.

22/04/2013
Had to call for management in the middle of the night to sort out the noisy bastards next door. Not good enough!
KL is famous, amongst other things’ for cheap consumer goods, some fake but lots of genuine stuff. We have decided, after all the anguish with our shiny thing, to invest in a supa dupa shining thing, one that works. So this morning we set off in a taxi to visit a 4 storey shopping mall that sells nothing but state of the art shiny stuff. We wandered around the store trying to give the impression we knew what we were looking at and asking daft questions, ( what colours do they come in…) and taking notes. As we don’t  know a gigabyte from a mossie bite we had consulted our UK guru for his advice and the answer was that the way to go is to get an I Pod and forget the bloody flip top thing.
 Well now we are feeling quite smug as we are the owners of a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, every home should have one apparently. We are doubly smug as we paid a lot less than they are advertised for on Amazon. All we need to do now is find out how the bugger works, that’s after we find out how to charge the battery…………..KIMMM!

  23/04/2013
  Our last day before we fly home tomorrow. We have spent it by going up country with our duty driver out of the city about 240K’s away. The main highway north takes you out of Malaysia and into Thailand, we didn’t quite get that far. We stopped to look at a rubber plantation where the trees were being tapped for latex, then a palm oil forest. Palms cover a vast area of the country and are overtaking rubber on the export market. Used for cooking, soap, cosmetics and being developed into fuel.
 Up into the Cameron Highlands where we had a nice cup of tea at a huge plantation. The tea here is still picked by hand using mainly a foreign workforce  and looks to be hard work. The tea plantations we saw in Australia were mostly on flat ground and the tea was harvested by machine. Here it’s far too hilly to get a machine to do it.
 We were taken to a mountain village that had a nice waterfall ( tour guides seem to love waterfalls) and once  past the Japanese tourists we got some good photos. By lunchtime the heavens opened and from then on it was difficult to see much through the pouring rain. We had a delicious  (cheap) Indian lunch before setting off back down the mountain and back onto the motorway to KL.  Driving in miserable conditions we could have been on any motorway in the world, all muck and spray and we couldn’t help thinking that this is Malaysia’s way of softening us up for our return to the UK.
 Our final evening in Chinatown has been interesting as we had a deep and meaningful discussion with a Chinese man with a speech impediment. While we were chatting a rat hunt was taking place as one of the waiters with a big stick chased a rat around the cold drinks cabinet in our eating house. The rat escaped!
   Time to pack the bags for the last time.

Kuala Lumpur over and out!

21/04/2013
Our hotel room is small but ok except the walls are on the thin side with not much sound proofing. Our neighbours, last night, decided to sit up all night yelling at one another, as Asians tend to do, so we had a bad night and had to complain to the hotel management this morning.
We spent the first couple of hours in the Central Market where we bought some good authentic stuff. Then in the Petaling Street market we bought a designer leather handbag and some top of the range polo shirts, all very good fakes and at the right price after a bit of good natured haggling.
 For the afternoon we hired car and driver to take us on a tour of the city which we thoroughly enjoyed. Our man took us round the usual tourist sites ending up at a chocolate factory where we skirmished with a million Japanese. With the population of Japan divided up between Cairns, Bali and here the country must be empty.
One of the highlights of the tour was getting up close to the giant Petronas Twin Towers though we were probably too close to get good photo’s, I had to lie flat on my back to get the towers in the frame. Until recently these towers were the tallest buildings in the world. We visited the Royal Palace where more hordes of Japanese pushed and shoved to get their photo’s taken next to the palace guards, they can be a very ignorant race at times. At the war memorial their objective seemed to be, who could strike the most stupid pose for photo’s in front of the statue depicting those who died in the wars.
Our evening meal was another in a cheap and cheerful oriental eating house. Watery chicken soup, fried rice, bbq’d duck with a chilli sauce for less than £2 each.

22/04/2013
Had to call for management in the middle of the night to sort out the noisy bastards next door. Not good enough!
KL is famous, amongst other things’ for cheap consumer goods, some fake but lots of genuine stuff. We have decided, after all the anguish with our shiny thing, to invest in a supa dupa shining thing, one that works. So this morning we set off in a taxi to visit a 4 storey shopping mall that sells nothing but state of the art shiny stuff. We wandered around the store trying to give the impression we knew what we were looking at and asking daft questions, ( what colours do they come in…) and taking notes. As we don’t  know a gigabyte from a mossie bite we had consulted our UK guru for his advice and the answer was that the way to go is to get an I Pod and forget the bloody flip top thing.
 Well now we are feeling quite smug as we are the owners of a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, every home should have one apparently. We are doubly smug as we paid a lot less than they are advertised for on Amazon. All we need to do now is find out how the bugger works, that’s after we find out how to charge the battery…………..KIMMM!

  23/04/2013
  Our last day before we fly home tomorrow. We have spent it by going up country with our duty driver out of the city about 240K’s away. The main highway north takes you out of Malaysia and into Thailand, we didn’t quite get that far. We stopped to look at a rubber plantation where the trees were being tapped for latex, then a palm oil forest. Palms cover a vast area of the country and are overtaking rubber on the export market. Used for cooking, soap, cosmetics and being developed into fuel.
 Up into the Cameron Highlands where we had a nice cup of tea at a huge plantation. The tea here is still picked by hand using mainly a foreign workforce  and looks to be hard work. The tea plantations we saw in Australia were mostly on flat ground and the tea was harvested by machine. Here it’s far too hilly to get a machine to do it.
 We were taken to a mountain village that had a nice waterfall ( tour guides seem to love waterfalls) and once  past the Japanese tourists we got some good photos. By lunchtime the heavens opened and from then on it was difficult to see much through the pouring rain. We had a delicious  (cheap) Indian lunch before setting off back down the mountain and back onto the motorway to KL.  Driving in miserable conditions we could have been on any motorway in the world, all muck and spray and we couldn’t help thinking that this is Malaysia’s way of softening us up for our return to the UK.
 Our final evening in Chinatown has been interesting as we had a deep and meaningful discussion with a Chinese man with a speech impediment. While we were chatting a rat hunt was taking place as one of the waiters with a big stick chased a rat around the cold drinks cabinet in our eating house. The rat escaped!
   Time to pack the bags for the last time.

Kuala Lumpur over and out!

21/04/2013
Our hotel room is small but ok except the walls are on the thin side with not much sound proofing. Our neighbours, last night, decided to sit up all night yelling at one another, as Asians tend to do, so we had a bad night and had to complain to the hotel management this morning.
We spent the first couple of hours in the Central Market where we bought some good authentic stuff. Then in the Petaling Street market we bought a designer leather handbag and some top of the range polo shirts, all very good fakes and at the right price after a bit of good natured haggling.
 For the afternoon we hired car and driver to take us on a tour of the city which we thoroughly enjoyed. Our man took us round the usual tourist sites ending up at a chocolate factory where we skirmished with a million Japanese. With the population of Japan divided up between Cairns, Bali and here the country must be empty.
One of the highlights of the tour was getting up close to the giant Petronas Twin Towers though we were probably too close to get good photo’s, I had to lie flat on my back to get the towers in the frame. Until recently these towers were the tallest buildings in the world. We visited the Royal Palace where more hordes of Japanese pushed and shoved to get their photo’s taken next to the palace guards, they can be a very ignorant race at times. At the war memorial their objective seemed to be, who could strike the most stupid pose for photo’s in front of the statue depicting those who died in the wars.
Our evening meal was another in a cheap and cheerful oriental eating house. Watery chicken soup, fried rice, bbq’d duck with a chilli sauce for less than £2 each.

22/04/2013
Had to call for management in the middle of the night to sort out the noisy bastards next door. Not good enough!
KL is famous, amongst other things’ for cheap consumer goods, some fake but lots of genuine stuff. We have decided, after all the anguish with our shiny thing, to invest in a supa dupa shining thing, one that works. So this morning we set off in a taxi to visit a 4 storey shopping mall that sells nothing but state of the art shiny stuff. We wandered around the store trying to give the impression we knew what we were looking at and asking daft questions, ( what colours do they come in…) and taking notes. As we don’t  know a gigabyte from a mossie bite we had consulted our UK guru for his advice and the answer was that the way to go is to get an I Pod and forget the bloody flip top thing.
 Well now we are feeling quite smug as we are the owners of a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2, every home should have one apparently. We are doubly smug as we paid a lot less than they are advertised for on Amazon. All we need to do now is find out how the bugger works, that’s after we find out how to charge the battery…………..KIMMM!

  23/04/2013
  Our last day before we fly home tomorrow. We have spent it by going up country with our duty driver out of the city about 240K’s away. The main highway north takes you out of Malaysia and into Thailand, we didn’t quite get that far. We stopped to look at a rubber plantation where the trees were being tapped for latex, then a palm oil forest. Palms cover a vast area of the country and are overtaking rubber on the export market. Used for cooking, soap, cosmetics and being developed into fuel.
 Up into the Cameron Highlands where we had a nice cup of tea at a huge plantation. The tea here is still picked by hand using mainly a foreign workforce  and looks to be hard work. The tea plantations we saw in Australia were mostly on flat ground and the tea was harvested by machine. Here it’s far too hilly to get a machine to do it.
 We were taken to a mountain village that had a nice waterfall ( tour guides seem to love waterfalls) and once  past the Japanese tourists we got some good photos. By lunchtime the heavens opened and from then on it was difficult to see much through the pouring rain. We had a delicious  (cheap) Indian lunch before setting off back down the mountain and back onto the motorway to KL.  Driving in miserable conditions we could have been on any motorway in the world, all muck and spray and we couldn’t help thinking that this is Malaysia’s way of softening us up for our return to the UK.
 Our final evening in Chinatown has been interesting as we had a deep and meaningful discussion with a Chinese man with a speech impediment. While we were chatting a rat hunt was taking place as one of the waiters with a big stick chased a rat around the cold drinks cabinet in our eating house. The rat escaped!
   Time to pack the bags for the last time.

Last days in Bali

 18/04/2013
 With only a couple of days left in Bali we need to get everything up to date with photos and the blog as we can see the days in K L being a bit hectic. Many hours later we had succeeded in sending the blog and one photo album with another made up ready before the bastard threw a hissy fit and packed up for the day. It would be really easy to say “bugger it, that’s it” but after two years of dedication we will see it through to the last day, even if I have to finish it off in Newbold.
  We are invited to Indys house tomorrow night for a Balinese farewell so tonight we did a pub crawl of our favourite bars finishing with a meal at our crispy duck restaurant Regina (we had pork again). Definitely need a Balinese cookbook!

19/04/2013
Everyone who visits Bali just has to have a massage. No matter where you are, in the street or on the beach, you will find women offering you a rub down with the mid week Bali News. Today Jane had her nails done whilst I put myself under the hands of a Balinese Ladies first XV front row forward who had extremely muscular thumbs! Never, will I ever, complain of a sore neck when in earshot of one of these monsters.
 Our visit to Indy’s parents home was a hoot and we loved every minute of it. Indy’s Mum ( Madi ) has only a little English but we managed to make ourselves understood. His Dad  ( Mani ), on the other hand, has lived and worked I Australia and his English is very good, so much so, you couldn’t shut him up. They fed us a typical Indonesian meal with lots of rice and noodles, chicken and goat satay with sambals. Food was served in in woven baskets with a paper or palm leaf liner saving on washing up later. After we had ploughed through the family photo albums Mani  decided on a musical evening so out came the DVD,s, music from his (and our) era. We had Elton John, when he had his own hair, followed by the Bee Gees, because he loves them, and could have had any amount of Beatles stuff. Mani knows the words to all the songs and sang along with them but he wouldn’t have any of that ‘American crap’ he said.
We had a lovely evening with a delightful Indonesian family and have made a good friend with Indy. Hopefully we will meet up again sometime.
Bali has it’s problems as it is a part of a third world country, but despite that, the people are as friendly and hospitable as you will find anywhere

20/04/2013
Leaving Bali didn’t exactly go to plan. On reaching immigration at the airport we were promptly arrested and marched off to an ante room were the immigration Gestapo slapped us with an 80000 Rupiah fine  and marched out. It seems we overstayed our 30 day visa by 2 days. We arrived on the 20th March leaving on the 20th April forgetting March has 31 days. We argued that it was only one day but they wouldn’t have it so we begrudgingly paid up and went off muttering about the injustice…….bastards!
Arriving in KL was a doddle clearing immigration and customs in no time. The airport here has a great system  for getting you to the city which combats rogue taxi drivers. In the arrivals hall you buy a taxi ticket then once outside you present your ticket to a flunky who calls up a recognised cab and away you go. It takes an hour to get to the city and during the drive we noticed how wide and clean the roads are with no potholes. They also drive on the proper side of the road as we do in the UK, Australia and Indonesia, though sometimes, in Indonesia it’s a job to know which side of the road is which. The millions of scooters are also missing and I actually saw drivers indicating, then doing what they indicated. Very civilised!
Our hotel is in the heart of Chinatown and quite good, very clean and well maintained though our room is small compared to the barn of a place we  had in Bali, the room doesn’t have a window, which is rather odd.
We mooched around the night market, which surrounds the hotel, here you can buy every conceivable brand name in clothing, handbags, jewellery, watches, DVD,s and much more……..all fakes of course. We ate in a typical Chinese eating house, good food, but fine dining, it aint! More exploring tomorrow.

Getting close to Panic Tanning

12/4/2013

A day to practice our Karma ( fat chance ) as we once again attempt to fire up the shiny thing. It has behaved itself since we threatened to leave it in the internet café amongst it’s betters! The threat seems to have done the trick as it found a connection within 30 minutes and didn’t throw us off once.
 Karma went well as there isn’t too much anguish lying on a sunbed beside the swimming pool all day. It only goes pear shaped when you can’t raise a waiter to fetch a couple of beers. Life’s a bloody struggle!

13/4/2013

We are not yet in panic tanning mode as we have over a week left to laze around but if the weather continues it’s trend of the last few days we may well panic. It’s hot and humid every day with not much sunshine though they do say you can tan just as easily on cloudy days.
Paid a second visit to the Retro Warung where the food is excellent then looked up Jane’s new best friend in the Aussie Sports Bar we use regularly. Jane has just realized that Anita ( her friend ) has two professions, one as a waitress and the second in the oldest  profession. Hey Ho!

14/4/2013

There is no doubt that Aussie bars are for drinking and Indonesian bars are for eating. Aussie bars obviously employ Indonesian cooks but Ausralians in general don’t like spicy food so the food in their bars is toned down. Tonight we made the mistake of ordering a Balinese meal in an Aussie bar and it was crap. We learn something every day. There again savage cocktails are cheaper and much more powerful in Australian bars, it’s just a matter of choice!

 15/04/2013
 Indy called round with his young son (about 9) and we have made arrangements to drive out to the less touristy east coast on Wednesday. That will probably be our last excursion on the island and we can say we have seen quite a lot of it. We had a bit of a fool around in the pool with Dika, Indys  boy, we suspect he doesn’t often get a chance to swim in a pool, though he does have the Indian ocean on his doorstep. Still, it was good to see the boy having fun.
More struggles with the shiny thing. We manage to get things done eventually, but it takes forever.

 16/04/2013
 A tan topping day spent on the beach where the onshore breeze helps to keep the temperature down a little. No change in the amount of litter lying around, it really is disconcerting having to pick your way through heaps of rubbish along the tide line to get into the sea. It wouldn’t take much for a tractor towing a drag to run along the  shore line every morning and dispose of the rubbish. There again a few dustbins wouldn’t go amiss but then you have to educate the locals how to use them.

 17/04/2013
  An interesting day out with Indy to east Bali where our first stop was the market town of Sukawati. The huge produce market is tucked away down  dirty, dingy alleyways, as well as out in the market square. It really is a grubby place with tons of rubbish everywhere. Some of the fruit on sale here we have never seen before but were a bit reluctant to buy any for fear of catching some unknown ailment. Indy always leaves us to our own devices which is good as we have to haggle and bargain without help. We haggled over some shoulder bags and Indy said later we got a good price. Away from the produce market the place is equally dirty , only the smell is different. This is not a tourist area so we were quite a novelty, but one or two hawkers sussed us out . We had a problem fending off a group of women trying to sell us knitted shawls that resembled string bags. We were also plagued by a few guys flogging “made in china” sunglasses and had to read the riot act, a phrase of two words….the second being ‘off.’
  From Sukawati we went to look at a pretty spectacular waterfall, a drop of 40m, one of Bali’s highest. Through Redang , an attractive village, for lunch at Mahagiri , a restaurant with a panoramic view over rice terraces (and the volcano when it’s not covered in cloud).  Over lunch we heard , in the distance a Hindu Priest calling to his village to attend prayers and the thanksgiving festival at the local temple. Today was a good day for a festival as we saw several more going on as we drove around the countryside. People get dressed in their best clothes and take offerings to the temple where they pray then sit around eating, drinking and chatting (gambling sometimes!), seems like an OK religion to me.
 Another white knuckle ride through teeming traffic got us back to our hotel just at the end of Happy Hour, by that time we were in need of a cold one.

Trip to Ubud

 08/04/2013
  We overdid the sunbathing a bit yesterday so thankfully, today being a dull and overcast sort of a day, it  didn’t feel like we were missing too much by spending an hour or two on the shiny thing. The priority after email was to go online and find a hotel for our stay in Kuala Lumpur, not a problem, Trip Advisor has 600 alone. Every time we find a hotel in the right place at the right price, we lost the internet connection. This went on for some time and we still haven’t booked anything. A trip to the one and only internet café in Sanur is our plan for tomorrow.
 More of the same this evening as we found ourselves marooned in a bar watching another monsoon. The bar owner plied me with Arak to keep us there and to listen to the band he had hired. We were his only customers. The band was good, the Arak was good but we still got wet walking back to the hotel.

 09/04/2013
 The trip to the internet café was a success, much less stressful than trying to boot up our shiny thing. We came away with a great deal thanks to Agoda (or was it Trip Advisor?) We are booked into a 4 star hotel in K L , in the heart of china town, the best place to stay apparently, for £26 a night with breakfast. All we need to do is bone upon our Malaysian so we can find our way from the airport to the middle of Chinatown.
 Having tried several restaurants in Sanur, some of them twice or three times, we have come to the conclusion that tonight’s Warung is the best. It’s the Crispy duck Warung though tonight we tried a couple of pork dishes, absolutely delicious, must look for a Balinese cookbook.

 10/04/2013
 I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, our evening meal was pretty poor by the standards we have been used to. We wouldn’t have minded too much but it was at a Warung most local to the hotel and was recommended by a couple of expats we had been talking to. We pass this Warung every time we go out and have been promising ourselves a meal there ever since we arrived. The meal was cheap enough but not good quality.
 We had to change rooms today as our room had been booked sometime ago by people arriving today. Why they should want that particular room is a mystery as we have moved two units down and it’s exactly the same.
Indy called this morning with a huge watermelon for us. We had a chat and decided to go out with him for the day tomorrow.

 11/04/2013
 If there is some sort of Highway Code in existence here in Bali I have yet to fathom it out. The whole adventure of just being a passenger in a car in the madness of Bali traffic has to be experienced . With hundreds of motorbikes, sometimes with as many as 4 passengers on each bike, seemingly knowing where they are going weaving in and out of three lanes of cars where there should only be one, is just mind blowing. Put that with packs of dogs roaming the roadside, pedestrians completely oblivious to the metal mayhem around them, it’s a wonder half the population isn’t maimed on the roads everyday.
 So with Indy driving we have spent the day in central Bali and the big tourist town of Ubud. Here we not only had the traffic to contend with but once again hoards of Japanese tourists wandering around, photographing everything and generally getting in the way.
 We managed to get into Ubud Palace, where the local royal family still live, and for a donation we were guided up to the actual living quarters of the Royals. Here we got some  photos without the usual bevy of Japanese in the background.  We wandered around the huge market batting off dozens of sarong and sari sellers and haggled over some packets of Bali spices knocking 60p off the last price. Indy still said we had spent double what we should have. ( They cost about £2 60!)
 Ubud is a cultural and spiritual centre with many art galleries offering pictures for sale at silly prices. We agreed that we wouldn’t give them houseroom even if they gave them away. Art and Culture as never a strong point at Newton Heath Technical High School, Manchester! Having said that even we can appreciate the intricate wood carvings and stone work in the Hindu temples. Ubud is a fascinating place so we may ask Indy to take us back for another day as it’s only an hour of terror inducing driving chaos!

Indolence!!

04/04/2013
 Managed a successful post of our blog, after quite some time waiting for a connection. Interestingly, we have more followers in Russia than anywhere else. So, that’s one more thing to do before we die….learn Russian!

 05/04/2013
  Highlights of today….Jane’s visit to the blacksmith to get re-shod. Well, they call it a pedicure but for what it cost you could get your pony a new set of shoes….That of course is a complete exaggeration , a foot massage, pedicure and manicure takes 1 ½ hours for less than £8. I sat in the pub watching rugby on TV.
  Dinner at our Crispy duck restaurant where we both tried the special, Crevettes in a Balinese sauce (garlic, chilli, onion and peppers) with fried rice. Bloody good feed.

 06/04/2013
  Ten days ago was the religious festival of  Galungan, when the Gods defeated some legendary tyrant. Today was Kulingan, a festival to thank the gods for a job well done, any excuse for a party! It is also a day when the old folk are revered , a bit like mothers, fathers and grandparents day all rolled into one. If the old folks are somewhere else I expect they get an email or a text!
 We have spent a lot of the day wandering around the town just looking at the locals going about their traditional day. After the family get together where they are all dressed in their finest clothes (sarongs) everyone seems to de-camp to the beach where they swim, fly kites and generally sit around in groups chatting. It’s a simple way of life but they put lots of effort into it. Just watching as they make and present their offerings to the gods is quite humbling. As with Galungan many shops and restaurants are closed for the day so we found another Aussie run watering hole, Jimmys bar, to have a beer or two saving us from over-culture.

 07/04/2013
 Today we lurched from our sunbed by the pool to another on the beach, just for a change of scenery  and a swim in the sea. Once again we are dismayed by the amount of rubbish that lays along the nice sandy beach and on the sea bed. Nobody seems to clear it up, they just sweep it into a heap and leave to get kicked around later. There are several small packs of dogs that wander around scavenging anything they can find or beg, and nobody seems to do anything about them either.
 After a scorching hot day the late afternoon turned to a tropical storm, the likes of which we haven’t seen since our last stay in Northern Queensland during the wet. Fortunately we were having dinner in a nearly waterproof Warung when the storm hit, which left us with no option but to sit it out with the staff, a few beers and some homemade arak. It’s amazing how language barriers can be breached when there is some local firewater kicking around.