Malaysia

30/10/11 – 02/11/11

After my unexpected overnight stay in Hat Yai I finally made it to Penang in Malaysia. Arriving in the afternoon I tried to Skype back home completely forgetting that the clocks had gone back an hour where as I had gone an hour ahead. That evening I went for a stroll around the town in the rain after grabbing some dinner from the huge shopping complex under the Komtar Tower.

The next day I went on my own walking tour of Georgetown, a protected world heritage site. Here is a list of some of the sites I visited:
• Town/city hall
• Fort Comwallis
• Queen Victoria clock tower
• Penang state museum
• Goddess of Mercy temple
• Mahamarianman temple
• Cheah Kongsi
• Khoo Kongsi
• Little India

That afternoon I caught a bus to the bottom of Penang hill before taking the hill train to the top to get some panoramic views of the island and city.
With me liking Penang so much I decided to stay an extra day to see some more sights in the area including Wat Chayamang Kalarm, the Burmese temple and the Botanic gardens (where I attempted to climb up to see the waterfalls but gave up after 40 minutes).

The next day I jumped on a coach to Kuala Lumpar, with me staying an extra day in Penang I only had the afternoon to do a bit of sightseeing in the city so I headed to the KL Tower to get some raised views of the city. There I bumped into a fellow Brit who I arrived to meet that evening to grab some dinner in the China Town area.

03/11/11 – 04/11/11

Another day another coach journey as I made my way to Singapore, the last new country I would be visiting in Asia on my RTW trip. Everything was going fine until I got to Singapore immigration where we had to disembark our coach to get checked into the country. At this point there were only 3 passengers left on the coach including myself. I filled out my immigration card before going to see the custom official to get check in. After I had to put my backpack through an x-ray machine before I quickly went to the loo before the final leg of our journey to Lavender Hill bus station. But on arriving in the coach parking area I couldn’t see my transport anywhere, I run up and down the platform checking to see if it was there – no sign of it. Asking another bus operator I was simply told that the coach had already left; cue an outburst of swearing from me. After waiting half hour to see if it hadn’t got simply held up in customs I knew it was true it had already left.
The main problem was I had no local currency on me due to having only just entered the country so my first mission was to find an ATM. After talking to a security guard I was pointed towards a shopping complex nearby so I quickly dashed over to find a series of ATM machines – relief! With money in my hand I boarded a local bus to the nearest metro station, not the stress I was expecting to find that day.