orwellianTwo
Stuff I write when I’m travelling
about
Category: Thailand and Malaysia
2018 – 1
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So, after two weeks, hundreds of miles and a few tasty local dishes, we come to the end of our quick spin through Thailand and Kuala Lumpur. It would have been nice to have seen more of Malaysia, maybe the historic sites of Melaka, Ipoh and Penang, but it wasn’t to be. KL was interesting…
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It was my last full day of the trip, so it was time I got away from the congestion, the fumes, the concrete of steamy Kuala Lumpur and headed out to the real Malaysia. The rainforest of the Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve teems with tropical birds, macaques, chirruping cicadas, and dark natural mystery. I didn’t…
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Kampung Baru is a small settlement of Malays towards the north-west of KL city centre. There are many old-style wooden houses on stilts, but what strikes one is the contrast with the ultramodern city on its doorstep. A third “Old and New” post would have been boring but that just sums this whole city up.…
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To the tour coach this morning for a little trip outside the city. The first stop is the Royal Selangor pewter factory, one of the most famous in the world. It’s amazing what you can do when you pour molten tin alloy into a mould. Especially when they fetch these prices. £1 was about 5.4…
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That was nice. It’s a short walk over to Chinatown, the historic heart of Kuala Lumpur. There are some older buildings there but it’s a worthwhile place to wander around rather than a must-see in a South East Asian itinerary. There were two temples I had a look at, both crowded with incense-wielding devotees and…
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First impressions of Kuala Lumpur. Huge super-modern airport, decent express train down the 50km to the central station. And then the cab ride to my hotel, through a backdrop of flashy, glowing skyscraper hotels and office blocks, illuminating the super-highways and transit systems ribboning their way across the whole Blade Runner-like cityscape… …bearing in mind…
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Imagine, if you will, that you’re a tin miner. Not just any tin miner, but one of 87 Chinese prospectors invited in 1857 by nephews of the Malay sultan of Selenagor to investigate the tin ore deposits up the Klang valley. So off you go, alighting with your buddies at the muddy confluence of the…
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As I sit here at Samui Airport about to leave Thailand for my next and final stop on the trip, I’m going to put some other photos that didn’t make the cut earlier. At least I don’t think they did… View from my Bangkok hotel. You get a feel for the poor air quality in…
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Tell you what. Let’s go speedboating! The Ang Thong archipelago is made up of forty or so tiny islands to the north-west of Koh Samui. Thailand has actually designated it a National Marine Park to preserve the environment around these beautiful limestone-heavy outcrops. That doesn’t stop us lot coming over in our droves; it’s probably…
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Everyone made it down. Our next stop was the small Buddhist temple of Wat Khunaram. One of its most revered monks was Luang Pho Daeng, who after raising a family returned to the monastery in his fifties and remained a monk for thirty years, until his death in 1972. Buddhists are usually cremated, but Luang…
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