Well I didn’t do well at updating the blog did I. Its been 23 days since my last post and in that time I haven’t had a spare second to catch up with things. I have however been, as usual, having an amazing time…. until recently (more on that in a bit)!!!!

Bali was amazing. We spent New Year in Kuta and had a great night out with some Aussie friends, Renee and Nate. It was the usual New Year in the pub having a few too many beers, in reality we could have been anywhere in the world – Until we left the bar and realised rain in Bali is unlike any I’ve ever seen before. Streets that were dry two hours earlier were now knee deep in water with motorbikes still attempting to ride up and down the street. A short dash from one side of the road to the other left us soaked to the skin so we gave up and walked leisurely down the road watching groups of pissed revellers having gigantic water fights in the street. The following morning we found much of the pavement had collapsed due to the water!

Along with Renee and Nate we left Kuta as soon as the celebrations were over and headed to the Gili Islands. The Gili’s are beautiful with sweeping white sand beaches and crystal clear waters. Kat and I took this opportunity to learn to dive and left the Gilie’s certified open water divers. The diving was amazing, lots of incredibly beautiful fish and we even saw three turtles gracefully swimming and feeding on the ocean floor.

From Bali we flew into the sterile metropolis that is Singapore. Singapore was nice, for a city. The zoo was amazing and we spent an awful lot of time wondering around the electronics market.

Our next stop was Malaysia and Tioman island. Back in the 70s Tioman was voted one of the worlds 10 most beautiful islands, and it didn’t disappoint. Although the developers are slowly moving in and in a few years time it will be completely ruined. This is where we first discovered that Malaysia is CLOSED!

We arrived in Mersing to get the boat to Tioman… It’s outside of tourist season so there is only one boat a day. We had to wait until the next day to get it.

We arrived in Tioman, only about three places are open for accommodation. Only one restaurant is open – I guess we’ll be eating there then!

We walked across to the other side of the island (about 9km through the jungle). It was incredibly beautiful – the reason why Tioman was voted on of the world 10 most beautiful islands. We ordered lunch… banana pancake – no banana. Pineapple pancake – no pineapple. Baked beans – no beans. Tuna sandwich – no tuna. Surely it would have been easier to have told us what they did have!

We left Tioman fro Kuala Lumpa and had a fantastic time (more of that in a later post).

From Kuala Lumpa we went to Kuala Lipis to go into the jungle. We arrive… it’s outside of tourist season and the only available trip went earlier that morning, there isn’t another for three days.

We head to Jerantut. A tour guide is due to give a talk about trips to the jungle in a hotel that night. We arrive for the talk…it’s cancelled, not enough people are around.

The next day we go to the tourist information. We want to book a trip into the jungle, but they only go if they have four people. Not a problem we are told there will definitely be four people going on the trip. We need to get the bus at 8:00am the next morning.

8:00am the next morning, the bus actually leaves at 8:30 but there is no point in us getting it because nobody else is booked on the tour so it isn’t going! We are told it is DEFINITELY going the following day so we book and pay.

We get a public bus to Kuala Tahan and go to the booking office to confirm our tour. Nobody else has booked so at the moment it isn’t going!

The next morning, an hour before we expected to be off jungle trekking for two days, our tour is cancelled.

We book some day trips and luckily bump into Clive ( a guy we met at Tioman) making our group number four so they will actually run trips.

We leave Kuala Tahan and go to Kota Bharu looking for arts, crafts and traditional Malay culture. Everything is closed until February. No crafts, no traditional performances, no workshops, no craft market! We wonder around the local marked but none of the arts traders are there until February.

We move onto Terengganu. It’s Friday the Islamic holy day so everything is closed. We wait until the next day (today) and head to the tourist information – guess what… it’s closed.

We are planning to go to the Perhentian islands for my birthday and try to book a ferry. But surprise, surprise the islands are closed until February.

We give up on ever seeing Malay arts and crafts or any more islands and book a night bus to the west and more developed side of the country hoping something will be open in the city. Our plan is now to spend a day in the city of Ipoh before moving on to Thailand. Hopefully something in Thailand will be open!.

The message in this story DON’T visit Malaysia in January! The bit we have seen has been great but we are fighting a loosing battle trying to see anything!

* Posted by j150vsc on 26/01/2008.