Hey,
So do you remember that I told you last time about that delicious Indian meal I ate in melaka? Well it gave me food poisoning.... joy! I was only sick for one good day, but still. I walked around Melaka for one day, I took a boot trip on the river. Melaka is really a beautiful city, also recognized by unesco. The city is crowded with several interesting museums. One museum is even located in a big ship in wood on the land. In the afternoon I got really sick and my stomach hurt so much. I got back to the hotel, but I had already checked out and I had my bus to KL only three hours later. Luckily the owner of the guesthouse was really nice and gave me a double bedroom to rest for those three hours. After that I was better and I got on my bus to KL.
I arrived pretty late in KL and I had to take the metro all over town. KL is a really big capital and it has a perfect combination of the nicest Asian architecture and culture with some western influences. When I arrived in the centre it was already dark and I knew the guesthouse couldn't be far, but there were so many streets and cars the street names had been changed since my map so I wanted to take a teksi (malaysian word for taxi). One teksi driver told me the guesthouse was further away so I had to pay more, but when I got there it was a completely other street and a hotel with too expensive rooms. I told him to get me to the guesthouse I told him, which he really tried to find and even called the guesthouse to ask the way. Long live GPS in all the taxi's in Europe. Turns out the guesthouse was at the other side of the street where the teksi had picked me up, so I was quite angry and only wanted to pay him half of what we had agreed. The next days I walked around in KL which is pretty big, but in three days you can do most of it by foot. I walked a lot though, and I was really exhausted after wards. One funny thing was that suddenly I saw helicopters, F16's, running soldiers, tanks,... for one second I feared a war or something, but than I realized it was only a parade for the independence day of Malaysia. I watched the parade for some time and it was impressive to see the whole army parading through the streets of KL.
To be honest, it is already a week ago that I was in Malaysia and so much has happened in between that I don't recall all the interesting details. I'd say look at the pictures and my stories will come again to my mind seeing pictures or talking about my travels. One thing I do remember is that I had a three hour delay of my flight from KL to Laos. The worsed thing was that the TV's and my boarding pass gave a different gate to enter. I spend most of those three hours walking from one gate to another to make sure which gate was the right one. It looked like French administration!
I'm now in laos, but I'll tell you about that later.
Kisses,
vina
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
wedstrijd travel blog award
hey,
Ik ga hier dus aan proberen mee te doen, want het lijkt me wel leuk om mijn blog te laten lezen door andere mensen op zoek naar leuke blogverhalen en reisverhalen. Het zou natuurlijk zeer aangenaam zijn om de prijs te winnen waardoor ik nog meer zou kunnen travellen!
groetjes,
Vina
CheapTickets.be en Travel Magazine op zoek naar bloggers!
In samenwerking met CheapTickets.be introduceert Travel Magazine voor het eerst een Award voor de beste ‘travel blogger’.
Samen met CheapTickets.be gaat Travel Magazine op zoek naar de leukste, creatiefste en meest informatieve weblog! Voelt u zich geroepen? Registreer u dan vandaag nog en wie weet sleept uw blog(post) misschien wel de felbegeerde TM Travel Award in de wacht!
Deelnemen?
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www.travel-magazine.be/travelblogaward/nl
www.travel-magazine.be/travelblogaward/nl
Ik ga hier dus aan proberen mee te doen, want het lijkt me wel leuk om mijn blog te laten lezen door andere mensen op zoek naar leuke blogverhalen en reisverhalen. Het zou natuurlijk zeer aangenaam zijn om de prijs te winnen waardoor ik nog meer zou kunnen travellen!
groetjes,
Vina
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Malaysia Penang + Georgetown + Cameron Highlands + Melaka
Hallo,
After my amazingly lay-back relaxing week at Pulau Langkawi I needed to go forward and restart traveling. I took the ferry to Penang which is an island to the continent. Penang has been governed a long time by the British, which you can still see in the architecture and some parts of the culture. I stayed in the city Georgetown which is the small capital city of Penang. I walked in a few hours all of Georgetown and viewed the buildings, temples, the fort and the museums. The national history museum was really interesting. it's also amazing to view all the religions together in harmony in Malaysia. You have mosques and churches and Buddhist temples next to each other. I took a bus to the Keh Lok Si temple which was one of the only things I actually thought was worth seeing. After that I took another bus to get to another temple with a big lying Buddha. The next morning I took the bus to Cameron Highlands.
The Cameron Highlands are stunning! It can get really cold though in the night. I had to wear my pull and two blankets to get warm, but I'm really bad against the cold. I'd rather have the heat. I went to Father guesthouse cause I thought my friends from Langkawi would be normally there waiting for me.They were not there... but I immediately met some cool Germans of course. After a few hours suddenly the woman of the guesthouse comes up to me asking me to come with her, acting secretive and all... And than I see my friends coming up to me. They hadn't been able to get in time to Ipoh to get the bus to Cameron Highlands so they had to stay a night in Ipoh. I actually arrived before them. Of course I was really glad to see them. I went for a walk to a waterfall with the Germans, although we didn't find the waterfall we had a lot of fun.The next day I booked myself a full day tour cause I hadn't got much time and wanted to view as much as possible. my friends chose the half day-tour. I had a group full of Germans, a Spanish guy and his Polish wife. In the first part of the day, we went hiking to the biggest flower in the world. We had to cross a river which was pretty funny cause you got all wet. The flower is indeed really big. After that we went to an aboriginal village which of course I critically doubt if they are that aboriginal but we could enter the houses and see how they lived. It was ok. They showed us how they hunt with blowpipes. We also had the chance to blow an arrow out of the blowpipe. I hit the target :). In the afternoon we went to visit a butterfly farm, where they also had a lot of insects, snakes and spiders. I volunteered again to have a scorpion on my hand, but suddenly he placed four other on my shoulders and neck, which I didn't really liked of course. I do have pictures of it. Luckily they didn't sting me. We saw a tea plantation and a strawberry farm as well. I had a Belgian waffle there which didn't taste at all as a Belgian waffle but still they have more in asia of Belgian than I thought. They have Tintin and the smurfs. I see everywhere the smurfs. Today I saw a girl with a smurfs T-shirt and even a smurf-Tattoo! I wanted to ask here wtf are you maybe Belgian, but I had to run for my bus so I can only guess why the hell she was so obsessed with the smurfs. The last evening of Cameron Highlands we had a really nice drink and card games and after the bars were closed we ended up eating a tandoori at 3 o clock in the night somewhere. The German smoked a lot, so I made a game out of it to steal his cigarettes and hide them, which was quite funny.
The next morning I had to get up really early to take the bus to KL and from KL to Melaka. I asked two people or that the place was where the bus came, but suddenly 5 minutes after the normal departure time a person told me I was at the wrong place. So I ran, but luckily the bus was late as well, so I got it. At KL I had to take a metro to get to the other side of town to the other bus station. There I took the bus to Melaka. I walked around in Melaka this evening and was very hungry cause I hadn't eaten anything since 7 in the morning. I had the best indian malaysian dish ever on a coconut leave. They even kept on giving me more vegetables when I had ate them all. It was only about 2 euro... don't you just got to love Asia :D. I got a tandoori bread and to little glasses with sauce. I dipped the bread in the sauce and ate it like that. After dinner the waiter tells me that it's actually a drink... oops!
Tomorrow I'll see the rest of Melaka.
Goodnight,
Vina
After my amazingly lay-back relaxing week at Pulau Langkawi I needed to go forward and restart traveling. I took the ferry to Penang which is an island to the continent. Penang has been governed a long time by the British, which you can still see in the architecture and some parts of the culture. I stayed in the city Georgetown which is the small capital city of Penang. I walked in a few hours all of Georgetown and viewed the buildings, temples, the fort and the museums. The national history museum was really interesting. it's also amazing to view all the religions together in harmony in Malaysia. You have mosques and churches and Buddhist temples next to each other. I took a bus to the Keh Lok Si temple which was one of the only things I actually thought was worth seeing. After that I took another bus to get to another temple with a big lying Buddha. The next morning I took the bus to Cameron Highlands.
The Cameron Highlands are stunning! It can get really cold though in the night. I had to wear my pull and two blankets to get warm, but I'm really bad against the cold. I'd rather have the heat. I went to Father guesthouse cause I thought my friends from Langkawi would be normally there waiting for me.They were not there... but I immediately met some cool Germans of course. After a few hours suddenly the woman of the guesthouse comes up to me asking me to come with her, acting secretive and all... And than I see my friends coming up to me. They hadn't been able to get in time to Ipoh to get the bus to Cameron Highlands so they had to stay a night in Ipoh. I actually arrived before them. Of course I was really glad to see them. I went for a walk to a waterfall with the Germans, although we didn't find the waterfall we had a lot of fun.The next day I booked myself a full day tour cause I hadn't got much time and wanted to view as much as possible. my friends chose the half day-tour. I had a group full of Germans, a Spanish guy and his Polish wife. In the first part of the day, we went hiking to the biggest flower in the world. We had to cross a river which was pretty funny cause you got all wet. The flower is indeed really big. After that we went to an aboriginal village which of course I critically doubt if they are that aboriginal but we could enter the houses and see how they lived. It was ok. They showed us how they hunt with blowpipes. We also had the chance to blow an arrow out of the blowpipe. I hit the target :). In the afternoon we went to visit a butterfly farm, where they also had a lot of insects, snakes and spiders. I volunteered again to have a scorpion on my hand, but suddenly he placed four other on my shoulders and neck, which I didn't really liked of course. I do have pictures of it. Luckily they didn't sting me. We saw a tea plantation and a strawberry farm as well. I had a Belgian waffle there which didn't taste at all as a Belgian waffle but still they have more in asia of Belgian than I thought. They have Tintin and the smurfs. I see everywhere the smurfs. Today I saw a girl with a smurfs T-shirt and even a smurf-Tattoo! I wanted to ask here wtf are you maybe Belgian, but I had to run for my bus so I can only guess why the hell she was so obsessed with the smurfs. The last evening of Cameron Highlands we had a really nice drink and card games and after the bars were closed we ended up eating a tandoori at 3 o clock in the night somewhere. The German smoked a lot, so I made a game out of it to steal his cigarettes and hide them, which was quite funny.
The next morning I had to get up really early to take the bus to KL and from KL to Melaka. I asked two people or that the place was where the bus came, but suddenly 5 minutes after the normal departure time a person told me I was at the wrong place. So I ran, but luckily the bus was late as well, so I got it. At KL I had to take a metro to get to the other side of town to the other bus station. There I took the bus to Melaka. I walked around in Melaka this evening and was very hungry cause I hadn't eaten anything since 7 in the morning. I had the best indian malaysian dish ever on a coconut leave. They even kept on giving me more vegetables when I had ate them all. It was only about 2 euro... don't you just got to love Asia :D. I got a tandoori bread and to little glasses with sauce. I dipped the bread in the sauce and ate it like that. After dinner the waiter tells me that it's actually a drink... oops!
Tomorrow I'll see the rest of Melaka.
Goodnight,
Vina
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Malaysia Pulau Langkawi 1/09 - 7/09
I took a bus from Kao Lak to Sarut Thani and from there I took a bus to Satun. I arrived in Satun at 3:30 AM in the night. I had to go with all my backpack and bags on a motorcycle to find a hotel in the night. Of course the one hotel that was still open told me they only had one room available of the highest price...bullshit but what can I do I have to get a room and off the street in the night, so I payed. The next day I took a taxi to the border cause there were no buses. At the other sight of the border in malaysia there were nor buses nor taxi's, but luckily malaysian people are so kind and they offered me immediately to drive me to the ferry terminal. I had no malaysian money yet so I had to find a bank that could change my TB into MR (malaysian ringit). Apparently it was a holiday so the banks were closed. A malaysian helped me out and searched a bank with me on the motorcycle. When we didn't found one he called up a friend who could change my money, so I happily got Ringit to buy my ticket for the ferry. Malaysian people are so friendly and helpful! They do ask a lot where my husband is :). They are surprised that a woman can travel alone by herself without husband or boyfriend. It's still mostly a muslim country. It's still strange to me to see burka's and nikhabs.
So I finally arrived at Pulau Langkawi in the evening of 1/09. I am staying at Gecko Guesthouse which is owned by a British woman. It's really nice here! I love this island, it is stunning and there is so much to do. It's a really amazing atmosphere of relaxing and lay back sabai sabai. The first day I just swam in the sea and got tanned at the beach....The next days we took some tours. I met here a British guy, american, two kiwi's, a finish girl, a south-Korean who has had apparently a relationship with a Belgian girl from Leuven as well. We went to visit the mangrove, the cave, a fish farm, eagle feeding,.... The next day we went island hopping to white sand beaches and a black sand beach, we went up the mountain with the cable car for the beautiful stunning view. The last day we went snorkeling at the coral riff between little sharks and a sand fish who kept biting me to protect his territory. Yesterday was my last day here and we just relaxed at the beach. Every evening we went for a drink at the beach and watch the sunset, smoke a shisha, listen to music... really a nice relaxing experience which I really needed after my fast travelling in Cambodia and Thailand. I was sick at the end of Thailand but here I got better. Today I'm leaving to Penang and I'm really sad about leaving but I'm curious about the rest of Malaysia.
see you soon,
kisses,
vina
So I finally arrived at Pulau Langkawi in the evening of 1/09. I am staying at Gecko Guesthouse which is owned by a British woman. It's really nice here! I love this island, it is stunning and there is so much to do. It's a really amazing atmosphere of relaxing and lay back sabai sabai. The first day I just swam in the sea and got tanned at the beach....The next days we took some tours. I met here a British guy, american, two kiwi's, a finish girl, a south-Korean who has had apparently a relationship with a Belgian girl from Leuven as well. We went to visit the mangrove, the cave, a fish farm, eagle feeding,.... The next day we went island hopping to white sand beaches and a black sand beach, we went up the mountain with the cable car for the beautiful stunning view. The last day we went snorkeling at the coral riff between little sharks and a sand fish who kept biting me to protect his territory. Yesterday was my last day here and we just relaxed at the beach. Every evening we went for a drink at the beach and watch the sunset, smoke a shisha, listen to music... really a nice relaxing experience which I really needed after my fast travelling in Cambodia and Thailand. I was sick at the end of Thailand but here I got better. Today I'm leaving to Penang and I'm really sad about leaving but I'm curious about the rest of Malaysia.
see you soon,
kisses,
vina
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