Hey everybody,
It has - as always - been ages since I posted anything here. This is partially because we were on holiday to escape from the winter, and partially because I am a lazy f*ck. I am going to try and make it up to you by overloading you with pictures and stories from our amazing time in South East Asia.
Let's start at the beginning. Only barely having escaped the onset of the Berlin winter (for in truth temperatures dropped to far below zero and it started snowing only 2 days after we left), we arrived in Kuala Lumpur. I was pleasantly surprised at how modern Malaysia was and how well everything worked. We walked around town for 2,5 days, acclimatised to being in our beloved South East Asia, ticked off the Petronas Towers, walked around Chinatown, agreed KL was not as cool as Bangkok but that we could easily live there and feasted on Malaysian food and terribly expensive (well, relatively so anyways) beers.
After this we flew to Myanmar for the next 4 weeks, which I well tell you about in a later post because it really has nothing whatsoever to do with Malaysia (and I need some more time to sort through the pictures). When we came back from Myanmar, we took a bus South to Melaka, the old trading town on the Malacca Strait which was fought over so many people in the course of history that it is futile to start enumerating them (the Chinese, the Malay kingdoms, the Dutch, the English...) and which dominated trade for centuries under different rules until the British eventually started favouring Singapore and Georgetown to piss off the Dutch before later acquiring it for themselves (by trading it with the Dutch for the port of Bengkulu/Bencoolen) and let it slip into history. Melaka has a tiny Dutch centre with some old houses, a ruined church on a hill, the one remaining gate of a Portuguese fortress, a scenic Chinese cemetery on another hill, a lively Chinatown area which nowadays is no more than a tourist trap and reputedly the best food in the world (a mixture of Malay, Chinese, Portuguese and Indian food). We thought it was rather touristy but alright for day and were rather amused when we heard the bus driver correct some local tourists when they said the wanted to go to the Stadthuys (City Hall) in perfect Dutch.
After Melaka, it was on to Singapore. We were only therefore for 24 hours, but were blown away by pleasantly surprising atmosphere of this very Western city. Public transport worked flawlessly, the air was clean, the people were focussed on their careers and having a good time, the shopping was amazing, the food nice enough and the alcohol on the expensive side. It was a breath of Western air which was more than welcome after a couple of weeks of slumming it, but still a city with its roots very clearly stuck in Asian soil and not a bad place to live.
From Singapore, we flew to Jakarta for the next part of our holiday (see another post).
Here is a link to pictures from Malaysia and Singapore: https://picasaweb.google.com/115645655489714063238/MalaysiaSingapore2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCPSep9-gn9eH4wE
It has - as always - been ages since I posted anything here. This is partially because we were on holiday to escape from the winter, and partially because I am a lazy f*ck. I am going to try and make it up to you by overloading you with pictures and stories from our amazing time in South East Asia.
Let's start at the beginning. Only barely having escaped the onset of the Berlin winter (for in truth temperatures dropped to far below zero and it started snowing only 2 days after we left), we arrived in Kuala Lumpur. I was pleasantly surprised at how modern Malaysia was and how well everything worked. We walked around town for 2,5 days, acclimatised to being in our beloved South East Asia, ticked off the Petronas Towers, walked around Chinatown, agreed KL was not as cool as Bangkok but that we could easily live there and feasted on Malaysian food and terribly expensive (well, relatively so anyways) beers.
After this we flew to Myanmar for the next 4 weeks, which I well tell you about in a later post because it really has nothing whatsoever to do with Malaysia (and I need some more time to sort through the pictures). When we came back from Myanmar, we took a bus South to Melaka, the old trading town on the Malacca Strait which was fought over so many people in the course of history that it is futile to start enumerating them (the Chinese, the Malay kingdoms, the Dutch, the English...) and which dominated trade for centuries under different rules until the British eventually started favouring Singapore and Georgetown to piss off the Dutch before later acquiring it for themselves (by trading it with the Dutch for the port of Bengkulu/Bencoolen) and let it slip into history. Melaka has a tiny Dutch centre with some old houses, a ruined church on a hill, the one remaining gate of a Portuguese fortress, a scenic Chinese cemetery on another hill, a lively Chinatown area which nowadays is no more than a tourist trap and reputedly the best food in the world (a mixture of Malay, Chinese, Portuguese and Indian food). We thought it was rather touristy but alright for day and were rather amused when we heard the bus driver correct some local tourists when they said the wanted to go to the Stadthuys (City Hall) in perfect Dutch.
After Melaka, it was on to Singapore. We were only therefore for 24 hours, but were blown away by pleasantly surprising atmosphere of this very Western city. Public transport worked flawlessly, the air was clean, the people were focussed on their careers and having a good time, the shopping was amazing, the food nice enough and the alcohol on the expensive side. It was a breath of Western air which was more than welcome after a couple of weeks of slumming it, but still a city with its roots very clearly stuck in Asian soil and not a bad place to live.
From Singapore, we flew to Jakarta for the next part of our holiday (see another post).
Here is a link to pictures from Malaysia and Singapore: https://picasaweb.google.com/115645655489714063238/MalaysiaSingapore2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCPSep9-gn9eH4wE
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