Jun 12
Jun 09
Up at 4am to meet the minibus at 4:30 which took us to the airport for a 7am flight out to Hong Kong. The descent into Hong Kong was a bit bumpy. There was a lot of cloud around. I have a feeling this is pretty normal. The city looks awesome from the air. Just a mass of winding roads and highrise buildings. But also vast expanses of green. Mostly hills, fair enough, but still.
We took 2 taxi’s from the airport to the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel where we’re staying for the 4 nights we are in Hong Kong. They cost just over HK$100 (about AUD$14.00) each. Took roughly 30 minutes and we arrived at the hotel around 12:30.
Here’s a tip. Even if you’re not going to Disneyland, stay at this hotel. This is top of my awesome list for the trip, and so far there have been some pretty awesome things. The mood and atmosphere as soon as you walk into the place is fantastic. There are probably some very nice hotels in Hong Kong but I can’t imagine anything coming close to this one.
There really is a magic surrounding Disneyland and it pretty much smacks you in the face and drags you through the front door as soon as you arrive. Plush carpets, massive rooms, huge chandeliers and floors polished till you can see your face in them.
As we were actually early (check-in was at 3pm), we registered at the front desk and went looking for some lunch. (The staff were all too happy to store our luggage for us until the rooms became available.) We asked where we could get some food and were directed to the poolside cafe. Walking out the back door and down a gigantic staircase (one of two) you get a view of the back gardens and the signature Mickey Mouse hedge maze, with Mickey’s head at the centre.
Everything is immaculately clean and tidy. At the back of the hotel is also a large ferry jetty but we never found out exactly what it was used for.
Around the east wing of the hotel is the pool. And what a pool it is. They sure don’t do things by halves around here! Slides, spas, another indoor lap pool, gym; the works. Even the bloody change rooms are classy.
We had lunch at the garden view cafe and then took the kids for a swim. There are lifeguards on duty and they even have backpack style floaties for the kids in various different sizes. The slide was loads of fun.
We went back up to reception to check if the rooms were ready. Two of them were good but there was still one unavailable because it hadn’t been double checked by the head room checker. This place is quality. It wasn’t long before the final room was ready so we headed up (or more correctly, around! How much more perfect can you get? We didn’t even have to take an elevator. Sweet!!!)
Jun 08
We stayed at the Berjaya Times Square Hotel in the city (not far from the Twin Towers) in an apartment on the top floor (43rd storey) for 2 nights. I’ll tell you what I won’t miss when we get home. Elevators! I don’t know exactly what height 43 floors is but by my calculations I’m guessing it’s about 150m. The view from the room was fantastic but the seemingly very thin windows which went from floor to ceiling were quite disconcerting.
There was a bidet in the bathroom which, as we discovered, works extremely well as a hand basin for people around 3 foot tall. 
Like the hotel in Singapore, this one is attached to a shopping mall as well. Except this mall is a little larger. Here’s some of the specs:
In one complex of 7.5 million sq. feet, there are:
- 1.7 million sq. feet of luxuriously appointed service suites (1,200 suites)
- 2.1 million sq. feet of shopping area
- 320,000 sq. feet of food and entertainment area
- 380,000 sq. feet of indoor theme park
- 200,000 sq. feet of extreme sports arena
- 450,000 sq. feet of corporate offices
- 29,000 sq. feet of world-class meeting space
- 2.35 million sq. feet of car park & building services (4,500 parking lots)
So just a small one really. This place has over 700 retail stores, 45 restaurants and cafes, and IMAX theatre and an indoor theme park with a full size roller-coaster. Very cool.
Went up the KL Telecommunications Tower on Saturday. It’s the sixth tallest tower in the world at 421 metres. The observation deck is 276 metres above ground level and, as you can see in the photos, you can see the entire city.
After we had finished at the tower we came across a city tour bus called the KL Hop-on Hop-off. It cost RM38 (about AUD$12.50) for a ticket and you can get on and off as much as you like withing a 24 hour period. There are 22 stops along the way and they provide a commentary as it drives around. I reckon this is probably the best way to see bits of KL that we would not have seen any other way. A few of the best stops were the Royal Palace, the “Eye on Malaysia” ferris wheel and the Petronas Twin Towers. We didn’t get time to go up to the walkway in the twin towers, which was a shame. They look pretty spectacular though, even from the ground. All shiny and sparkly.
We got off the bus at a stop close to Bukit Bintang, one of the main shopping districts in KL and not far from our hotel. There are some large shopping centres and also a heap of market stalls selling copy watches, sunglasses and the like. I wanted to get a few Rolex’s as gifts but had heard that customs were cracking down on this sort of thing, so I gave it a miss.
Sunday morning we walked across the road from the hotel to a little food court for breakfast. Had a “roti”, apparently one of the local favourites. It’s like a piece of pizza dough that is stretched out very thin and then cooked with various ingredients. We just had egg but you can choose all sorts of other stuff like cheese, onion etc. They cost about RM1.80 (AUD$0.60c). Pretty bloody tasty too I thought.
Sunday afternoon. We left Times Square and transferred to the Concorde hotel which is closer to the airport as we have a 7am flight to Hong Kong in the morning.
I know he’ll probably never read this but the same taxi van driver who we encountered when we first arrived in Kuala Lumpur took us up to Genting, drove back up to pick us up and ferryed us back to KL, also picked us up to take us to the Concorde. Thanks Lawrence, your service was impeccable. The message here is that if you get a good taxi driver get his card or number from him.
Jun 07
Currently sitting at Starbucks in Berjaya Times Square in Kuala Lumpur having a Latte writing this on the phone. God, I love free wireless internet, and the coffee’s not too shabby either. (although it’s not a fetid dingo’s kidney on kopi 
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Went up to the top of the KL telecommunications tower today. Well, what can you say? Absolutely mind blowing. Going to try to get up the Petronas twin towers tomorrow. Fly out to Hong Kong Monday morning. Having a ball.
Jun 06
We flew out of Kuching to Kuala Lumpur and caught a taxi van straight up to the Genting Highlands. Stayed for 2 night (sorry it wasn’t longer) at the Theme Park Hotel.
This place ROCKS!!!! It is 1700 metres above sea level, has 6 massive hotels (the First World Hotel has a total of 6118 rooms and is the largest hotel in the world), and an outdoor AND indoor theme park.
Had the idea of having a lazy afternoon seeing as it had been quite a big day. That was blown out of the water as soon as we walked into the indoor theme park. I instantly felt like I was 12 again. AWESOME!
Jun 02
Drove from the kampung back into Kuching this afternoon, or more accurately, were driven. Thanks to the members of the kampung who chauffeured us there and back again.
Arrived at the Holiday Inn Kuching about 4:30pm. This place is right on the Sarawak River. Top spot. The most dominating feature looking across the river was the new Sarawak State Legislative Assembly Building in the throes of construction. This thing is massive. It’s going to be quite incredible when it’s finished. 9 storeys, 114 metres high and about 48000 square metres of floor space. Not a bad little hut!
Another building up a little further turned out to be a palace, called the Astana. Built by Rajah Charles Brooke in 1870 as a private residence, it is now the official residence of the Governor of Sarawak. Couldn’t get a real good view of it from across the river but it still looked pretty flash.
Went across the road for dinner to the Topspot foodcourt. The court here is similar, I guess, to the ones we have in our shopping centres except it’s probably about 10 times larger and they actually have waiters out serving the tables. The thing is that there are waiters from each individual food outlet who basically fight it out between themselves to get your custom. They can appear quite pushy (as ours was) but at the end of the day it’s all about competition. You could order different dishes from several different outlets if you wanted to but we ended up getting the lot from the one. And this is the best bit. We fed 6 adults and 4 kids for around AUD$60. And we certainly didn’t go away hungry.
Jun 02
This place was AWESOME! I am glad and so very grateful to the people of the Kampung for allowing us to stay and making us feel so welcome in their village. We stayed for 3 nights in one of the ‘units’ of the original longhouse, during a celebration called Gawai Dayak. Gawai Day is held on the 1st June (though the festival lasts a few days) every year across Sarawak and is both a religious and social event where many of the members of the kampung who now live elsewhere return home for the celebration. I think it is basically a harvest festival. A thanksgiving day for good crop.
The kampung itself is an amazing place. There are many things done the way I imagine they were done long ago, and yet the modern world has certainly made an impact. We watched a lady sorting pepper on a large mat, tossing it and picking bits out of it, I guessed, like her great-great-great-grandmother would have done. People were cooking out the back of the longhouse in fire pits. Chickens were plucked and cleaned just outside the back door. And yet the whole village had electricity. Some of the units had fridges and tvs. But, strangely, no hot water. The water comes from the hills. Cold? A saying regarding balls and brass monkeys comes to mind.
Links
May 30
We’re taking a van across the border to JB this morning to catch a flight to Kuching.
Driving across the causeway which connects Singapore to Johor Bahru there were trucks lined up for miles heading over into Singapore. Semis as far as the eye could see. It takes them near on all day just to get over, drop their load and get back.
Going through immigration was interesting. You go through to get out of Singapore and then a couple of hundred metres down the road you go through to get into Malaysia. You never even get out of the car. The officers sit in little booths and you need to smile at them through the window of the car. It took all my self-control not to order a double cheeseburger and fries.
They did have quite a few cars that they were checking thoroughly. Not sure what they try to smuggle into Malaysia. I’d think the problem would be larger going the other way. I heard that they had a big crackdown on people going over from Singapore, fueling up and heading back. They had just brought in that Singaporeans couldn’t get petrol within 50km or so of the border, so maybe they were checking the fuel tanks.
As you get into Malaysia you notice a swift decline in the quality of the buildings. It’s a stark contrast to Singapore where even the older areas are relatively clean. A lot of the buildings are dilapidated or run down and there were quite a few that had never completed construction. There was even a complete shopping complex on the coast that had been abandoned by the tenants and was completely empty. I heard that it had lasted about 12 months. This thing was huge. I think it was called the Waterfront City Shopping Mall. Apparently this is quite a common occurrence over here.
Once through immigration (which was completely hassle free) it was only a short trip to the airport. This was not very large, maybe 10 or 15 shops. Luckily, there was a coffee shop which was good because we were hanging out for a caffeine by this stage. There was also a little bread shop. These have recently become the go over here and they are everywhere. They sell a rather large variety of breads, pastries, cakes and the like. We grabbed a couple of chicken curry rolls (which were pretty good) and were told that a small, bright green, gelatinous rice sweet was the business so we got a couple of those as well. Not sure exactly what I was expecting it to be like but it tasted, well, gelatinous and ricey! It wasn’t bad though.Seeing as we had a bit of time to kill before the flight, the girls decided to treat themselves to a foot massage.
There was a crew at the side of the airport working on an extension. I was surprised to see a guy up on the frame welding and wearing a harness. I expected, from what I had heard, that work safety wouldn’t be a high priority. I might have been right. He didn’t actually have it clipped to anything.
May 29
Took a cab out to the Singapore Zoo today. It was a fair sort of drive (30 mins) but still cost only about S$15.
This is another must-do if you are visiting Singapore. It’s an open concept zoo, which means that most of the animals are separated from the food visitors by moats, which surround their landscaped enclosures. They have over 300 different species and over 2500 individual animals including a couple of polar bears.
The kids favourites were the giraffes. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Funny thing as we were driving home. It must have been knock off time because the traffic was a lot worse than when we were driving in. It started to rain and all the motorcycles gathered together under the bridges. There must have been 50 or so crammed together at one point, just hanging about waiting for the rain to go away.
Had dinner at a local food court just around the corner from the hotel. S$3 a plate for noodles, fried rice or some meat and a couple of veg. Excellent stuff. Fed the lot of us for under S$20. Had some more kopi as well. Mmmmmm kopi!
May 28
Shopping day. The girls went over to Bugis Junction which is full of shoes, clothes and fashion shops. The boys headed over to Sim Lim Square; 6 storeys of electronics, computer and IT products. Urr-urr-urr!!! Supposedly the place to score a bargain.
Holy crap! I have no idea how all the shops survive. There must be about 20 shops in 500m² selling exactly the same gear. Maybe they don’t survive. There are probably businesses that go bust all the time just to be replaced with new tenants.
Most of the vendors seem to get by on low profit margins and high turnover. The shops are packed to the gills with stock. One store we passed had pallets and boxes of cordless phones (all the same model) stacked to the ceiling. There must have been at least a thousand of them.
As we walked back to the hotel we passed through a mall market. Markets seem fairly popular over here. In the middle of the mall were 2 temples; one Chinese and the other Indian. They were seperated by only a few buildings. The different religions seem to live quite happily together. Everyone seems to be able to do their own thing.
Had dinner at Raffles plaza and then went up to the Long Bar for a beer. No trip to Singapore would be complete without stopping in at the Long Bar for a drink. The girls had the obligatory Singapore Sling and we ate peanuts and threw the shells on the ground (I’d like to know where that tradition came from…….maybe they were just messy bastards.) This is a pretty cool place. Okay, it’s gone a bit too far into the touristy scene but the atmosphere in the bar was sweet. The slow swinging fans, the timber, the architecture and the bar itself (which apparently isn’t as long as it used to be) make for a pretty special experience. Though for some reason I felt like I should have an elephant gun over my shoulder.
The ladies and the kids got a rickshaw back to the hotel. I think the bargaining started at S$30 and ended at S$10.
May 27
Went for a walk down to Clarke Quays to look for somewhere to have dinner. There was an old guy in the underpass busking. Playing guitar and singing all western songs.
Found a place called IndoChine. Quite classy. We were guided right through a building (which I later found out was a club. Big couches, Massive fish tanks. The place was huge. Very hip.), through an outside area which would have been 20 or 30 metres (again with big plush couches. Must keep the staff on their toes when it rains), across a small lane way where we were seated close to the river. The meal was quite expensive but not unreasonable. I did object to paying S$15 for a bottle of water though. The food and the service was good so I’m not complaining.
There are some oddly themed restaurants around this area. One we passed was decked out with hospital beds and wheelchairs. They even had a drip set up with a strangely alcoholic looking liquid in it. I guess it’d be a good place to get legless. You could just nick one of the wheelchairs.
There were some guys across the river flying UFOs. Remote control things with lights all over them. Looked quite cool from where we were sitting.
G-Max have a reverse bungy and a giant swing along side the river as well. That looked pretty wild.
Grabbed a coffee from a little food court on the way back to the hotel. They call if kopi, made with condensed milk. I was told that the coffee has the consistency of black tar. You could stand a spoon up in it. It’s watered down and added to the milk. Apparently it has been handed down through the generations. The actual coffee, not the recipe. It was one of the best coffees I have ever had. Excellent stuff. And only about S0.80c a cup. The locals usually have it served up in a plastic bag with a straw in it. Easy to carry around I guess. I’m told that you can get a lot of things in plastic bags.
May 27
Went out to the Jurong Bird Park today. Took the MRT west to the end of the line, Boon Lay. From there it was a short bus ride to the park. They ain’t kidding …..they sure do have a hell of a lot of birds. Over 9000 individual birds across about 600 species which is one of the largest collections of birds in the world, according to their brochure.
We caught the first show of the day, the “Birds n Buddies” show. That was quite cool. It opened with a bunch of flamingos walking into the stage area and the guy running the show followed them a minute or so later.
They all just fluttered about until he ushered them off the stage area. I assume there were other handlers off to the side giving them commands. I didn’t realise that flamingos (flamingii ???) could be trained like that!
They went on to do several other acts with different species of birds.
There are some real weird-ass looking ones.
The slam-dunking parrots were pretty special.
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Another part of the show involved members of the audience holding up hula-hoops.
Apart from the birds, I just love the sets they build at these places. Some of the buildings are awesome.
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May 26
Went over to Sentosa Island for the afternoon. It’s sort of like a beachside theme park come resort world. There are about a half dozen resorts with more planned.
The cable car is definitely the way to get there. That was pretty cool.
We only went to one section called Imbiah, though we did take a bus out to one of the resorts and walked back along the beach.
I wish we had allowed more time. We didn’t get on the island until just after 4 o’clock. It would have been a lot better had we got there before lunch. We were a bit rushed and missed out on quite a few of the attractions.
It seemed to me that the whole place wasn’t planned very well, almost like most of it was an afterthought. “Hey, we want to put another thing in here but there’s not enough room. Quick, hand me that really big hammer!” A bit of a Jackson Pollack really. But, then again, it may have just seemed that way because we left it too late.
Don’t get me wrong. The place is fantastic and we did get to see quite a few things. The Butterfly Park & Insect Kingdom (which sounds like a bit of a pull but was actually quite well done), the 4D movie (which starred Leslie Nielsen & Eric Idle) scared the crap out of my little girl & the Merlion (simply stunning at night when it is all lit up).
Would have liked to do the skyride, a ski lift type arrangement which takes you and a luge up the hill and then you ride the luge back down, the cineblast, an imax like, high definition movie with hydraulic seats, and Underwater world. Ah well, maybe next time.
But the highlight was definitely the “Songs of the Sea”. This was a laser, fireworks, water spray, singing, dancing extravaganza. They spray water up into a fan shape and project lasers onto the water to produce 3d animations. Very cool. If I can work out how to post videos to the blog I’ll put some up. [update: Click HERE to see some videos.]
Have a look at this Wikipedia article for more info.
