Back to the world

Allo,

I shall endeavor to keep this brief... so brace yourselves!

So we left the 1st world what seems like ages ago and flew straight into KL which it must be said is also the 1st world ro rather a Malaysian effort at the 1st world for which I award them A-. KL it has to be said a rapidly evolved sort of place.. Sandall and I couldnt for the life of us find anything more cultural than the Petling street ngiht market to see and the Petronas towers which dont in my opinion really count being essentially really big office buildings with the dubious claim of being the worlds largest TWIN towers, not the worlds largest buildings still, small victorys and they are quite big. Anyway so we went to the night market and the woman bought a gucci purse.. wait sorry a fake gucci bag.. its fabulous darlinng dont you know or something like that! I of course bought a fake watch or maybe 2 (they rule.. I have a James Bond Omega Seamaster and a Breitling jobby, the Breitling seems a bit more flimsy but they both have automatic movements apparently.. either that or you have to shake them to get it started whenever they break). So I was happy and she was happy and then we went for a drink, and then we were not happy as alcohol is a pricey commodity in this neck of the woods.. officially this is a Muslim country, based on the number of bars, clubs and prostitutes its one relaxed muslim country too!

Right I just deleted a whole bunch of what I had writen so I shall condense it for my sanitys sake! 2nd day in KL and we decided to head to the Petronas towers to journey to their lofty peaks and see the sights! Only you can only go as far as the skybridge which is only on the 41st floor or something and therefore not quite as impressive! Still must be done, anyway we then met up with the couple who had agreed to hold onto my camera for me and so it came to pass that once again I was reunited with my toy! In fear of losing it again I then sent it home today so fingers crossed it will remain in my possesion now! Anyway we met up with the couple (Simon and Claire) and had an absolutely awesome time, they are as all the expats we have met are, absolute legends and proceeded to ply us with the super expensive booze and lovely food until the early hours and then picked up the whole tab.. truly a pick me up for a pair of shoe stringers like ourselves! Anyway I can report that my hangover was of monumental proportions and I dont want to even discuss what happened.. there are pictures of me the day after and i look like I belong in a morgue!

So seeing as I refuse to speak of the day after the night before I suppose I'd better change the scene which promptly leads me to worlds oldest primary rainforest! Smooth link eh! Yes we ended up in this place called the Taman Negara which is reputedly the worlds oldest rainforest, I dont know much about rainforests so i guess i'll take their word for it, but it could have been the worlds newest for all I know... suffice to say there was a lot of trees! Now everyone knows that rainforests equal leeches so you can imagine that the pair of us went out bought salt, and other goodys to defeat the slimy blood suckers, only to arrive there and find that there were no leeches... hmmm. Anyway we went for a walk in the woods and a night safari, which was advertised as going through the jungle when in fact we went on a jeep guided by a wildlife hating lunatic who took us to a fruit plantation.. awesome.. we saw 3 birds, one of which the man captured.. why? who knows! So not to great really considering the cost of getting there! We were going to go on a canopy walkway which apparently is a 'highlight' but were caught out by friday prayers that seem to shut down odd bits of the country for friday afternoon. So we left, unimpressed! Ah well.. anyway we headed back for KL inorder to head north to our current abode, that being Penang. In Kl we met up with Chase and Furze two mates from university who we had arranged to meet up with at some point.. it was tres amusing to see them, acting all married! haha! Went to a few bars drank some, caught up, marvelled at the wonder that is A/C and then sadly bade them fair well as we caught a bus to Penang..
Penang it must be said, is not awesome at all... we havent seen so much of it so cant speak for all of it, but in Georgetown where we've spent most of our time, the highlight for me would probably be watching the Da Vinchi Code in the local cinema.. I still cant figure out if i liked it, i think i did, a good use of 3 hours anyway! Anyway we've seen a bit of this place and had planned on heading to Lankawi next and then on to Thailand, but reports are that Lankawi is too quiet and too expensive to be worth it.. so we head for Thailand tomorrow at 5am!! Dear god! Anyway thats really it from me... its been a bit of a list hasnt it not.. not so much with the gags or fun, sorry people!

Anyway I dream of England...

Greetings friends,

We have taken refuge in Singapore one of the great outposts of the empire! Since flying in some luxury from Dehli to our present location we have been scuba diving, sat on a tropical island, had the worst hangover of the trip (ok thats just me) and errrr spent a lot of money, probably too much money.

Its fair to say theres been a bit of a culture shock since getting here, we both started dribbling over things like road markings and traffic lights, which in India are yet to be introduced in most places and in those 'enlightened' areas which have been blessed with such traffic control devices, the indiginous population chooses to ignore them completely (flashing green and red lights are either a form of witchcraft or the signs of cheap restaurant, neither being particularly useful for controlling the flow of traffic), but i digress. So yes its different and at first its very wonderful, its so first world and pleasant. But then theres something about it thats just a bit dull, its the city equivalent of the colour beige, its inoffensive and on occasion fairly pleasing but for the most part you'd struggle to find much of a pulse! Bit unfair maybe espeacially as the taxi drivers use meters and theres an underground! Get in! Anyway we didnt stay long in Singapore, infact it was about 2 hours before we found ourslevs being herded through immigration and into Malaysia. Four hours on a bus and 5 hours sitting on ones elbows and then another 2 hours on a boat and we arrived in the tropical paradise of Tioman island just of the east coast of Malaysia and very nice it is to. You could cornettos there, just like in Weston Super Mare but without donkeys and with palm trees and coral reefs and stuff! Highly pleasant.

We already had ourselves booked on a diving course, an advanced one no less, so we hoed for it so to speak. I should point out now that since cracking my cusp (thats the dental expression apparently) i have been whinning day in and day out about a) how much it hurts and b) how afraid i am of a tooth squeeze. Now for those who aren't aware of what a tooth squeeze invloves let me enlighten you! A tooth squeeze is when a pocket of air is caught inside a tooth and you decide to go diving to 20mtr or something the volume of the air is decreased by 3 times due to Boyles law (you still paying attention there!! this is important!) and causes a squeezing sensation which is rather unpleasant.. However on the way up it should expand back to the normal size and everything is ok again..solution dont go diving. It happens when you get filling which then gets some decay under it or if you have a decayed root or something.. I dont know. Anyway what I was worried about was what happens when you have cracks or tiny holes that allow preasurised air in i.e. when you're at depth but then doesnt let it out as it expands, this is called a reverse block and in teeth it can lead them to break apart.. yessssssssssssssss. break in twixt. This hurts alot. Now being paranoid (you may have noticed from the explanation), I was concerned that my cracked cusp would play a trick on me and course my teeth to explode, so as you can imagine i decided to externalise my fears by telling Jennie about how excrutiating painful it would be!! Right ok so I've just gone and done it again, thank you all for listening. I can tell you now it didnt happen and I am very grateful for this fact, so instead I became afraid of sharks. Diving can do this to you.

Anyway enough of that Sandall and I are now both advanced diver people, not what sure that means but I can tell you on the underwater navigation I almost became lost so just dont ask me to read a map underwater. Ok right what elese happened, well we also went snorkelling which was very nice and saw lots of lovely looking fish and a few mean looking ones too, I found a large shell which i gave to Jennie and she told me to put it back... nice. Apart from that I watched the FA cup final and was gutted for West Ham and decided to get drunk in support of them, it was quite bewildering to have people commiserate with me when they finally lost, perhaps Tottenham fans just have that look about them espeacially in near miss situations!! I dont know. Anyway we arrived back here in Singapore yesterday afternoon and booked into a hostel called the 'The Inn Crowd', very clever, stayed in a huge dorm which to my mind stank of feet but apparently it was wet paint... hmm think i'll take feet if i'm going to spend the night in there. Anyway we then went out and spent loadsa money all at once in this place called SimLim Square which is an electronics mecca, Sandall bought an I Pod Nano and hasnt stopped proclaiming her love for it, and I bought a big fat digital camera which I'm still trying to figure out how to turn on, I've charged the batteries so far whichis a step in the right direction!! Hmmm apart from that Sandall keeps on threatening to blow all the rest of our money on clothes and shes also come out with lots of bumps up and down here legs, which she says is lots of mosi bites but i think its a spending rash she gets when she wants to go shopping. Right now shes effing and blinding at a computer because shes trying to get her music off her old MP3 player so she can put it on to her new one, but in a fit of electronic jealousy her old MP3 player refuses to give up its musical bounty!! She is not happy I can tell you so I hope she doesnt read this and beat me up!

Anyway we fly to KL tonight which i think will take about 45 mins or something stupid, so we set off for the airport in a little while, in the meantime I'm making preparations to watch the Champions League Final tomorrow evening, come on Barca! Hope everyones well back in Blighty... I think its time we got backpacking again, we're getting fat and comftorable living in the first world!

Be upstanding

Andrew

Good morrow hombres

Well thew time has come I'm sad to say to say farewell to this fair country and move on to yet another colony.. I mean ex colony. So it has come to pass that we make passage for Singapore this very night. From there it is a matter of hours before we voyage north and east to Tioman, tropical paradise.. errr right. Ok Ok so enough with the waxing lyrical down to business, last time we met I told you to Mahal this well now we've Mahal'd that and the rest we've seen the Taj Mahal, the worlds most beautiful monument to love apparently, it is I might remind you a tomb but I guess its a case of whatever floats your boat! Still a very nice tomb and a good alternative to the traditional headstone. So we saw that and visited a few other places in Agra which were no where near as impressive and then we decided to get the hell out before we cooked and I was peruaded to buy a mini Taj Mahal.. they were majestic though! The salesman really fell down when he spent half an hour showing me how rubbish the cheap mini Tajs were that were for sale everywhere and then proceeded to try and flog me a large marble one for a rediculous sum. When he sensed there was no way this chump would shell out for an oriental dolls house made of marble, he then tried to sell me the very same cheap and shit mini Taj Mahals he had just taken great pains to show me how rubbish they were. No sale although for sheer audacity I almost bought an elephant before Sandall started to beat me up and I had to leave the shop in humiliation. Ah dear. Anyway we moved on to Jaipur...

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and is very dusty! Its also hot but between you and me thats a given from now on. Recently Indian newspapers have been printing death tolls in Dehli.. amkes a nice change from the old degrees celcius we're so used to... in Dehli to day 10 people died from the heat... not sure what the conversion is but think if the rate goes abover 15 then we've passed 50 degrees.. ouch! So where was I.. ah yes Jaipur. Well its not big or particularly clever.. Notable points of our time there would be dining at Pizza hut and the AC bus we took to Dehli. Ok thats not at all fair, Jaipur does have its charms, for one the old city still has its walls round it so to enter you go through these massive gates.. inside the buildings are slightly older and supposedly pink in colour although to be honest they just look dirty to me! There were sopme interesting places the various palaces where i Stubbed my toe for the 50th time this trip causing it to bleed all over the place, prompting every Indian within a mile to come and have a good look at white mans blood.. like sharks only not. I have now bought some new holiday dad sandalls (no pun intended) to protect my damaged feet (they dont work that well as yesterday I had to pull a fat wodge of glass from the sole of my foot.. painful!). We also visited a lovely observatory place where some lunatic went around building massive sun dials among other things. I'd tell you more but the guide we hired was about as helpful as well I dont know he was bloody useless. Ten minutes after hiring him he had finished and he hadnt spoken a word of sense throughout! Bloody useless! Anyway in a an extreme show of one up man ship Jennie located an individual even more useless than our guide and paid him a sum 15 times greater than I had paid our guide for of all things a 5 year horrorscope. Horror being the appropriate prefix here. The man had a Phd in god knows what and basically printed off a bunch of crap from his computer stuck it in a red binder and charged us over 1000 rs. It turns out that his predicitions repeat themseleves preiodically, so i think we can expect many years of strife and hardship to come.. I thank you Dr! Hmmm anyway we also managed to catch a cycle rickshaw, the driver of which required me to push when ever we approached an incline, and then asked for more money because we were tourists, I was going to explain to him that it was rediculous to expect extra cash if you require your passengers to push as well but in the end i just told him to bugger off! So on that high note we left Jaipur for the very last leg of the Indian adventure... to Dehli!

Dehli is without doubt the most infuriating of all cities. The rickshaw men are without doubt the biggest thieves of them all. They all carry meters with them which by law they must use. However if you ask them if their meter works they'll say yes, when you tell them where you want to go they'll say there meter doesnt work and then charge twice and sometimes 3 times as much as they should! Whats more most of them wont negotiate, they look at you and then just drive off if you try to argue. We've done a fairly decent job of beating them down, but I must say I'm not sorry to see the back of them! The good news is that according to this mornings paper, the governement on the basis of all they're elicit earnings feel they should now have to submit a tax return! hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha... I cant wait to go and find one and ask him what he thinks his tax bracket will... finally they get what they deserve a big fat lump of Indian red tape! Ah dear.. hmmm anyway we've seen the sights them being Humayuns tomb ( like the Taj just not as good) and the Red Fort (promises much gives very little!), the red fort has been appropriately ruined by some British barrack blocks which have been built inside they fort, they look a little like the turds of the Raj left on the British retreat from India.. something to remember us by maybe?! Anyway the sights have been seen or at least some of them and I have to say I couldnt be happier to be leaving.. after a while this place starts to drive you nuts, the two faces of India both generous and thieving all at once sends you out your mind after a while! But there you go, thats India for you, a country of many different faces, but the one I'll remember will be the yellow smile of the rickshaw driver as he shouts "you wan rickshaw?" whilst his eyes glint with greed as he sizes you up for hom much you're good for!

On a personal point, one of my teeth is killing me when I eat.. after spending more than a grand on dental treatment earlier this year I just want to wrench the whole lot of them out and get me some dentures.. but i'm hoping it'll get better soon if not its off to the Drs South East Asian style! Ahhhhh!

Right I must be off, I shall great you from another time zone soon enough..

Best wishes one and all.. Long live the Queen and Long live England

Its hot... very hot.

Pardon me for the informality and let me expand. Its very very very hot! We currently reside in Agra, home too the Taj Mahal and very impressive it is too.. a big white domed tomb... lovely!
Any way more if this hot place later firstly let me tell you a tale of thieves, corpses and of course our return from the mountains. So we were riding racks around a snowy lake last time, yes. Well I shall continue from there.. after discovering China 'pon a Yak, we headed west toward a little town named Pelling. Pelling is a samll place with a few hotels, a couple of Buddhist Monestrys..and a small compliment of tourists all of whom are trying to book jeeps out of Pelling! Its just a little bit too quiet.. and the monestrys are inconveniently located atop of mountains, one assumes the walk lets a monk become one with nature or someother hippy nonsense, but after seeing a nice jeep full of monks and driven by a monk arrive in the car park of one of the monestrys after her ladyship (i will explain in a moment) and I had struggled up the lofty hillock I get the impression its more for the lovely views and of course their amusement as the foreign tourists arriv on the brink of a heart attack! When your religion prevents you from harming all other living things I guess you do get a little passive agressive!

* Her ladyship is christened thus as she has been suffering a little in all departments.. back, neck, stomach, insect bites and the rest, anyway shes not shy about informing me of her many problems and as such I must treat her in a precious fashion for of breaking her! Just as well for the lonely planet guide to infectious diseases theres plenty in their for her too choose from!*

Anyway for all Pellings charms it was like I said.. too quiet! So we like everyone else left swifty enough.. heading back to the Darj.. we did have one interesting experience when we joined an Indian tour group for half a day... the Indians are a bit like Japanese tourists only with crap cameras and absolutely no respect for nature... the general form is:
1) Get in jeep
2) talk loudly and shrilly (if female).. intersperse with burps and the occasional hucking up of phlem.
3) Arrive sight, decamp from jeep.. through rubbish over the edge of road.
4) Take picture of sight with friends (if waterfall throw more rubbish in the catch pool at the bottom)
5) Get in jeep and repeat at next sight!

It was as you can imagine a rubbish tour! But there you go.. anyway we retired to the Darj where you proceeded to buy up souvenirs from the local bric a brac stores. It looks like we have a buddhist monestry in our back packs! Anyway the Darj passed and the time came for us to take of our jumpers and return to the heat of India in the summer! Hmmm Hmmm.

And here starts the most grueling journey to beset us so far! Darj to Varanasi by jeep and by train. The journey did not start well, about an hour into our jeep ride down to the station a small child began projectile vomiting like the girl out of the exorcist only rather than green slime it looked like a banana smoothy.. delicious! Pandamonium broke lose with the father cupping the protein rich shake in his hands whilst the child maintained an erie calm throughout, never once crying and I think I saw it turn its head 360 degrees! Anyway the journey continued and after 3 hrs of vomit induced nausea and the fear of repeat performances.. we tumbled on to a train for the next leg of the journey a 14 hr trip to Patna... located in precisely the middle of nowhere. We arrived at 4am having had barely any sleep to find a railway station rammed full of sleeping Indians! I should note that just before arriving at Patna a thief had tried to steal some jewelery from a woman on the train sitting right next to where we were. There was a huge commotion with Indians running allover, but the thief had been smart and struck as the train was pulling out of the station.. suffice to say he got away, extremely sneaky! Anyway where was I..yes Patna.. Patna is rubbish we had to stay there for 7 hours or so untill our train on to Varanasi left and they were punctuated by bugger all with the exception of being befriended by an Indian boy who gave me a magic calculator.. hmmm ok. I'm still not sure if its a bomb or whether there's some drugs hidden inside.. I wont be taking it with me from india! But still he seemed like a nice chap!

Anyway we got to Varanasi finally and it was hot! Varanasi as some of you will know is famous for its ghats where the hindus come to bathe, clean and burn their dead relatives on the banks of and in the river Ganges. Its a strange place with the old town being made up of hundreds of cris crossing narrow passage ways all of which have the potential to be extremely dodgy indeed! As you can imagine the 25 degree jump in temperature took its toll and for most of the 2 days we were there it looked like we had just been swimming in the Ganges! Not a good idea as the water is septic playing home to 1.5 million nasty bacteria jobbys per cubic millilitre of water.. basically its about 5000 times dirtier than the max amount deemed safe for bathing by the WHO.. nice! We took a guide on the second day who toured us through the streets of Varanasi and around the many temples as well taking us on a dawn boat trip which was pretty amazing. He even took us to the temple where a bomb went off about 2 months ago.. good old morbid tourism then! We saw our share of toasted ex hindus on the banks of the Ganges mostly in ash form thankfully for Jens sake! Our guide was an interesting fellow by the name of S.K. Roy who is notable for 3 things; 1) he drank the water from the ganges and survived 2) he had a huge tooth that stuck straight out of his mouth and 3/ whenever he dated a building artifact etc his date would be out by between 500 years and a millenia. I think the last 2 can be attributed to 1st probably! A strange man, who at one point declared he wanted a picture of me to put in his advertising, where he would pass me off as a young 'before he was famous' Andrew Flintoff. He obviously would have to put before he was blonde, blue eyed and six foot whatever flintoff is and also before he undeerwent facial reconstruction surgery.. a strange man as I said before.

Anyway thats that from the big V.. quite a nice place and I had a haircut from an overzealous barber who should have know better.. after telling me he would cut not to short not to long he proceeded to cut far far to short to the point where he had a cutthroat razer our to cut 'a beeet closer sir'! Jennie throughout expressed her displeasure at his handiwork by sighing heavily as opposed to stopping him.. she later told me she coud see it was getting to short and I shoud have stopped him.. she obviously failed to notice that a) I cant see what he does on the back of my head and b) he had a sharp knife! Anyway I look like a marine now which isnt as fetching as it might be.. thanks god hair grows back... I feel i got my moneys worth all 35p of it! Right anyway we jumped on yet another train last night to get to Agra this morning where it is hot! around 43 degrees today and rising towards 47 degrees later this week... i think we might melt! Right thats it I'm off to get an ice cream! hooray

p.s. I lost my pipe somewhere so am feeling less colonial without.. should find it soon enough.. so will still be able to take Dehli for England and the Queen come sunday.. we shall attack from the east where they least expect it! Off to Jaipur tomorow before Dehli and then on to Singapore and next stage of our adventure.

Regards all... A.J. Mulliner Esq