Land's End

First of all, apologies for the gap since the last post. It seems that internet connectivity in the Northern Territories of Australia is rarer than rain in the desert!

We left you last, having just departed our paradise island of Ko Boulon Leh in the Andaman Sea. We were now heading towards the final leg of our overland journey that started in London back at the end of August. We retraced our journey back to the scruffy, city of Hat Yai which is Thailand's 4th biggest city and the big railway junction for the south if the country, where the line branches south-east for Khota Bahru in Malaysia and the jungle line back down to Kuala Lumpur, or south-west for Butterworth/Penang and on to KL and Singapore.

We had over 4 hours to kill in Hat Yai before our train down to KL, which wasn't made any easier, when the heavens opened just as we arrived in the station area. We rushed for cover in a large Thai 'greasy spoon', where we were told we could have anything on the menu, as long as it was chicken and rice. We watched the rain pour down outside and tried to work on a strategy for making chicken and rice last for 4 hours. Fortunately, the ladies serving and cooking seemed to enjoy having us around (either that, or they found our 'drowned rat' impressions funny), so they were in no hurry to kick us out. We were joined for a while by 4 young Russian backpackers, who hailed from Yekaterinburg. They were amazed to find that we had recently been to their home city and really enjoyed seeing our photos.

Eventually there was a break in the rain and we escaped to the station. We found our international, inter-city express train, sitting forlornly on one of the back platforms, tumbleweed blowing past. It was a decrepit 2 carriage affair, that reminded me of the old trains that just about make the short journey between Cambridge and Newmarket a few times a day. At the end of the front carriage, we found our 2 bunks for the night. Lots of heavily laden locals were boarding, but all seemed to be at the far end, with swathes of empty seats in between. Eventually, we were joined by Sanna and Taneli, a young Finnish couple, struggling under the weight of immense packs - they were climbers heading ultimately to New Zealand and in their packs were 30 foot of rope, crampons, ice axes, tents and other specialist equipment. Apparently their packs weighed in at over 100 kg and they had done a similar journey to ours carrying all of this. We built a barricade between us and the rest of the train with our luggage and had an enjoyable evening swapping stories (including a travel horror story to beat any that we have ever heard, of their search for a bed for the night, after their train arrived 12 hours late into Calcutta at 2.00 in the morning - we will never complain about a bad room again!). At the border into Malaysia, we were rudely interrupted for an hour when we had to take all of the luggage off at for customs inspection.

We arrived into KL at 6.30 in the morning pretty tired, but thanks to my old friends and colleagues at CFC, we had a treat in store, in the form of a night of 5 star luxury at the Marriott. It felt strange after some of the less salubrious places that we have stayed, but we lapped up the luxury nonetheless and we were particularly grateful that they got us straight into our room at 7.00 in the morning!

We were taken by surprise by KL, in that Christmas was in mid-swing here even though we were only in the last days of November. The gaudiness of some of the decorations in the malls near our hotel took our breath away. Outside one, we were welcomed by a 20 foot inflatable winking snowman replete with a Santa hat and lit by a barrage of silver lights. We ventured inside and found Santa in person sitting proudly in his sledge with families queuing for their picture. But he was merely the centrepiece for the central atrium of the mall, which had been filled with several 3 storey high Christmas trees laden with baubles and lights; a merry go-round and a stage where a band dressed as Santa's helpers played 'Jingle Bell Rock' at full volume to the backdrop of a snow-coated Germanic style house.

The scale of the decorations took us by surprise, because Malaysia is a Muslim country, but it is also pretty prosperous in KL and we guess that nothing will stand between western brands and a marketing opportunity like Christmas!

 

Away from the main shopping district, we found KL to be a very nice city, even if the traffic was horrendous at times. We had a cheap tasty lunch in China town (leaving us almost nostalgic for our time on China), walked across the river, past the national mosque with it's grand sweeping mosaic roof and up to the botanical gardens (which were rather ramshackle, though pleasantly cool and quiet on a hot day). KL is quite a cultural, ethnic and religious melting pot and seems to work well as a city, which we found encouraging. We got around the city on a neat little mono-rail system, which was always busy and we never waited more than a couple of minutes for a train, with the fare set at about 20 pence to get anywhere in the city!

On our last evening we strolled over to see the Petronas building: a symmetrical pair of dalek-like towers, joined like Siemese twins mid-way up. At the base, were bars, food courts and ornamental lakes and fountains. As the sun set, the towers lit the night sky and the fountains were filtered through a series of lights. We sat and watched and mused over how far our journey had taken us, how much we had seen and finding it hard to believe that we were approaching the end of the first-leg of our journey.

Then we were back at KL Sentral Station for the overnight train to Singapore. Annoyingly, we had been unable to buy a ticket before getting to KL and, as a result had to settle for a seat for the night. Even though we managed to get into the first class carriage, it was still not that comfortable and we passed a sleepless night in the eerie quiet of the train.

Since I had last been to Singapore, they have closed the old central station (too much of a real estate opportunity we guess) and moved it 20 kilometres north of the city centre. We emerged bleary eyed and confused at 5.30 a.m. into the modern new station. Fortunately the local people immediately endeared themselves to us with their friendliness. We had to get a bus up to the RMT (rapid mass transit system) station and hadn't managed to find either an ATM or a money exchange place. A bus arrived and the driver smiled and waived us onto the bus for free and made a point of stopping to tell us where to get off and where to go next. At the RMT station, an employee gave us maps and even used his tablet to locate our hotel on the map for us. Little things like this gave us an immediate good impression of the city.

It was a Sunday morning when we arrived (1st December) and the RMT train took us easily to our destination, though it took the best part of an hour. We were staying in an area of the city known as 'Little India' where a lot of the budget hotels are found. It was a vibrant part of the city, even if a little edgy at times, and we enjoyed our stay here. We had an excellent curry in a local restaurant for lunch on our first day and we felt immediately teleported to the streets of an Indian city. Our hotel had had mixed reviews, but it turned out to be very clean and comfortable and the staff could not have been more friendly, giving us the first room that became available when we arrived early in the morning and giving us free coffees as we waited.

It was interesting that we noticed an edgy under-current in Little India, because we heard a week later that this area had been engulfed by the worst riots that Singapore has seen in more than 20 years. It seems that an Indian man was killed by a reckless taxi driver (and we can testify that some of the taxis drive pretty aggressively here) and within hours there was a mob on the streets turning over cars and fighting the police. We understand that there are a lot of Indian migrants brought into Singapore, to provide cheap labour for the many ongoing building projects and they tend to congregate in this area, so it is easy to understand how trouble can ferment in such an area of what is, otherwise, a very prosperous city. We're not sure what is happening, but we do seem to have been one stop ahead of trouble on much of this trip!

But Little India isn't really indicative of Singapore, so we spent most of our 2 days exploring the central part of the city, particularly the areas around the harbour and the Singapore river, which forms it's heart. This whole area is ultra modern and the combination of the modern architecture and the setting around the bay was really impressive, if a little clinical at times. It was a hot day and we sweltered as we walked around the exposed bay. We were forced to take refuge first in the air-conditioned cool of a shopping mall (which had every up-market western brand we could think of, but with less gaudiness than the Christmas decorations of KL) and then the oasis of the 'Gardens on the Bay'.

These 'Gardens by the Bay' warrant some mention. We still can't make up our minds whether we liked it, but it was certainly thought-provoking with its avant-garde mixing of nature with modern architectural styling. Closest to the bay itself were the 2 huge wave-shaped glass and steel domes of the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome, which houses the world's largest indoor waterfall with different controlled climates hosting a vast array of tropical and Mediterranean plant-life.

Possibly even more impressive, was the 'Supertree Grove': 18 tree shaped steel scaffolds that act as trellises for hundreds of different species of climbing plants. The trees are connected high in their branches by a 50 metre circular walkway and as the sun sets, the trees and the walk way are illuminated by thousands of multi-coloured lights. At 7.00 on the dot, a son-et-lumiere started, with music perfectly co-ordinated with the electronically controlled dancing lights on the trees. Set to the backdrop of the Singapore skyline, it was an unexpectedly dramatic 15 minute extravaganza!

Singapore was very expensive compared with the rest of Asia, but on the way back towards our hotel, we found an open-air market area, where we bought rice, noodles, satay sticks and cold beer at a fraction of the price of the restaurants and sat and ate it on trestle tables looking out over the bay. Locals mixed seamlessly with tourists to create a lively party atmosphere and it felt like a fitting end to our overland journey, as we looked forward to flying on to Darwin in Australia the next day.

In our next post, we will tell you how we have got on with our first steps in Australia, so that we are up to date before Christmas!

The Gardens on the Bay in Singapore, by day...

 

...and by night

The Singapore night skyline across the bay

And finally...marketing Singapore style