Cameron Highlands Day 2

This morning started of early...too early! Some of the others staying in the dorm beds werent as considerate as we typically are in the noise they make while getting ready. I also dont understand what there is to DO here at 6 in the morning, but thats beside the point! We eventually got up and went outside to get a bite. We split 2 scones with whipped cream and homemade strawberry jam, and two fried eggs. This seem to taste better when your this high up! We then decided to void showering since our day plans consisted of hiking and a tour. We put our stuff up in a room for tonight (its $4 more) instead of the dorm beds, and headed out for a trail that led to a waterfall. We came upon this little park for the general population to use but it was so much nicer than our parks back home. It was small and didnt really have as cool of jungle-gym type ammenities like we are use to, but there was so much greenery and flowers it was just beautiful! We played around a little here then continued on toward the waterfall. We finally reached the edge of the road that lead into the woods and went right in. Instead of continuing down the path to the waterfall, however, we decided to go on this one we happened to see first. It was STEEP, climbing over roots and trees going towards the top of this mountain/hill but boy was it a good feeling getting to the top. Right where the path continued down, a tree and a bunch of foliage had fallen to block the path, so we just went down the same way we came up. Once down, we kept going down the original path to the waterfall. When we came upon it, after about 5 minutes of trying to figure out how to set up the camera to take our picture, Geron just happened to come down the same path so he took the picture for us. The waterfall was really cool but the water is quite a disgusting color, looking like a lighter-orange color but very similar to the chocolate river in Willy Wonka. We continued on the path and after a little, the path went left but there was a fence with a gate that would open that went off down to the right. As Robert Frost would have suggested, we took the less travelled path behind the fence. It was a fun climb down and back up, but by the time we made it back to the main road, we were absolutely famished. We trudged back to the main street and had a simple indian lunch of cheese naan and chicken fried rice (kind of chinese also). Afterwards we met up with Maddy back at the guesthouse and signed up for a countryside tour for the afternoon. It was a RM25 well spent. The driver was very friendly and first took us to a rose farm/garden. He said he would be back at the bus in half an hour so we had that much time. We didnt think we would need NEAR that much but the expansiveness of this place was so much more than we anticipated. Everything in this city works with the natural landscape, as opposed to how we cut out the shape WE need the mountain to be back home. The rose garden had multiple levels that wrapped around different sides of the mountain and TONs and tons of roses and other flora. Thirty minutes almost wasnt enough time. From there he drove us up to a Tea Farm/plantation. These places are absolutely massive with just multiple rolling hills completely dedicated to tea trees. Dr. Rob would be so jealous we toured the farm, the manufacturing facility, saw where the workers live, and got to try some fresh tea. I thought it was rather funny that there was a soccer pitch where the workers stayed and they played other people who worked at the vegetable farms and strawberry farms etc. The driver said "the tea team is pretty good but the cabbage team, not so much". Got a real kick out of that. We then proceeded to the butterfly gardens and bee gardens, which were cool but really paled in comparison to the first two stops. Our final two stops were the stawberry farm and a buddhist temple. The strawberry farm we had been looking forward to all day for the fresh strawberries, but apparently there had been so many tourists doing the "pick-your-own" option we couldnt do that. We did get to have a cup of homemade strawberry icecream with sliced strawberries and cream on top, however. Winning. In the temple we saw "Malaysia's fourth largest buddha", which maddy pointed out and we agreed is quite a weird thing to claim. Don't you usually stop counting at around 3 when you have statements like that?? Anyways, the temple was alright but the tour in general was great fun. The driver dropped us off at a night market in the town over where we snacked and got some goodies for home before we found a food court to grab a bite at. We know were taking advantage of our foreign adventures when we find places to eat where there are NO westerners and no english menu options. Made for quite the enjoyable meal, but I still dont know what it is we ate. We copped a cab with maddy back to tanah rata and walked back to our guesthouse. We sat outside and talked with maddy a while about life in America, life in Australia, and how everyone should take opportunities to do stuff like this. There really is nothing else like it. After a good long talk with her, we went up to our room, took FREEZING showers, and are now updating you on our full day. Tomorrow well be here again, this is our favorite place so far so we really want to soak it in and do some more trails and enjoy this place. Well update you tomorrow with everything, the fun and the boring! Goodnight!

Cameron Highlands Day 1

Hey guys :) So today has been super chill and easy going! Its been nice not walking as much as we have been (at least 8 miles a day). Our feet needed a rest! We started off the day walking to the bus station to buy a bus ticket to the Cameron Highlands. We found out it left at 1:30pm which gave us just enough time to walk back to our hostel, bring our backpacks downstairs so someone else could check in but we didnt have to carry them around the city, walked to lunch (Hardrock Cafe- super American I know but Blake wanted to get a collectible pin from halfway around the world), walk back to the hostel to pick up our stuff, and then walk back to the bus station. Lots of walking in the morning, but followed by a nice long bus ride! The view on the way up was beautiful! I ate a little too much candy that I picked up at the market at the stop on the way up so I was feeling quite sick from all the curvy roads. Once we got to Tanah Rata (the city we are in), we literally had no idea where we going to stay. However, after standing there for no more than a few minutes collecting our thoughts, a man came up to us and asked us if we had a reservation to "Father's Guest house". Ofcourse we didnt, but his car wasnt full so he told us to hop in and if we didnt like the place he was taking us, he would take us to another hostel. We didnt see the harm in going so we hopped in with 2 other people that seemed to be our age. It turned out being the best decision weve made on this trip! The hotel ended up offering dorm beds for only 15 ringgits (aka $5 US dollars/person) and was on top of a hill with a beautiful sight and cheap food and tea and was only a 3 minute walk from the main part of town. The best part though was that the we ended up making friends with the other two other people riding with us, a second year college girl , Maddy, from Australia and a first year college boy, Geron, from London! They are both SOO cool! After settling into our beds and getting our stuff together, the four of us walked into the town together and had dinner at a delicious Indian resturant and stayed out talking (and looking for dessett) for at least an hour or two after. We plan on hanging out with them again tomorrow!! Its really nice having other people our age to hang out with, especially ones from other countries. It was really cool comparing how things are from each of our prospective countries and schools, etc. Anyways, somebody just turned off the light despite the fact that I am on the computer and Blake is reading so I guess that means its bedtime! Goodnight :) love you!!

Kuala Lumpur

Wow what a day today has been! We first headed out of our hostel to the 7/11 so Jen could get breakfast (shes not a fan of the same cereal and toast that ever hostel seems to have), and we split some type of pastry thing and an apple juice. We got on the monorail just a few blocks away which took us to the central station of Kuala Lumpur. Right around the corner you could get train tickets for areas in and right around kl, so we hopped on a train to Batu Caves, around 8 miles north of kl. Once we got there, we went to take pictures in front of this green statue when some Indian woman walks up and tries to sell jen bracelets and anklets. She literally gets down on her knees, after repeatedly being told no thank you, and proceeds to put the anklet and bracelet on Jen anyways. Im dying laughing at Jen trying to figure out how to tell this woman no in some way other than the word NO that apparently hadnt worked. I finally went over to help her after I got my fair share of entertainment (sorry Jen lol) and just started taking the stuff off of her because its nearly impossible to do yourself! Anyways, after that we walked to the caves entrance and saw a bunch of monkeys, just chilling on the sidewalk. I figured if they are just chilling there, they muct not mind you getting close to them. Jen was smart enough to stay back at first. Once I got a step to close, the monkey barred its teeth and started coming at me! We later realized they don't mind being close to people...if THEY come close to you. But then we saw a mommy monkey and her baby, and that could have occupied Jen for at least a good 3 hours (you know how she is with babies). After we took a fair share of pictures of her, we walked the 272 steps up to the main cave. This place was amazing! Its more of a GIANT tunnel that leads to an open area than it is a typical cave. The place is full of Hindu worshipping temples! We played around in the cave for a while, just kind of admiring them, when we started to walk back down the steps. About 10 steps down and off to the right was the option to do a dark cave tour which was another cave in the mountain that was more your typical idea of a cave. So we did that and within the first 50 yards into the cave there are tons of cockroaches and other beetle like insects crossing all around our feet. It took everything Jen had in her not to just run the other direction. We made it past that part and finally got into the dark part of the cave. Apparently there is also this one species of spider that, out of the whole world, only lives in this cave. And out of the whole cave, there are only 4 nests (idk if that means 1 spider per nest or what but I thought that was crazy). After the tour we went to the bottom and ate at this vegetarian indian food stand/restaurant. We got some kind of bread/tortilla thing that you sort of dip into sauces, along with some indian noodles and a coconut water. On the menu there was "coconut" and "cold coconut water". We thought the only difference is one was chilled. Apparently the normal one they just chop open and serve you so you can drink the milk and eat it. Thats what we wanted. The cold one we ordered was chopped open then filled with cold water. It was kinda like taking a cup of milk that still has a couple sips left in it, filling it up the rest of the way with water, then drinking it. Wasn't the greatest portion of our meal. We finished up, hopped on the train, and went back to the city. We want to head north tomorrow to the highlands, so we decided to see as much of kl today as we could. We started off walking, no clue where we were going, until we found something our little tourist book talked about. We eventually stumbled upon the lake gardens, which had we not been tired of walking in ~95 degree heat (were right on the equator), would probably have been fun to find, but we walked around the area for about an hour just tring to figure out where the "lake" was. We then saw a tower off in the distance, which happened to be the Kuala Lumpur tower (original), and thought it didnt look too far away. We set off and about an hour and a half later...we were somewhat close. We finally dragged our dehydrated selves (although we had bought and drank our weight in water) up to the tower only to find they charge some stupid tourist charge just to ride an elevator to the top. Eff that. Disappointed as we were, we still wanted to see Little India, as we had seen Chinatown the night before. We set off going farher north of it though (and farther from our hostel) to this place called Chow Kit. It was supposed to have a ton of hawker stands so we thought we could get dinner, but it must not have been late enough because it was still just a huge vegetable market like it is during the day. So we walked BACK south down to little india, resisting the temptation to go into Pizza Hut. Once we finally made it to Little India, we could have eaten a horse. We found this one woman without even a stand, just selling various items. We tried a couple things until we found this one bean-ball type thing that was absolutely amazing. We bought a few and kept walking. We never really found anywhere to eat and our feet were hurting so we started in the direction of the hostel. We stopped at one last cart and bought another fried creation with some delicious sauce, and figured well live until breakfast (Im still not hungry and thats saying something). We finally made it back to our hostel, upstairs and crashed into the room and turned the AC on full blast. Altogether today we walked anywhere from 10-12 miles in ~95 degree weather up and down hills, constantly wanting more and more water and not with much food in our bellies: we were spent. Despite the facts just stated, today was an amazing day. Exhausting at times, but we loved every minute of it. Time to try to upload a few pictures and go to bed though. Goodnight!

Malaysia Day 1

We woke up wayyy later than planned this morning but the timing ended up being perfect! We left the hostel around 11 and walked to the bus station where we took a bus to another bus station where we bought a ticket to kuala lumpar at 12:15 that left at 12:30! The bus was sooo comfortable! The seats reclined to where we could lay down! We started off looking at the scenery, but soon realized it was just literally millions of palm trees side by side as far back as we could see until we got closer to the city so we read which was really nice. The bus took multiple stops along the way. Once when crossing the border to fill out immigration papers and such and after that for bathroom breaks. The first time we stopped for a bathroom break, we were immediately surrounded by food! We were sooo jealous because we didnt have any Malaysian money to spend but figured out we could trade Singapore dollars for ringgits. We did and got our first taste of Malaysian food which was delecious (it was nothing compared to dinner though... dad would be so jealous). 6 hours later, we finally got to Kuala Lumpur. The bus dropped us off at a completely sketchy place but luckily we had a map and found our way to where we were staying. The city is SOOO amazing! Not nearly as clean as Singapore or as nice, but perfect for two college students on a budget. Our hostel is much nicer than the first one too. It is very close to a street full of food! Literally, full of food. The whole street is lined with stands all offering cheap, delicious meals. Blake and I shared spring rolls and chicken satays. It was AMAZING!! We then went and explored Chinatown, which I might add is like heaven for me. A whole entire street dedicated to shopping for name brand items (knock offs) for CHEAP! Blake got 2 Liverpool jerseys for the equivilent of $13 US dollars and I got a pair of rayban aviators for aroiund $7. I was on a shopping high and wanted to stay but we decided to head back and go back tomorrow. Overall, GREAT day :) I can already tell we are going to LOVE Malaysia! Game plan for tomorrow: Take a tram to the Batu Caves and then come back to the city, eat, and explore some more!

Singapore Day 1

Today was the longest day of walking EVER! Yet, also one of the most amazing. We woke up around 9am and almost none of the other hostel-ers were awake. They are all kinda douchey by the way, not exactly what I was expecting out of traverlers our age, but they keep to themselves so its not a big deal. Anywho, we had a little bit of cereal for breakfast and took off. Literally outside the door of our hostel there was a stand. Once we walked through it and got to the street, we saw all the way up and down there were stands just like it lining the road. We looked at all the little trinkets in chinatown for a while, remembering what we wanted to revisit, then headed off to the river to see the Merlion (mermaid-lion composite creature thats symbolic of singapore, it "welcomes visitors and protects the city" or something along those lines). Our necks were hurting by the time we got there from looking up the whole time. There are soooo many ginourmous buidlings...and theyre all banks! But we eventually saw this really cool looking building called the Fulerton Hotel, and figured we would just go in (by the way, we were wearing tank tops, and no one all day questioned us about staying at any of the 3 hotels we creeped through...thought that was pretty funny!). The place was AMAZING. I could sell my first born son and probably still not be able to get anything other than a standard room here. We went up to the top, took some pictures, and left. Outside, our day almost ended because I about passed out. Parked next to each other were, in this order, a Lamborghini, an Aston Martin, a Porsche (Cayenne 300GT not an old crappy one), and a Maserati. There were a bunch of measley BMW and Mercedes around also, but this sight amazed me. So we left there, went and saw the Merlion (little bit anti-climactic, not as big as we thought it would be). From there we crossed the river to head to little india. We saw this Asian Civilization museum and thought wed stop in and check it out, if not at least for the air conditioning. We ended up getting student priced tickets and a pretty cool little tour. From there we went to the first shopping center of the day. We don't know how to shop in America, these people are hardcore. This center was the smallest shopping center we saw all day and it was 4 stories tall, had at least 200 stores, and probably around 50 restaurants. We doodled around there for a while, got a bite to eat, and went to the Raffles hotel. Sir somebody Raffles was the Brit who founded/discovered Singapore and this hotel place was soo cool. They had tons of WAY upscale dining, beautiful courtyards, and a HUGE tea collection. Once again, we kept walking. We then went to another shopping center and then stumbled across the Burgis Junction. This is about 2 square blocks of shoulder to shoulder hawker stands and little shops. This place was the quintessential foreign market. After that, we FINALLY made it to Little India, which is VERY run down. Which made it quite fun. We looked at all the fancy indian clothing stuff they had for sale and decided we would head to the famous Orchard Road. This place is the best shopping of the world crammed onto one street no longer than a mile. We were way to tired to explore all of it today though, so we just went into one of the behemoths that they call shopping centers and headed back. On the way we came upon clarks quay and had a beer at burger king "whopper bar". This is the nicest burger king establishment I have ever seen, it was insane. And would you believe it a good old Bud Heavy was more expensive than a Fosters, Heiniken, Carlsberg, and Stella Atrois! Go America! We eventually made it back to chinatown were we found some food at some little restaurant, and are now about to pass out at the hostel! We plan on heading to Malaysia tomorrow so we will post when we get there!

Singapore!!

WE MADE IT!!! Finally! After 2 longgg days of travel we are finally here!! We woke up super early this morning (probably because we went to bed so early last night) and walked alround the Korean ghost town for about 2 hours. There wasnt much to see, but we climbed some of the cliff/rocks on the beach all morning and took pictures so it turned out being pretty fun! Then we went looking for lunch, but after asking and looking around, we soon realized the ONLY thing to eat was raw seafood.... my favorite!! Even blake didnt think it looked or sounded appealing. We settled on some interesting looking ice cream to split until we got to the airport (which is the nicest weve ever sen by the way) but when we got back to the hotel, we ended up eating at the resturant at our hotel that had Mongolian Beef. It was served very fancy with rice and seaweed served on the side cooked about 4 different ways. Around 3 oclock, we headed back to the aiport, checked in and entertained ourself with all the free activities they had for tourists. We made lucky rice cleaners called Bakiori and took pictures dressed in Korean attire. Very COOL!! The plane ride went by pretty fast but we didnt get into Singapore until after the MRT stopped running so we had to split a cab to chinatown. Our hostel is interesting. We are sharing a room with 6 other people (Blake has the top bunk, I have the bottom bunk). Were both super tired, Blake is already passed out in his bunk haha but VERY excited to go explore tommorrow! Love you all :) Goodnight!

Korea (the South one)

This is possibly the most surreal day weve ever experienced. We left the Tallahassee airport 25 hours ago and the sun still has not gone down. We flew straight from Atlanta to Korea on a 14 hour flight. The craziest part is we went waaaaay north, almost to the North Pole, and then came back down flying north-to-south into Korea. Guess thats the whole curvature of the earth effect or whatever. We had this one meal on the plane that was some sort of rice and steamed "stuff" that I thought was pretty good. Jen "wasn't hungry" aka couldnt stand it. But the ride wasn't to terrible. Jen had the window seat, I had the middle, and a ~85yr old Korean woman was in the aisle seat. Wish I could have seen us trying to communicate with her the whole flight: priceless. Anyways, she was hilarious. But when we touched down, we were SOOO excited! Its around 55 degrees here though so our plans of visiting the beach tomorrow probably wont happen. Were staying at a hotel near the airport which isnt actually IN seoul, but on an island near Seoul. Anyways, I dont know if this is all of Korea, or just here, or just this day, but it is dreary-er than those towns you see in eastern europe from WWII footage: there is NOTHING going on here. But after the travel, were grabbing some food and passing out. Well update when we get to Singapore!


P.S. Im updating this before we head out but this place isn't as depressing as it once seemed. Its nothing to oogle over, but we stumbled upon the beach which had a bunhc of really interesting restaurants. The only downside is it was purely seafood which jen does not like. It wasn't exactly appealing to me either, however, since NONE of it was cooked: not the clams, mussels, stingrays, conch, fish, crab, etc. We just had mongolian beef at the hotel, but it is safe to say we are looking forward to not having Korean food...Singapore, here we come!