Malaysia & Singapore (Dec 3 - 7)

Hello Friends! I've finally had some time to sit down at a computer and upload some pics of my trip to Malaysia and Singapore. For the 5 days, my mom and I toured these two neighbouring countries with a Chinese tour travel agency...which means really cheap prices, 5-star hotels and rushing around from place to place! It was great times, travelling with my mom wasn't so bad either....haha....though chinese people like to get the most out of their vacation, so the days' events were definitely packed. i got to see lots of places, learned a bit of history and of course...took lotsa pics!

Pre-trip Randomness



We flew Singapore Airlines, which is a really amazing airline with cute stewardeses, haigen daz ice cream and I even got a chance to play some...

F-ZERO!!

(brought back some great SNES memories)

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

We spent the bulk of our time in Malaysia, the first city being its capital Kuala Lumpur. Here's a photograph of probably the most recognizable of Malaysian landmarks, the Twin towers. Unfortunately we did not get a chance to go up to the observation deck...chinese tour = no time..haha (Apparently though, you cannot BUY tickets to go up, but if you go and line up real early in the morning, you can get one of only 100 FREE tickets they give daily for people to go up there.)

Twin Towers @ night

Along the way, I also picked up a little Malaysian history courtesy of our tour guide (I guess as accurately as I can understand it in cantonese..haha). Below is a mural depicting the history of Malaysia chronologically from left to right...in the right upper corner, you may be able to see a faint outline of a ship, representing the arrival of "white people'

Mural of Malaysian history

The Portuguese invaded Malaysia in 1511 and controlled the land for 150 years until the Dutch came and took over. Eventually the British came to power and helped set up the Federation of Malay states (13 in total). Malaysia finally reached independence in 1957. Of the 13 states only 9 have kings, the other 4 don't. Each king can rule for 5 years, then he must relinquish his crown. The current king will serve until Dec 13th of this year (later this week!), after which Kuala Lumpur will welcome its 13th king.

The king's residence in Kuala Lumpur

While we were in Malaysia, the weather was about 30 degrees celsius and it was humid! Although most of the people on our tour seemed to want to get right back on the air-conditioned asap, the heat didn't seem to bother the locals all that much. Perhaps its b/c the lifestyle in Malyasia very relaxed. People take their time, sit around and just generally just enjoy each other's company it seems. On top of that, the food is great, lots of different spices and curries and the fresh fruit is amazing!

Curry chicken bread

Genting, Malaysia

Malaysia is a beautiful country with vast lands of virtually untouched terrain. Below is a picture of Malaysia's tropical rain forest as seen from our cable car on the way up to Genting, 6000 feet above sea level.

Malaysian tropical rain forest

View from the top of the mountain

In chinese the city of Genting is called "Wun Dang" which literally translates to "top of the clouds". Located 6000 feet above sea level, this city also houses the world's largest hotel - The First World Hotel (as confirmed by the Guiness book of world records). This hotel, however tacky it looks (below) is able to house an amazing 5,500 rooms! Our room number was literally...15943 (15th floor, 943rd room).

Although located high up in the mountains, overlooking a beautiful Malaysian landscape with miles of tropical rainforest, Genting is known as "the entertainment city" because of its huge complex of casinos, theme parks (indoor and outdoor), shopping centres, theatres and many places to eat.

Outdoor theme parks (as viewed from our hotel room)

From Genting, we also spent some time in the city of Malacca (or Melaka) and the border town of Johur Bahra. I don't have many interesting pics to upload from there, so I will show you a cool pic of a cobra eating another snake from some zoo in malacca.

Some snake eating some snake

Singapore

We only spent a day and a half in Singapore, however that was more than enough as this country is much smaller than Malaysia and roughly the size of Hong Kong. An interesting fact is that Malaysia used to be called "Malaya" (ie. without the S & I), but they added it during their independence to include SIngapore. After only a few years though, Singapore declared independence themselves, however the name "Malaysia" stuck

Legend has it that Singap9re was named after someone (I forget who) supposedy saw a lion somewhere (I forget where) in Singapore (Singa = Lion). There are no lions in Singapore, however just like Malaysia, the name stuck.

View of Singapore from the sky tower

Chinatown, Singapore

Many restaurants in Singapore are open-air

Although our time in Singapore was short, it was well worth it because I got a chance to visit my good friend Caleb. I know him because he spent one semester here at McMaster back in my 2nd year. He took us out to check out some of the streetlife in Singapore at night. It was great to catch up with old friends and new (he's married now!) To everyone back at MAC and old HCCF-ers, Caleb says hi!

L to R: Nixie, Angeline (Caleb's wife), Caleb, Me

In the end, despite the heat, this trip was great...enough talking from me...off to Shanghai on Monday, keep posted for more pics from that!