The Gap Year Adventure....

hellloooo! i'm currently in Kuala Lumpur on our second night here so thought i'd write a quick blog to update you on what we have been up to.

On Sunday (8th April) we spent the day wandering around Chinatown in Singapore before meeting our group (there are 12 of us in total) at 5pm. There is another couple in the group, Nick and Trish who are both English, an irish guy called noel, an australian guy called Ben and an English girl called Meeta as well as an Australian family of 4 which is quite cool. For the suatralian family this is the first time the parents have left Australia in over 25 years and the first time ever the children have left the country or gone more than 2 hours away from home (they are 19 and 14) which is quite strange for us as they are very very VERY naive - especially the 19 year ofl girl, we thought she was 15!! Everyone is really nice - only slight downside being that they are a bit quiet and not as much fun as the greenforce lot, possibly due to the family being a large part of the group and also the mixture of ages. Everyone gets on really really well though which is good as we have some really long bus journey's!!

Monday (9th April) - Today we set off at 8am to Melaka which was a 6 hour bus journey. I thought this would be a killer but, aside from when we were crossing the border from Singapore into Malaysia, i slept for the ENTIRE journey!! The pillow nan mason bought me is really comming in handy - it is SO comfortable! Melaka is an old port town which started off as a small fishing town but now, mainly due to tourism, is pretty large with a big shopping centre etc. It was really nice to spend the afternoon wandering around the small shops down the narrow streets -VERY different from Singapore! In the evening we went on a trishaw tour of Melaka and stopped to visit the oldest chinese temple along the way. The temple was beautiful -considering it's age and the materials it is made out of it is in wonderful condition and it was really interesting to hear about the history of why it was built there. The trishaw's were AMAZING! we had seen trishaw's before in Singapore but didnt go on one but these were in a different league - they were so so elaborately decorated (the one Tom and I went in was shaped like a boat and COVERED in fake flowers and fairy lights) and many had music and flashing lights! I felt awful when we learned that the driver (or rider maybe?) was 65 as were most of the other riders! I felt like I should sit him in the back and I should ride - especially as it was a pretty long ride (about 45 mins) up some hills! We had great fun though and it was a great way to see a lot in a short time.Melaka is the type of place that i would like to have more time to explore - we arrived at 2pm and left at 11am the next morning so didnt have too much time and the winding streets and wooden shoes that they make there were calling me!!

Tuesday (10th April) - we set off to Kuala Lumpur today, a slightly shorter bus journey at only 5ish hours. Our hotel is in the mioddle of Chinatown which is really cool and right next to Petlang street which is a big night market selling LOADS of gucci bags and rolex watches etc - im sure you get the picture. The only difference is that these are REALLY good quality and ridiculously cheap! It's a really fun vibrant place to wander round and the haggling is great - i'm ruthless!! Our evening meal was in a cool (and very cheap) chinese restaurant where the food was amazing. We just spent the evening wandering around the night marketbefore getting a relatively early night.

Wednesday (today - 11th April) - Today we went on what was supposed to be a half day tour of Kuala Lumpur but we set off at 9am and got back at 3.30 so more of a full day really!! Fist we went to the King's Palace, the grounds were gorgeous and so so well maintained and the building looked amazing but obviously it was a long way back from the gates!

We also visted the largest Mosque in Kuala Lumpur which was very very impressive although we wernt allowed to go into the main prayer area for some unkown reason as we are usually allowed to. The women all had to wear full length robes (alter server style) and head scarves - these were so HOTand claustrophobic, i really dont know how the women wear them all the time!!

Next was Petronus towers - unfortunately we didnt get to go up as it would have meant several hours queuing but we went and stood at the bottom and got some cool photos - they really are GIGANTIC!! They are more commonly know here as the twin towers (for obvious reasons) and since September 11th, they are now the tallest twin towers in the world - 88 storeys and stand at 452 metres above sea level.

Then onto the Royal Selangor pewter factory - the largest pewter factory in the world where wee went on a guided tour and saw how they made most of their stuff. It was really cool to see the really detailed engravings being done - such monotonus and manual jobs though, very hard work and SO boring! We saw the largest pewter bear tankard in the world and a really big model of patronus towers made entirely out of normal sized petwer been tankards which was pretty impressive. Unfortunately everything was REALLY expensive so souvenirs were out of the question! :-(

Next was Menara telecommunications tower. It is one of the tallest concrete towers in the world, standing at 421m. It is the tallest tower in south-east Asia and ranks fourth in the tallest telecommunications towers in the world. We got a guided tour so now i'm an expert on this tower!! Despite the fact that it was raining we got a really good view over Kuala Lumpur and took some cool photos. The view would have been awesome if it hadnt rained but it seems to do that a lot here!!

Unfortunately, due to the heavy rain we didnt get to go to the botanical gardens but we had a really really good day and saw most of the main places in Kuala Lumpur. We ate at a dodgy chinese/malay street restaurant for tea and had some really nice noodles :-D

And now im sat in an internet cafe writing to you! Tomorrow we go to Kuala Kangsar for 2 nights where we stay with a traditional malay family and visit some waterfalls and the beach which should be cool!

In the mean time i have sent another CD home when i wa sin singapore with photos on but the links below will take you to all of my photos - some of them you will have seen but many are new...

My Birthday Party:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4020&l=77a94&id=602500397

Mid phase Break:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4024&l=0a748&id=602500397

Mid Phase Break continued:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4026&l=f0ad0&id=602500397

Camp:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4030&l=b3608&id=602500397

Meserani Snake Park Pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12751&l=7b84f&id=602500397

Eluai Pics: (Eluai is the name of the Maasai village we lived in):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12755&l=f7ec7&id=602500397

Random Tanzania Pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4022&l=5b9e8&id=602500397

Zanzibar Pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12757&l=905f9&id=602500397

Singapore:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=12764&l=cc02e&id=602500397

Melaka Pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13489&l=4b359&id=602500397

Kuala Lumpur pics:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=13493&l=20f2a&id=602500397

If you cant click on the link just copy and paste it into the address bar at the top

Enjoy!!

miss you

lou

xxx

hhheeelllloooo!! SO today i found them ost depressing thing in singapore a shop called ' XXL Sizes available - 12 to 18' I'm now officialy XXL! tom found that hilarious and has been taking the mick out of me ever since! Anyway enough about that, onto what we've been up to....

Friday: Today we went to Sentosa island 'Singapore's resort island'. The viewing tower was pretty cool, great views out over singapore and we arrived on the island via cable car from the city which was very very cool. however aside form the beach there was a distinct lack of things to do without paying large amount of money for the privilage and being cheap travellers we didnt want to do that!

in saying that we did pay to go on the luge - a cool go-kart type thing where you go down the side of one of the hills which gives you great views out over singapore and the sea. A skylift takes you back up to the top - i e-mailed mum a photo of tom and i on that :-)

The most impressive thing about sentosa island was seeing the merlion, one of the main images of singapore which was very impressive!

We left sentosa in the afternoon and got the monorail to vivo ciity - the largest shopping centre in singapore. It's HUGE! It only opened 3 months ago so is incredibly modern, there is a park on the roof with a really big grassy area as well as a shallow swimming pool and a kids play area - a really really nice place to shop apart from beign riduculously busy but it probably didnt help that we went on a bank holiday...

Despite the disapointments we had a really good day out at Sentosa - and tom was happy because it didnt involve TOO much shopping (although he's bought more than me since we got here!!)

When we got back to the centre of Singaporewe went to the cinema and watched Mr Bean. Everyone was going crazy for it -laughing at absolutely everything and loving it!! It was a really cool film, made cooler by the fact we were watching it ini singapore with chinese subtitles!

Saturday: Today we went to Singapore zoo which was incredible and also saddening at the same time. It was an amazing zoo, almost like being in a rainforest as it was full or greenery and awesome trees and the animal displays were fantastic, they looked really real and comfortable. However, the problem being that, once you have seen these animals in the wild, no matter how nice their cage is it is still upsetting to see them in captivity. Especially saddening was the big cats - metres of space to roam around in rather than miles and miles of African bush. A really cool zoo though, and we had an ace day out :-)

Sunday we left the Hangout (*sob*) and moved to The Royal Peacock Hotel in Chinatown which is where we start our first trip. We are currently sat in an internet cafe in Chinatown, we meet the rest of the group at 5pm - looking forward to that! Tomorrow we start the trip by travelling to Melaka in Malaysia, we enter Thailand on the 16th April.

Anyway nothing else to update for now, ill e-mail and blog as often as i can though unsure as to how much acess to internet we will have

miss you

lou

xxx

Thought i should start to catch up on the blogs i missed due to lack of internet access!

Zanzibar started with a 9 hour coach journey to Dar es Salaam on a surprisingly good coach (we expected to stand of a cramemd bus thing!). We even got served free soda, water and sweets. The best bit of the journey has to be watching the dodgy african films that they were showing on the TV - dancing hearts 1 & 2, probably the worst films I have ever watched with no plot or storyline! Ahh it made the journey go faster though!

When we arrived in Dar we got a 4 hour ferry to Zanzibar. This was an interesting ride as here we were all crammed in (i was sat on the floor and got pins and needles from my waist down for pretty much the whole journey - not good!) Also there was a coffin on board (apparently a singer from Zanzibar) which was pretty awkward as the lady accompanying the coffin proceeded to wail for the entire 4 hours whilst we sat there and tried not to look.

We spent the first night (Monday) on Zanzibar in the Stone Town - the old part of Zanzibar. This was a really nice area where we went to a local night market and tried various things such as zanzibar pizza (it's sooo good!) Tuesday morning was spent wandering around the streets of stone town and shopping :-) Tuesday afternoon we went to Kendwa rocks - the beach that we stayed at. Our accomodation was pretty basic huts on the edge of the beach - needless to say the view from them was gorgeous and we were more than happy despite the fact that they were made out of wood, had no filling between the pieces of wood and the inside walls were covered with scrappy bits of cloth to try and disguise this fact.

The beach was incredible, the sand was pure white and the water was so so warm. We spent the afternooon lazing on the beach and i had my first beach massage - i was addicted!! The evening was spent in the beach bar eating gorgeous food and just chilling out.

Wednesday was Hannah's birthday so we spent the day lazing on the beach havign massages, henna and I got by hair braided which was interesting! It took forever and hurt like hell but i think it looked pretty cool once finished!! anyway for 1.00 it was worth it!! (for some bizarre reason the PC's in Tanzania and singapore dont have pound signs on them!!)

Thursday was our snorkelling trip to a local island. We travelled by Dow boat, a traditional fishing boat which took 4 hours to get to the island as we sailed along at what can only be described as a 'leisurely' pace! I fell asleep on this journey and, despite being smothered in sun cream, got ridiculously sunburned and didnt realise until the next day when i couldnt walk, stand, lie down, sit - basically i couldnt move!! Snorkelling was cool though - saw soem really random fish and shells that were as big as a computer screen and bigger!

Afetr the snorkelling trip we completeed our last night in Zanzibar in style by staying up until 4am dancing on the bach and everyone else drinking FAR too much. At Approx 1am we all stripped to our underwear and went swinmming in the sea where mikey proceeded to be sick (i sat him at the edge as he was too drunk to swim!) The girls however all got their tops stolen while we were int he water which was HIGHLY annoying as it was one of my favourite tops!! Thjis didnt spoil the mood though and everyone continued to have a great time and get far far too drunk!

Friday was the start of our journey back to Arusha which left everyone regretting the night before! We left 2 girls in Zanzibar to do a scuba diving course, one of the boys went to join his family who has flown out to Zanzibar the night before for a family holiday and the scientist also stayed in zanzibar for a holiday. The rest of us piled back onto the ferry for a very very rough journey back to dar which resulted in severeal people being sick!

Saturday morning was the deathly bus journey back to Arusha - the coach wasnt as nice thisd time and the journey took about 2 hours longer for some reason!! Saturday night was just spent in Arusha before we all split up on Sunday to get our various fights.....

Ok so i am in love with Singapore although it is VERY VERY depressing when people look at you pityingly for asking for a size larger than a 30" waist when buying jeans!! Apparently that is the largest size most of the shops sell here, doesnt shock me too much - unfortunately all of the women here are TINY which makes me feel like a beached whale!!

The city itself is amazing - the shopping (all we have done so far) is incredible. On both sides of the road the whole way down are shpping centres that are (at the smallest) 5 or 6 times as big as St. Georges and sell everything from Gucci and Armani to Topshop and random foreign clothes.It's taken almost 2 whole days for us to get through about half of the shopping centres. That doesnt include being right next to singapore's largest street market which is unbelieveable as well as chinatown and little india. Tomorrow is another day of shopping (i could spend SO much money in this place!!) then on Thursday we are going to Sentosa Island - an island just of the coast of Singapore where we can go to the beach, view singapore from the country's highest viewing platform and do random other fun things. Friday we are going to singapore zoo which should be cool :-)

Sorted out our visas's for Thailand so they will now let us in the country!! They cost 50 singapore dollars which is approx 17 pounds - in England it would have cost me 50 punds to get the visa!!

Singapore is so cool and vibrant and I love how modern everything is as well as being immaculately clean. Even down to the MRT - the underground. It is beasically a cleaner, safer and generally better run version of the London Underground!

McDonalds is EVERYWHERE!! literally every building has one. Also they have something called McCafe here, pretty explanatory by the name but this is also on every street corner! For lunch today tom and i had noodles, some meat (no idea what it was) and a fruit juice drink for 1.50! its great! and this is singapore, can only imagine hoe cheap the rest of malaysia will be! Obviosuly there are some spectacular restauants. We tend to go somewhere nicer for our evening meal - we splash out and spend about 15.00 for the two of us :-P

the heat here is so different to that of Africa. The temperature is still the same (around 30 celcius) but it's really humid here rather than just HOT as it was in Africa. Finding the heat ok though, will be much much hotter in Thailand as we will be there at the hottest point of their year. We go to Thailand on 16th APril so watch this space fo the weather report!

Missing my Maasai friends - after seeing them everyday for 3 months and learning to live with their endearing wierdness it's strange when they are gone. Keepingi n touch with the other volunteers though - already had several updates from them about where they are and what they are up to so not missing them as much.

Anyway shall update more when i can - going to upload photos tomorrow (for some reason this computer won't allow it) and also will be posting a CD with my photos on back home.

Missing you

lou

xxxxx

Well my time in Tanzania with Greenforce is over and i'm now in Singapore.

My last week in Zanzibar was amazing it was a paradise beach with white sand, hammocks on the beach and clear brilliant blue sea that you could see right to the bottom of. I had massages on the beach (for the very extortionate price of 50p!!), got some henna done and also got all of my hair braided in corn row type things - see the pictures, it really didnt look that bad!!

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were spent lazing on the beach indulging in the above activites or ocasionally venturing from the hammocks to the bar and then into the sea. On Thursday we went on a snorkelling trip for the day to a nearby island and had King fish for lunch (yes i am tending to eat fish now) barbecued for us on the boat. All was great until i woke up on Friday realising that, having faleln asleep on the boat ont he 2 hour journey to the island i was now ridiculously red on my front making walking, sitting, sleeping, standing (pretty much just existing) painful! my head was also burned in between the braids - not good!! Im more brown than red now but it is 4 days later and i am strangely patchy!

Saturday saw us make a 10 hours bus journey from Dar es Salaam abck to Arusha which was painful as there was no air-conditioning and we only stopped once...

On Sunday we left to begin our marathon journey to Singapore which was suppoed to begin with an 8.00am flight from Kilimanjiro airport to Nairobi but upon turning up at 6am (2 hours before the flight..) we were told that the flight was at 6am, it always was at 6am and there had never been an 8am flight to nairobi!! Due to it beign sunday STA (our travel agents) were closed and for some reason do not have a 24 hour helpline so it was left for me to go mad at the airport staff which resulted in us beign put on the next flight (1hr 20 mins later) free of charge. Upon arriving at nairobi we had a 7hour wait until our flight at 5.15 to Dubai - a 5.5 hour flight. I was amazed by the plane - they all had TV's and playstation's in the backs of the seats so you could watch whatever you wanetd or play games. You could also play games with other people on the flight, send e-mails, texts and even make phone calls. Now why don't they do that for spain!Dubai airport is AMAZING. Its like a bigger and more stylish version of the trafford centre - not like an airport at all! I FINALLY got the McDonalds i had been craving for 3 months at 1.30am (yes it was worth the weight - rice and cabbage really makes you want some pure junk!)

After 3 hours in Dubai it was time for the flight to Singapore - 7 hours, again on an amazing plane. The other thing that i love about these long haul flights is the food - pasta, chicken, curry and it is all such good tasting food and its a 3 course meal. You also constantly get free drinks throughout the flight, i sat there in luxury. Well actually i slept for most of it!!

We got to singapore at 2.30pm (7 hours ahead of the UK i do believe) and it was so refreshing to be in a nice clean airport where people understood what you were asking and everything went prefectly, our bags only took 10 mins to get off the plane all all arrived perfectly! A taxi took us to our hostel which turns out to be incredibly big and very very very nice (tom and my room has 3 beds, an en-suite bathroom, an incredible view of the city, a desk and a sofa as well as a large wardrobe and a lot of room to walk around - its HUGE!! There is a laundry room (the first thing i did was wash all of my clothes, having been handwashed for 3 months they wernt looking or smelling their best!), free internet access, the roof is a big flat area which loads of deck chairs, a swimming pool and a barbecue area, there is a pool table, and a chill out room where there is a huge plasma screen TV that shows movies daily. The whole place is immaculately clean and decrorated to a really high standard - its nicer than any hotel i have been to in england!!

Anyway enough ranting about how amazing 'The Hangout' is, tonight we wnt for a wander to get some food and see the city. We ended up eating at KFC (yes old habits die hard!!) before spending hours wandering around a gigantic street market. Due to the time differernces we are both pretty jet lagged so are havign an early night (well 10.30). Tomorrow we are going on a hunt for the Thai embassy to sort out getting our visas - we couldnt get them before we left the UK because they are only valid for 3 months from date of issue.

We will be in Singapore until Sunday 8th when our first tour from singapore to Bangkok begins... soemthing to look forward to! until then we will be exploring this city - so far i love it. It;s big and exciting whilst being clean and you can cross the road without thinking you are going to get squashed!

One thing id never get used to in tanzania is the driving - and you thought spaniards were bad!! nI have NEVER seen so many near misses in my whole life - people drive with smashed windowscreens, bumpers hang off often trailing on the floor, the cars dont have seatbelts, traffic lights are something very very rarely seen, people drive 3 abreast up the wrong side of the road and just sit there when its busy blocking up the whole thing and the roads are usually dirt tracks so you feel like you are in a washing machine!!

I really did love Tanzania, despite being dirty, driving being Horrendous and nothing ever getting done when it is supposed to (the motto for Africa is 'no hurry in africa' which is extrermely fitting!) and the Maasai are wondeful people. I will definately go back at some point when i have finished my travels of the rest of the world, Tanzania had a certain heart and vibe about the place, everyone is always singing and dancing and havign a good time - even those who dont have anything.

On the subject of the Maasai 6 of them are comming to run the London marathon in 2008 to raise money for a water hoel int heir willage!! At the moment they have to walk miles to a disgustingly dirty reservoir which always goes dry int he dry seasonlevaing them with no access to water - clean or otherwise. The Maasai are running the marathon free of charge and will be the first people ever to run without wearing numbers. All are terrified of the idea of flying - many have never even left their tiny village in the middle of knowhere before but they are all really excited about comming to London. AT the moment we have been given the task of getting the 20,000 sponsorship needed for the waterhole so if anyoen has any ideas of who may help, tom and i are going to be contacting Carphone Warehouse to see if they will - the BBC has already expressed an interest.

Anyway time for me to go and catch up on my much needed beauty sleep, will update on my travels around singapore as the week goes on. I will also be uploading all of my photos from Africa and will be sending them home once again.

I have also sent a parcel home containing some gifts my Maasai friends ghave me and stuff i bought which you will probably find really interesting - they were delivered to tom's house on Sunday so Mum will be able to show you them once they get to mine.\

Hope eveyone is well - missing you

lou

xxxxx