Old town exploration

We explored the old town by foot today. Starting from our hotel, we walked north passing many beautiful old Chinese buildings. We found our way to the main street which passed by the Kapitan Keling mosque. The surrounding areas were rather Indian with flower sellers and eateries. We continued to the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion […]

Read more

Clan jetties

One thing I didn’t do in Penang five years ago was visit the clan jetties. These are stilted homes built over the water with a jetty serving as the main access way. We took the CAT (free bus) from near our hotel to the ferry station, from which it was a short walk to the […]

Read more

Pearl of the Orient

We woke before 0600. The hotel transport took us to the airport but dropped us outside to avoid paying the USD1 entry fee. It is a good reminder that USD1 is a significant sum in this country. We didn’t mind the short walk to the terminal. The bag-drop and check-in queues weren’t exactly short. There […]

Read more

Angkor Thom & Angkor Wat revisited

Nice weather had returned to Siem Reap. We set off at 0800 by tuktuk again to Eastern Mebon, picking up where we had left off the day before. The sunlight was perfect, illuminating the facade of the first few sights we visited. The big one for the day was Ta Prohm, made famous by the […]

Read more

Wet day indoors

It was a wet morning. It looked like a big cloud system was hovering around and wasn’t about to pass quickly. I was proved right and it did hang around all day. So it was a chill and massage day until attending the Phare Cambodian Circus in the evening.  This is an acrobatic show performed […]

Read more

Angkor Thom revisited

Our body clocks woke us up early so it wasn’t a big deal to leave at 0550 for sunrise around 0545. According to an newspaper article I read, Angkor Wat’s west gate is ridiculously overcrowded with people waiting for the sunrise so I took their advice to go to the east gate instead. Instead of […]

Read more

Revisiting Siem Reap after 14 years

Leaving Kuala Lumpur We walked from the Tune Hotel to the check-in area at KLIA2 and did our bagdrop 1.5h prior to departure. Going through security, they were really slack with LAGs and metallic objects but we realised later that there was a stringent check-point near the gates.  I later understood it to be a […]

Read more

Onwards to Asia

Oh no! Another bad night sleep. That is just so rare for me! The ventilation was too warm for the both of us despite turning it down to the lowest level. After a light breakfast of muesli, we headed to the airport by train. Bag-drop was swift but immigration and security involved countless zigzags. We […]

Read more

Blue Mountains

I had a bad night sleep feeling a little sweaty. The body wash I had used earlier (not my own), had over-moisturised me and I was very uncomfortable in bed with thick bedding. I went out to get some fruit and milk and made a breakfast with muesli. An old friend Gabriel invited us to […]

Read more

Jetting to the big smoke

My flight from Townsville to Sydney departs 1320 which meant a shuttle pickup at 1145. That suited well as the hostel check out was 1000. It allowed me to chill a bit in between checking out and leaving. I waited outside the hostel at 1130. A little after the scheduled pickup time, I saw a […]

Read more
Go top