Amazing pictures!

Hey everybody. So I went down to Koh Tao, Koh Samui, Koh Pha Ngan and Koh Nang Yuan. We had a great time! Hong, Sacha and I went with Sacha's friend John from Canada. I don't have much to say because I've been to these places before, except this time I was lucky to be able to use Hong's amazing digital SLR Camera. He has a Nikon D40, which as you'll see, takes some amazing photos. I hope you enjoy them.

So I have 77 images so I thought rather than post them all on here, I'd embed them using Picasa and google web albums. Click on the image below to be taken to all the photos :)

Koh Tao

Back into Bangkok

Hey all. Sorry for the lack of postings or pictures. I have been in Koh Tao, Koh Pa Ngan and Koh Samui. I have some great pictures to show you, but I'm waiting to get them off of Hong's Flash Drive. So as soon as I get them I'll let you all know :)

Hope everyone is doing well. I'll update soon!

Koh Nang Yuan is amazing!

Hey there! Well I had a moment to update this so I thought I'd upload this image. I went to this island beside Koh Tao called Koh Nang Yuan. This place is amazing, the most beautiful location I've ever been to. I can't belive it. So I will have more images later, but here's one for now.

Check out the website www.nangyuan.com.

Ok, that's all for now, I'll update as soon as I can. :)

Koh Tao

Hey guys, I went back to Koh Tao for a week or so. I took the bus down last night with Hong and we met up with Sacha and her friend John. Sorry, won't have an update for a week probably, but Hong has let me use his awesome digital SLR camera so we should have some wicked shots, can't wait!

Ciao all!!

Jeremy

Malaysia (continued)

Well the next part of our Journey was going to a large outdoor park where we saw some wild monkeys. This was quite interesting. The monkeys seem so cute at first. They were a bit apprehensive to get close to us but once I found half an orange, this one feisty dude came up and snatched it right out of my hand. He was standing there eating it, only a few feet away. I thought I'd get closer, maybe he likes to be petted. Well he sure doesn't. Haha in fact the second I was within about a metre of him, he tried lunging at me and was hissing and looked quite mad. Suddenly he turns from being a really cute monkey to a pretty scary monkey. Heh that was enough for me heh I wanted to high-tail it out of there. So we continue on our adventure around this "park". There were some neat paths and creeks, it was really lush and tropical. Kind of reminded me of Vancouver. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to explore everything.
Our next trip was to the Penang Butterfly farm. In Westbank, we used to have a place called butterfly world and it was quite similar to this. I got some great shots with my camera, I have new faith in the abilities of my camera haha.
So after we were done in the lovely city of Penang, we headed across the water back to the mainland to the city of Butterworth. There we were to get on a sleeper train to head to Kuala Lumpur! I was pretty excited! So for 38 Malaysian Ringgit (about $12 CND), we stayed in a 2nd class overnight sleeper train. It was fairly small, as shown in the picture above, but it was relatively comfortable. We arrived the next morning at about 7:30am, into the main train station (Sentral Station) which is the hub of KL in terms of the transit and transportation is concerned. From that railway station, we hopped on one of the many public transit lines that could take us to areas of the city. We stopped off in China town as our Lonely Planet "bible" told us that there
I find Kuala Lumpur (KL) to be quite a beautiful city. The city seems to sprawl in the middle of a rain forest. I took the above two photos when walking around downtown to get to the Petrona Towers. The above picture is just outside the Petronas Towers buildings. It was so amazing to actually be here, something I've always wanted to see.
We also went to the KL Communications Tower. This tower is the 4th tallest in the world and has quite a nice view. We went to the lookout tower at night and took some amazing pictures of the surroundings.
Ok, so enough photos of the Petronas Towers haha. I figured I might as well capitalize on the fact that I have a camera and it seems to work well.

So we spent some more time in Kuala Lumpur doing random looking around the city. We met quite a few Canadians staying in the same hostel as us. So we hung out with them for a while and shared stories.

And then it was time for me to get on the plane back to Bangkok. I flew Air Asia for about $58 CND with all taxes. And we're talking a 2 hour plane ride on a brand spanking new Airbus A-320. The plane was so nice, leather seats and everything. Air Asia is Malaysia's huge discount carrier, they're based out of KL. We always fly them for our inter-asia flight needs because they're so cheap. Usually they aren't too delayed. You don't get any food, not even water, unless you pay for it.

As we were flying and during touchdown I decided to snap some more photos. The water on the airplane window turned out really well so I thought I'd post it. So long Kuala Lumpur and Hello Bangkok. I had a great time and hope you enjoyed my photos. I enjoyed taking them!

Malaysia!

Well, after our adventures in Southern Thailand, we made it to Malaysia. Malaysia is a federal constitutional Monarchy, believe it or not. It has substantial Chinese and Indian Minorities mixed with the Malay culture. The population is about 26 Million, 57% of the people are Malay while the rest make up the Chinese/Indian subset. Malay is the official language, but when we were there, almost everyone spoke some form of broken or fluent English. Manufacturing constitues the largest single component of Malaysians economy. Tourism, palm oil, petroleum, natural rubber and timber are other major contributers to the economy.

Now that you've been briefed on some facts of Malaysia... Our first stop was the island of Penang. On the map you'll see the small arrow pointing to the island, right above Georgetown. Don't be fooled by its small appearance, the island houses millions of people and is quite beautiful. I loved it here because its so tropical and serene in nature. The skyline envelopes tall skyscrapers mixed with lush tropical forest beside small houses on stilts and other interesting architecture. Because Malaysia was once colonized by the British, there is also some European architecture that can be seen throughout the cities.

In Penang, we stayed in Chinatown, a large area close to "Little India". We found a great little guest house called the SD Guest House. It was basic but nice and clean and looked pretty new. It was only 35 ringgit (which is about $12 CND). The staff was really nice and helpful. We went on a day trip that was organized because we had tried to do our own thing the day before but it was difficult to organize and took a while for us to get around. So we paid this guy about $60 ringgit each and he took us to 5 or 6 different areas of Penang. Our first stop was at Penang Hill now referred to as "Bukit Bendera", one of the historic sites apparently built by some British Colonials originally in the early 19th century.
These are some of the pictures from the Train and views from the top. It was pretty nice up there except it was still early in the morning so there was quite a bit of fog which limited our view. There were some cool temples at the top as you can see in the picture above. After this, we headed off to a famous Chinese temple. I forget what it's called unfortunately but it appeared to be quite famous. It was quite beautiful, it overlooked the city and was on a hillside surrounded once again by lush tropical rainforest. Quite the impressive site to see.

That's one thing I definitely enjoy about the Malaysia culture, there is so much of it. There are many different temples and mosques to visit.

Well I think I need to break this post up into a few. This one is quite long. So I'll leave this one at this for now, upcoming I'll talk about the monkeys, the butterfly farm, and the lovely amazing pictures of the Petrona Towers!!! Can't wait!