Archive for September, 2009

So after all the travels I successfully arrived back at London Heathrow @ 06:30 on 30th September greeted by the cool English weather and grey rainy sky! Along with the hordes of commuters on the tubes. The trees were brown and the touch of winter was inbound…

LHR landing @ 06:39

The reality of england – commuters

Victoria on route home.

Arrival home…

Winter on route…

After 7.3hours sleep in the renta-room, there was no other way to kill 12hours in Brunei, other than going on a tour bus, a little overpriced @ £27 for a 4hour tour bus around the city. There was no other way I was going to pack so much into this short amount of time and I am collected another stamp on my passport Brunei is a pretty impressive country, there is no tax, education & the health service is completely free and fuel only costs £0.22, cheaper than water! The only downfall with Brunei is that it lacked character, it seemed to be just another big city, with big buildings and mosques but with few people. I have experienced it in other countries, where everything seems to be built for the hordes of people, when there just aren’t that many people there. After the 4hour tour I came out with good photos and a better understanding of the country…

Brunei Dollor 2.229 to £1

The country is ruled by one man, the 29th Sultan of Brunei “Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah” when he became the sultan, he was carried about in this through the streets of Brunei.

Some other artwork at the Sultan Museum.

Short Boat trip into the water village “Kampong Ayer”, one of the largest water villages in the world with over 39,000 people living there.

“Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin Mosque” – The mosque stands at 52m (171ft) high and can be seen from virtually anywhere in Bandar Seri Begawan. FACT!!

The Royal Place (where the Sultan & his family live) they stop the traffic in the road when one of them enters.

Our tour guide, I’m sure he kills vampires by night time with ninja stars and a sword!

“Jame’Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque” another one of Brunei’s mosques. There is a strong reference to “29″ there are 29 of everything (steps, towers, domes, fountains) to symbolise the 29th Sultan of Brunei.

It was back to the airport 2hours before departing for England. Stamped in and stamped out…

It was touch down at KL airport on Saturday 26th September 2009 @ 18:00, I had two days left before jetting back home to the lovely winter days of England. KL was a typical city & fairly expensive in some areas. Chinatown seemed to do me alright though and you could get pretty cheap food, drinks, clothes, sunglasses etc from the markets. It seemed to rain the entire time there so was a little hard to keep myself motivated to go out and get drenched, but as they always say “skins waterproof” though people don’t account for the fact your clothes aren’t and when wet they stay wet until they dry.
The most impressive site of KL is the Petronas Twin Towers, it’s a pretty epic site when you actually consider man’s creations in this world and how they achieve it! A feet of excellence! Other site seeing took me to the “Menara Tower” a small reptile zoo next door and the “Aquaria” though these didn’t seem to be so impressive & the fact the tower and aquaria were £7each made it even more disappointing.

Touchdown @ KL airport

This is where I stayed, it was a new hostel and some of the points on the flyer weren’t really valid! but it was chilled out so can’t knock it too much.

First up-close view of the Petronas Twin Towers

First up-close view of the Petronas Twin Towers & the RAIN!

Inside Suria food court – My £1 Chocolate Brownie and Ice Cream.

China Town markets (cheap).

Random shop name, not sure if he did much business??

Menara Tower – No photos from up inside the tower of the city unfortunately it was night time they didn’t come out too well.

Reptile zoo & F1 gaming, part of the Menara Tower ticket.

Don’t know the name of this, but like most people I will refer to it by colour… Yellow Snake

Some form of monkey?

Lizard?

Petronas Twin Towers @ Night

Chinatown @ Night

Day 2 @ KL – Flight @ 22:00

“Aquaria” – bit like the sealife centre, but not really as good.

Bit of a mad rush to the airport, ended up missing the bus by 2min to the international terminal airport so had to get a bus to the internal terminal and getting another bus from there, the timings were a bit tight but I made it in the end… All good, fortunately I was also just under my weight allowance, so didn’t need to be getting a sweat on.

19KG! just under the 20KG allowance

Just after 01:00am I touched down in Brunei Airport. Strangely I had to fly to Brunei (back in Borneo), even though it was further away from England than KL. All pretty backwards I managed to get a bed in one of the dayrooms at the airport, 8h for £12 and worth ever ££ for some good Gonk! It was a goodnights sleep before a sightseeing tour around Brunei and then a 16h flight home.

Dayroom Bed @ Brunei Airport 01:30am

Phnom Phen, well what to say… In simple terms this country is seriously messed up. “Pol Pot” was the leader of the Cambodian communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge and decided to execute 200,000 people with 20% of the population (1.4 to 2million) being wiped out due to starvation and disease between 1975 to 1979. Hard to try and understand the logic of some mentalist like this. He basically wanted to move the country back to the stone age and killed everyone that was clever, wore glasses, politicians, military, reporters and journalists etc. They were taken to a field and executed in a pretty brutal way, the strangest part was this only happened 35years ago! The fields are now a morbid tourist attraction, which in itself is a strange concept. Others were held in the prisons of “S-21” in the centre of the city, before dying or being moved to the killing fields for execution.

Killing Fields @ Choeung Ek

S21 Prison

Some vid I found on Google… S21 & Choeung Ek

It was a short one night’s visit to Phnom Phen. It was off to KL from the airport for the last stage of the trip. Once again I was fighting against the weight restrictions and ended up having to wear my jacket and get hot, just because some job’s worth wouldn’t allow my 2kg over the weight limit of 15KG!

Getting a little warm at the Airport

Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur – Shame they have to rip you off at Phnom Phen airport by charging you $25 US (Departure Tax) just to leave the place!

Final US $$ what better way to spend than an expensive overpriced airport beer.

Thought i’d make the most of the colour range in the markets at Siem Reap…

Vivid colour Market Scenes…