Malaysia, July 20 2007

Hi!

We left Thailand with a very nice sleeper train, which was ice cold from the air condition. We woke up with three soldiers walking in to our carriage, but this was the only sign of the occasional violence in southern Thailand. After an easy border crossing we came into our new nation for the week. We headed straight to our second paradise island of the trip, Pulau Pherentian. Despite the not too long distance between Thailand and Malaysia, Thailand was in low season peaceful and quiet while Malaysia was busy in the middle of the high season and very hard to find accommodation. The atmosphere was very relaxed at the island, no one knew what time it was, receiving ordered food could take hours and our favorite waiter had his expressions like "I don't know", "I have no idea" and "that word, very difficult". The beach was long and nice, the sand white and soft, the water clearer than a pool and the sun was burning the whole day except for daily thunder storms with beautiful displays of lightning.

After Emil had killed off a really bad upset stomach with some antibiotics, he was ready for the best diving ever. It was as diving in a giant aquarium with very good visibility, colorful corals and a lot of fishes. Hanna worked on her tan and is now brown as ginger bread.

We can easily accept some ants and a few mosquitoes in a room, even ants in all different sizes. When you have lizards watching you through the windows at the toilet and a snail coming up the drain you start feeling uneasy, but when you wake up with blood spots on the sheets and bed bugs crawling around filled with our blood just ready to burst we were quite happy to change room, while the manager just shrugging his shoulders as this was just normal.

After crossing the main land of Malaysia we arrived to Kuala Lumpur. It took us by bus some 9 hours to cross the constant rain forest, which cover 60 % of the country's surface, without even passing smaller cities. Kuala Lumpur is a very modern city, filled with sky scrapers of which we visited the two highest. We went up the Petrona Twin Towers' sky bridge and today the KL Telecom Tower. As many of you know both Hanna and Emil hate shopping, but we really did our best and to our surprise we spent quite some time in all the shopping centers and the markets, ending up with a considerable amount of items.

We now have packed our back packs and are amazed how much they really can hold. Tomorrow we are heading to the last country for the trip, Singapore, and we have booked a very nice hotel to relax and enjoy the last two days of our honey moon.

Lots of love from Hanna and Emil