It's day 52 and time for the next installment of our much abused travel log - lucky Yahoo doesn't have a foul landuage filter as most of the emails we're getting would never reach us .. your bitterness really knows no bounds!
Anyway, since we last wrote we actually haven't done all that much.
From Kathmandu we flew to Singapore, via a hot & sweaty stopover in Delhi (God we love that place!) and spent a week of luxurious, air conditioned heaven chez Miss Townson. She really was the perfect hostess providing us with our own room, own bathroom, fresh towels, fully functioning washing machine (& tumble dryer), free internet access (well free for us anyway - thanks Saz!), private swimming pool/sauna/gym (not that we went near the last two) and a ready made set of friends for us to socialise with - brilliant.
All this could mean only one thing - drinking, eating, drinking and spending lots of money - not so brilliant!
The novelties of Top Shop, Mango, Burger King and KFC were too much for us poor ethnicised Westerners to resist - now don't get us wrong, we've really enjoyed the local food everywhere we've gone, but there are times when there's nothing that hits the spot quite like a Whopper with Cheese!
Highlights from Singapore were, the pool, the shopping, the night safari, the pool, the drinking, the pool, the karaoke (!), the drinking, Sarah's friends (well, all of the non-American ones!), the popularity of air conditioning, the cleanliness of ... well ... everything and definitely the food and not just that of the fast variety ... oh and the new Harry Potter book which I have finished and Tessa is half way through. Writing this, we're not sure how we managed to tear ourselves away particularly with the (very kind) offers from everyone to put us up in various degrees of luxury for the next three months - there was lots of "my pool's bigger than your pool" rivalry between our various suiters!
The only disappointment for us was the sheer boringness of the drivers. They stick to their lanes like glue, hardly ever beep their horns, insist on stopping at red lights - in fact they even stop at amber ones, always have the air con turned on and never try and take you somewhere via their cousin's textiles shop .... very disappointing!
Anyway, we did it, we managed to get away and are back in squalid obscurity in Kuala Lumpur ("KL" to those who know, or who aren't good with foreign looking words) after a 7 hour train experience which couldn't have been more different from our Agra to Varanassi ordeal if it tried!
We're actually quite enjoying KL so far, although to be fair this can be explained fairly simply. I'm a sucker for tall buildings and Tessa's a sucker for handbags, of which there are lots. There must be some sort of weird pricing conspiracy going on in the UK cos genuine Prada handbags only cost GBP4 here - you guys are being done!
Had a very amusing incident today. For those of you that don't know, there's been a real clampdown by the Malaysian government over the past month or so on the sale of pirate DVDs - all sorts of staggering statistics about how much it's costing the film industry blah blah blah ... yeah whatever - so we thought we would be scuppered. However, it turns out that DVDs are the new heroine! On every street corner it seems there are shady looking blokes whispering "You wanna DVDs sir?". If you reply in the affirmative you are ushered into a nearby warehouse, through about 19 locked doors and into a room of cardboard boxes of said contraband. Now I've never bought drugs but I imagine it is just like this! We came away with 22 and 5 cd's for about GBP35.
Tomorrow we're off to the Cameron Highlands for some jungle walking, before hitting Penang for beaches and food and the Pehrentian Islands for more of the same.
In the mean time, hope all is well with you and make sure you keep in touch, for the want of sounding like a broken record, it's "really great to get all your emails guys - we really love you".
Love Jules & Tessa
P.S.
Sarah T - Thanks a million and see you in the Pehrentians
Sarah T's friends - Ditto
Matt W - Happy Birthday for Tuesday - I don't think they have email in the jungle
Jilly - enough of the star "spotting", more of the star "making friends"
Mum (Rose) - have you booked your ticket yet?
T-Mobile team - Enjoy Q2!