Hayden's Adventures in South East Asia!

Singapore! I dont know why but I was super excited to spend a couple days in Singapore. Maybe because I thought it would be a nice break from south east asia and live the western life for a little bit. Everything is super clean and really well kept.  I really liked all the different buildings that they had there too. The pace of Singapore is so much faster than every other country as well. which I loved because although slowing down to local pace in other countries sometimes can be nice but other times I felt like a was moving like a snail. Their streets were really interesting as well. Also many of the street names were interesting unlike the random names that we have back home. They also had some interesting benches around too: I didnt take too many pictures of me in front of cool buildings cause i was by myself and didnt really feel like asking people. Plus i have huge stop over in Singapore in about a month ...

   You can leave me a voicemail too.  Simply call my Google voice number:  (312)985-6526  And I would love to hear from you. If you want I can even post it on my blog. [update] I have heard many concerns about long distance charges and what so now you can call me from your computer! Just click the button below and it should connect you to my voicemail free of charge   not 100% it will work but I thought id give it a try

Every once in a while I find a place to settle down for a bit and just relax. As hard as it is to believe travelling gets pretty tiring. So I spent a week sitting on the beach   Reading my book  Tanning This woman was doing the opposite.  Best way she could find to stay out of the sun I guess. Couple of good skype conversations with my parents I decided 2 big thing 1. I'm not going to go to Borneo. (The island that is home to the west part of malaysia) There wasnt really much that i wanted to see there that i could see other places and it would cost much too much. 2. That I'm not going to get my PADI certification for scuba diving. I've been scuba diving before and even had my junior PADI something rather so I decided i would invest a fraction of the money the PADI course would cost into getting some good snorkelling gear. For more photos check the album on the left!  Remember to comment and pass on!

Next stop was Penang, a city on the wast of Malaysia about half way up the coast. As backpackers we didnt find much to do here. Walked around, looked at some old buildings. we hiked though a park one day to get to this beach called turtle beach. Sadly it was so average that i forgot to take pictures But here is a picture of a building in china town. Around the building there were wire sculptures like these that told about historical thing in the town.  This one was about Jimmy Choo Just some phone cases a found while wandering around one of the big malls. While walking around the mall we decided to try some "SoyaSoya" you got to pick your pudding flavour and they kind of pearls that you wanted on it.  Looks delicious right? This is how tasty it was: One day after walking around we made our way to this park near the ocean because we heard there would be some sort of Chinese new year things happening. We got there to fin...

On the way back from the tea plantation we decided to stop at this cottage on the way back to town that is supposed to have the best tea and scones in the Cameron Highlands. They were sadly disappointing and overpriced. We couldnt even walk around in the garden because they were filming a Malaysian soap opera there. As we were paying to leave we told the director that if they needed any western extras they we could sit in. Half joking half serious and they said that they would pick us up later that evening! We got a ride back to the hostel and prepared ourselves for the camera. Basically tried to make ourselves not look like backpackers and waited for them to pick us up. Once back at the cottages we sat around for a very long while while they were finishing up with the scene that they didnt need us for. We had a little break for dinner where everyone feasted on 2 huge garbage bags of durian. My first time trying durian , not my favourite fruit for sure. Kinda li...

I decided my next stop would be the Cameron Highlands which is in central peninsular Malaysia. The elevation there is a lot higher so it was nice to cool down a little but from the heat that I have been used to every where else. One of the main attractions is the tea plantations. From here you can buy a cup of tea and watch them from the balcony harvesting the tea leaves and throwing them in a basket on their back. Some very nice views. You can also go walk among the tea fields where we tried cutting some leaves. Very nice balcony at the cafe. The other thing that people do is go to the look out point which is at the tallest mountain in Malaysia (so all the signs said) When we got there we discovered that it was super foggy so we couldn't really see much.   And here are some clouds that I thought were interesting enough at the time to take a picture of. On the way back to town we found ourselves becoming extras in a Mal...