Halloween in Kuala Lumpur!

Our group (now made up of 5) were lucky enough to be able go spend a week in Kuala Lumpur which happened to fall over Halloween. Despite many locals having no idea what Halloween, was resulting in us being some of the only people dressed up in Zouk, we managed to find Halloween themed activities to add to Kuala Lumpur's must do attractions. 

Attractions and activities

1. Sunway lagoon

Sunway lagoon is a mixture of a water park, animal park and theme park. One ticket enables you to access all of these so you can spend the morning on the rides, then see the animals, watching the tigers and bears being fed and then spend the afternoon on the water rides. They claim to have the biggest water ride in Asia which we went on in the middle of a tropical storm as well as an indoor 5D water ride which was one of its highlights. They also have an adventure park area including a flying fox zip Line over part of the water park.

Sunway Lagoon is definitely good value for money. They do however check your bags for food and drink when you go in which meant us waddling in with jam sandwiches, crisps, fruit etc stuffed down our bikini bottoms.... Classy I know!

As it was Halloween weekend, Sunway lagoon held a fright night so we hang around for that after the day time finished. Compared to Thorpe park and other English theme parks, it wasn't as scary and some of the mazes became a little repetitive but the actors were all dressed up really well and it was a good way to spend Halloween. The owner of the park decided to jump out at us whilst we were peaking in a gap in the fence and he told us that the event is up and coming so it's only going to get better, plus he let us queue jump and gave us free sweets, what a nice man!

2. Escape room

Wanting to keep in the Halloween spirits, we spent 45 minutes trying to find our way out of a vampires castle....before he drank our blood. We started out handcuffed together and then had to find clues and work out puzzles to open boxes and doors, we massively failed but lived to tell the tale.

3. Batu caves

A short LRT ride away from China town is the Batu caves where you climb a number of stairs and walk through some caves up the top... Avoiding the monkeys trying to grab your possessions. If you're female make sure you cover your shoulders or you will have to purchase an item of clothing once there. 

4. The Petronas towers

Probably everyone who visits Kuala Lumpur will head to the Petronas towers at some point during their stay. We didn't pay to go into the towers themselves so just took photos outside before being typical British girls and getting excited about buying Marks & Spencer's wine and chocolate raisins! 

5. Shopping malls

Kuala Lumpur has a couple of really good malls which contain a number of western shops such as H&M, Topshop etc as well as some cheap clothes and accessory shops. I also managed to buy a new Iphone pretty cheap in Times Square mall which was our favourite. It has a bowling alley, cinema and a rollarcoaster which runs around the top (it's pretty expensive for just one ride though). 

Nightlife

Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur is the best night to be female as it's ladies night and we all drink for free! A number of bars take part including the skybar in the Traders hotel, it doesn't soud nice but their cocktail of Heineken, vodka and blackcurrent was delicious! Another bar worth checking out is Funtheque, the drinks were pretty gross but they had a live cabaret show which was amazing. Googling bars which participate in ladies night will give you an up to date list including the times that each runs their offers. 

On Halloween weekend we went to Zouk  (the sister club of Zouk Singapore) dressed up as dead people, we might have looked hilarious but it meant we got in for free! Drinks inside are a little on the expensive side but it's definitely worth the money.

Food

In Kuala Lumpur we ate in the mall food courts a lot where you can get noodle soups for around £1 and they have a number of restaurants to choose from. After ladies night we were in need of a big cheat meal so headed to Nandos in China town! They have quite a few in Kuala Lumpur and we made it our mission to find one during our travels.

Accommodation 

Our hostel, The Travel Hub is a really good place to stay in Kuala Lumpur. It's located in China town, close to an MRT station, breakfast is included as well as tea and coffee all day, plus they have a cool rooftop area where they have a free BBQ every Saturday so it comes highly recommended! 

The Philippines: Swimming with whale sharks

We absolutely loved our month in the Philippines however we definately made a fair amount of mistakes when it came to planning our route as we didn't really know anyone who had been before so we had to rely on maps and the internet to plan our journeys. This meant that once in the Philippines we found that certain journeys were not possible or would take too long so we zig zagged around a bit.

After a week in Boracay we spent a night in Iloilo and then took an overnight boat sharing a room with 240 people and a couple of roosters to Cebu.

Cebu

Our time in Cebu was spent in the city where we visited the Spanish fort, Carbon market, some really good malls and took jeepneys around the city (each ride is only around 9 pence).

Unfortunately we didn't spend any time on the beaches which we later found out are really nice so if visiting Cebu it's probably best to spend your time there. The nightlife in the city isn't amazing but we went to an Irish pub one night where Jen kicked the singers off the stage to perform her own solo and then onto a club, it was massively empty but we met a bunch of really lovely locals so had fun dancing with them.

Dumaguete

If visiting Dumaguete you definately have to stay at Harold's mansion. It has a rooftop area with live singers, the rooms have aircon and TVs and they provide free tea and coffee. Harold himself is really nice and goes out of his way to make you feel welcome, he took us for our first surf lesson one day, we weren't any good but we loved it all the same. There's some nightlife here due to it being a student town, hot springs and it's cheap to learn how to dive.

Bohol and Panglao island

The boat journey from Dumaguete to Bohol goes really quickly as they show films on a big TV. I'm not going to reccomend our accomodation "Paddles up" as we had to wake up every half an hour to brush ants off of our beds and sleep with the light on! It's definately much better to stay on Panglao island which is joined to Bohol by a bridge. 

Eduardos place and Alonaland are both really nice places to stay, they both have a pool, nice rooms and aircon. Alonaland is slightly cheaper, closer to the beach and has a TV.

You can do all of your activities in one day and take a public bus between them all. The furthest away is the Chocolate hills which due to the time of year looked nothing like chocolate but worth seeing all the same. A quick bus ride away is the Tarsier sanctuary which takes no longer than 15 minutes to walk through as it is tiny and then you can hop back on a bus to the zip line.

The zip lining here is amazing, you lie on your stomach and fly over the jungle and a river, it was definitely the highlight of our day. If like us you want to avoid going back to your bug infested room, the cinema is only 100 pesos and we joined a gym called "The gym" for a week which cost 1000 pesos.

The food in Panglao island is amazing and so cheap. There's lots of BBQ restaurants including Alona hidden dream where you can get seafood and mixed vegetables for a few pounds. There's also a restaurant called Trudis place which does a 3 course menu for around 3 pounds and best of all they bring out everyone's food at once which is very rare for Asia.

There wasn't a great deal to do in Panglao island (hence why we actually managed to go to the gym every day) however probably the best day i've had so far was spent here swimming with whale sharks. If you are going to Cebu it's best to do it from there to save yourself the 3 hour boat ride.

We set off early in the morning and arrived in Oslob where you have a quick briefing about what isn't allowed when you get into the water (suncream, touching etc.) and then you get taken in a paddle boat out to where the fishermen feed the sharks.

The guys on our boat were really nice. If you hire a GoPro from here (500 pesos) they will take all of your photos for you and help you get the best shots.

The whale sharks are absolutely massive and we didn't expect there to be so many of them. They come up right next to you opening their huge mouths to swallow fish but they're not scary (even when you touch them by accident!). It was such an amazing experience and I would love to do it again. You can also dive here but as the sharks are mostely at the surface I think snorkelling is better.

Manila

As we needed to save time we flew up to Manila which was to be our last stop before Malaysia. Manila wasn't our favourite place and I wouldn't suggest spending a lot of time here but our hostels "Pink Manila" and "Our awesome hostel" were both really good. Staying at both means you get to see both parts of the city which are completely different to each other. We didn't really do anything but eat here (undoing all the hard work we did at the gym the week before!) but in our defence the Philippines has malls filled with cheap, delicious food so it's not our fault we ate everything. Oh and TGI's does bottomless mojitos...winning!

Mermaid lessons in Boracay!

We touched down in Boracay back in September and us food girls that like to save our calories for food, were delighted to discover San Miguel light at the airport....only 100 calories, we loved the Philippines already! Boracay itself is absolutely beautiful! It reminded us of Gili T only prettier, bigger, less busy and much cheaper. A large bottle of rum costs less than a bottle of mixer at just 85p!

 Nightlife

All the nights out we had in Boracay were really fun. We stayed in station 2 on White beach which is in the middle of 1 and 3 but all the bars on either side are in walking distance. If you plan on going out a lot, ideally you want to stay on this side of the island. There's a little reggae bar that we went to every night which plays really good music and beers are the cheapest we found at just 50p. There's also a bar called Epic which has a ladies night where cocktails are 50 pesos each. There's loads of other bars dotted around but one of the only ones that stays open until late is Summer place which you have to pay to get into after a certain time, probably around midnight.

Accommodation

Accommodation wise we stayed at Facebook resort which is nice, inexpensive, in the center of everything and the owner is lovely. He even posted us an item we left behind to another country free of charge! You also get a TV in your room which is perfect because the Philippines has HBO which shows really good films.

Mermaid lessons

Probably one of the best days we've had travelling was spent becoming mermaids in Boracay! For £20 you get fitted with a mermaid tail and are taken for a 2 hour mermaid lesson in the sea which includes learning how to swim in different strokes, learning some tricks and a photoshoot. I'd love to say we looked elegant and graceful but waves and sea water kind of took any potential elegance away, we absolutely loved it though. It definitely gave people walking past something to look/ laugh at and we even had a man come and ask our teacher to give him a lesson!

Food

Food wise Boracay has pretty much everything you could want. Station 2 has a seafood market where you can buy your seafood and choose one of the restaurants to cook it for you in your style of choice. Shakeys does really nice salads and pizzas, Army Navy is good for greasy hangover food and Spider house sells fresh sushi and wraps. I'd definitely recommend a visit to Spider house even if you don't fancy eating. It's a little bar/ restaurant which looks like a tree house in a cliff. It's just past station 1 and the walk involves walking through little caves and over pretty beaches. One of it's main features is that you can jump straight from the restaurant into the sea where there are turtles swimming beneath.

Next stops

Our next destination after Boracay was Iloilo for a quick stop over. Another amazing thing about the Phillipines is the fact that their coaches show films which makes a journey go so much quicker! After Iloilo we had to take an overnight boat to Cebu sleeping in a huge room with 240 beds (made for really tiny people) and a bunch of noisy chickens, can't say that's the best journey we've ever done! On the plus side the lady at the port was lovely enough to order us a KFC delivery before we got on board so at least we weren't travelling hungry!

Singapore, the home of Universal Studios, ice cream sandwiches and ladies night!

 

Singapore is such an amazing city! As soon as I arrived I knew that, despite the fact i would get fined $500 for eating on the MRT,  I could most definitely see myself living there. It's a really westernised country, insanely clean, has signs everywhere encouraging you to love and care for each other and their dessert of choice.... ice cream in bread!

Before coming away everyone told us how expensive Singapore is but compared to England it's still really cheap (it's just more expensive than other parts of Asia such as Thailand etc). We spent a total of 5 nights in Singapore and we planned it really well and ended up only spending around £150/ £170 including accommodation, day trips, a night out, a bit of shopping and even getting shellac manicures (only around £5).

Accommodation

Our accommodation, Footprints hostel is a really good place to stay. We booked it quite far in advance which meant that we were only paying around £6 for weeknights which included breakfast. They have a TV area and lots of films, WIFI and good showers. The only thing we didn't like is that they won't turn the aircon on until 7pm which meant us having to do our makeup hanging out of a window to stop it sweating straight off. It also makes the room smell like teenage boy in the day times too, yuk!

Things to do

Singapore is a really beautiful city at night so a chilled out evening can be spent just walking around looking at all the brightly lit buildings and the Gardens by the Bay. Desperate to have our photo taken in the famous infinity pool, we tried sneaking onto the roof of the Marina Bay Sands hotel and as a last resort, even contemplated booking a $48 chocolate buffet with the idea that we could jump into the pool after. However the potential embarrassment of being caught and chucked out made us change our minds. One day when we are rich we will come back and have beautiful infinity pool photos!

If you have some spare time during the day I'd recommend a visit to the Changi museum, it's free entry and will teach you about the WW2 and the Japanese occupation.You can get the MRT pretty much everywhere in Singapore which really helps save some money compared to having to take taxis. Their version of an oyster card, an EZ link card is really handy as it makes all of your journeys cheaper. You get your deposit back at the end of your trip too.

Singapore was our first experience of ladies night and sorry guys but it's such an amazing invention and a great reason to be female! Once a week (Wednesdays in Singapore) ladies can drink for free in a number of bars and gain access to clubs for free after. The Exchange gives out free apple martinis until a certain time at night at which point you can head over to Clarke Quay where a number of the bars there participate in ladies night. Shanghai dolly gives all ladies any 3 drinks for free and has live performers on a big stage at the front. Attica was one of our favorites where you get given a bunch of coupons that can be exchanged for any drink you like. Once you've finished drinking at all the bars, definitely head to Zouk for the rest of the night which is a really amazing club. I'm guessing a normal night out in Singapore could be quite pricey but thanks to being female all we paid for was taxis..... well knowing us we probably ended the night with some sort of delicious food too!

We brought a joint ticket to Universal studios and the night safari for around $100 at the airport. The safari is really good, you take a tram around half of the park and walk the rest to see snakes, crocodiles, bears, lions, tigers, sloth bears etc. They also put shows on where the animals do tricks such as finding grapes and sorting and recycling bottles. 

Our absolute favorite day in Singapore was spent at Universal studios pretending we were 10 years old again! Although the big roller coaster was closed, the rides we did go on were so much more fun than usual theme park rides. The Transformers 3D simulator was one of our favorites as well as the Shrek 4D show and the mummy ride where I spent the whole 5 minutes laughing at Jen screaming! We tried our best to hunt down the characters to have photos with but seeing as Shrek ran away from Aimee we only managed to find Pinocchio.

Food 

We spent our last day in Singapore shopping at the indoor markets and eating in Little India. We went to Komala Vilas, a vegetarian restaurant in little India and it was one of the best meals we have had out here and probably the best Indian meal I've ever had! After we saw a stall with a long queue selling Indian desserts so brought a ball made up of coconut, nuts and dried fruit, it was delicious!

 

The Hawker stalls all sell really good inexpensive food as well. A meal usually cost us around $4 so we ate from these most of the days. If you feel like splashing out the buffet at the Marina Bay Sands looked amazing but was unfortunately out of our price range!

Dragons, views and too much food.... The Komodo island boat trip

This trip is definitely a must do for anyone travelling around Indonesia. As the title suggests we went on the komodo island boat trip from Gili T to Flores. The companies really don't do it any justice when advertising it as it's so much more than just going to see the dragons.

There was probably around 30 of us on a boat for 4 days which stopped at various islands as it made it's way to Labuan Bajo. For around 90 pounds (1,750,000 rupiah) it's an absolute bargain, plus.... they feed you loads! We all got really fat (goodbye to all the hard work we did in the gym pre travelling) but it was so worth it!

Day 1

We left from Gili T and took a little boat to Lombok. When you get off the boat don't get in a tuc tuc to the bus, it's a massive rip off. We didn't know where we were going but the bus stop is literally down the road and we ended up angrily having to pay the man 50 rupiah each to be taken there. We then took a mini bus, had a 2 hour wait in an office and another bus for 3 and a half hours to get to our boat.

There are a number of companies that run this trip but i would definitely recommend going with "Kencana Adventure" which we booked at the travel agents next to Gili T's "Sweet and Spicy cooking school". We met some of the people doing the same trip as us but with another company who complained that ours was much better than theirs (comfort, food, entertainment etc.). The staff running our boat really made the experience what it was. They always made sure we were having a good time and entertained us with songs, instruments and getting merry on their lemon wine in the evenings. They even took one lady back 2 hours on a little boat to get her bag that she left up a mountain!

You can pre order beers to have on the boat and everyone drinks and puts music on in the night times. The boat itself was sometimes scary as some parts of the sea are really rough and the waves spill over the sides of the boat. Luckily the staff make you feel safe even though you're sometimes falling over trying to walk around.

Day 2

After breakfast (toast or banana pancakes) we swam to Moyo island where we trekked to a waterfall. You have the option to climb up the waterfall itself (not our best look legs everywhere in a bikini) or just swim at the bottom/ take a shower as there isn't one on the boat. After the waterfall we sailed to Satonda island where we were lucky enough to have dolphins swim alongside our boat, you can also spot quite a few in the distance too. At Satonda we visited the lucky lake which is said to bring you good luck if you swim in it and then snorkled back to the boat where we saw blue star fish, jellyfish and clown fish. This trip has some of the most beautiful snorkelling spots!

Day 3

On day 3 we trekked up a mountain (the same mountain the lady left her bag with her passport in at the top of!) where we saw the most amazing views, probably some of the best we have seen whilst being away.

We then snorkeled at pink beach...if you can call it "pink" which had lots of beautiful fish and corals. After lunch (normally a curry type dish with rice and salad) we went to the Komodo island to see the dragons. Six rangers kept us safe from the 2842 dragons that live on the island. They're not actually scary because they lay pretty still but when they start moving we all run behind the nearest guide!

Day 4

We started our fourth day at Rinca island where you actually see more komodo dragons than at the national park. After, we visited Kelor island which has water so shallow you can lye down and sunbath in it and it's also a good area for snorkeling.

When we arrived at our final stop Labuan Bajo, Addy who runs the boat took us all to paradise bar to watch the sunset, see an amazing band perform and get some food.

The next day in desperate need of a shower, we booked into a basic hostel where we all enjoyed being clean and finally having a proper bed. If you spend the night here definitely go to the Greek restaurant on the main road, the food is amazing.

Our visa was quickly running out so we did not have time to travel back to Bali over land so we flew back to Kuta to spend a couple of nights with our friends before they left us to go back to Australia.

Overall I definitely think anyone staying in Indonesia for a long time should take this boat trip and see Lombok and Flores with Addy and his team. They looked after us so well and we had an amazing experience thanks to them.