The Joy of Malaysian Nando's

Unrelated picture: we ate the Nando's too quickly to take a picture.

It only took a week and a half for us both to get pretty sick of Asian food. 

Don't get me wrong, we've had some amazing food on the trip so far, but 90% of it has been rice and noodles and it's starting to get old. I don't want to be all "woe is me", but being vegetarian (or technically pescatarian now we've started eating seafood again) makes finding variety in what you eat 10x harder. No matter though, we've stuck with it and found some real gems. Don't think I'll be going to Wagamama in a hurry when I get back though, let's put it that way.

Anyway, during our time in KL, we booked a night at a fancy-ass apartment on Airbnb; the apartment had its own kitchen, so obviously our first thought was, thank Christ, now we can finally make ourselves something that isn't rice or noodles for dinner. 

Of course, that was the intent.

Unwilling to spend a moment away from our new fancy apartment, we rushed over the road to the mall to get ourselves some food for dinner. What became apparent very quickly, however, was how little we could actually be fucked to cook. We racked our brains trying to decide what we wanted and all we could both think of was the hearty comfort that only comes from pasta topped with a mountain of cheese. Sadly cheese was expensive and only came by the block. Were we capable of eating a whole block of cheese in one evening? Probably, but I didn't want to find out. And what kind of heathen wants pasta without cheese?! The pasta dream died as quickly as it was born.

We were out of ideas.

Then, the answer to our prayers landed right in front of us:

Nando's.

There it stood in the middle of the mall, literally opposite the supermarket. It was a fork in the road and we had to make a choice.

We chose Nando's.

Let me tell you something about Malaysian Nando's: it's like they've taken the concept of Nando's and sewn up all the minor niggles most people have with it.

The DIY aspect of having to piss about getting plates, knives, forks, napkins, sauces - all that shit - is no longer an issue; the waitors and waitresses looked at us in horror as we made our way to get our own plates before telling us to sit down and that they'd bring them over. At one point, Callum went to get some ketchup and the waitor was over in a shot asking what was wrong and again, to sit down.

The whole aggravation of having to get up to order your food has also been eradicated and Malaysian Nando's now functions like pretty much every other restaurant or chain in the world: they come and take your order. 

What a sigh of relief for the socially inept among us that just want a restaurant to work like clockwork - no confusion, no wandering aimlessly looking for cutlery, no spending half an hour trying to work out if you're meant to go up to pay or if they bring the bill over to you. 

Malaysian Nando's is seamless. 

Malaysian Nando's have got it right.

As you walk through the door in Malaysian Nando's, the waitor taking you to your table yells "NANDOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" at the top of their lungs and all the other staff in the restaurant stop what they're doing, turn around and holla "NANDOOOOOOOOO" right back at you. It's a beautiful moment. 

However, our favourite thing about Malaysian Nando's was the price. At first, we were thinking it would be the equivalent to Western prices and pretty expensive compared to street food, but hell no, Malaysian Nando's strikes again: £4.50 each for a veggie burger, fries and unlimited refills. 

We both love trying new foods as we make our way into different places, but nothing is quite the same as some home comforts every now and again...

NANNDOOOOOOOOO!!!

Looking Back on Singapore

Leaving Singapore was odd, it was the first real time on this trip that I felt like I was backpacking and not on holiday. Ahead lay a 12 hour journey into Malaysia and it’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur. All that time gave me time to reflect on Singapore, the first stop of our adventure.

I had heard very good things about Singapore, mainly from Emma who had been there when she was cabin crew with British Airways and had never stopped raving about it; about how pretty it was, how clean it was, how modern it was and so on and so on.

Was it what I expected?

No it wasn’t. It was very pretty, stunningly so. We sat and watched the sun go down and the lights go on in the Marina 4 times in our 5 night stay and I loved each one.

There isn't a great deal to do in Singapore for your average Joe traveler like us as drinking and meals out are extortionate and the shopping malls only really cater for those interested in high fashion.

That said, there are some great things to do. For me the top 5 things to do in Singapore are:

Marina Bay Sands Observation Deck

This cost us $22 each but the view was incredible. There isn't a great amount to do at the top and the drinks are, as you would expect, hella expensive. But it is 110% worth being up there for sunset. We were also lucky enough to see some the Singapore F1 practice from the top and so we stayed there for many hours.

The Colour and Light Show

This gets shown nightly just out the front of Marina Bay Sands: twice on weeknights and thrice on weekends. It only lasts around 15 minutes, but is entirely free and utterly amazing. I would recommend getting there about 10 minutes ahead of show time as it gets quite crowded on the wooden steps.

Colour and Light Show by the bay

The Island Of Sentosa

You can get as much or as little out of Sentosa as you want, depending on your budget of course. With a Universal Studios, a host of bars, restaurants (including a Hard Rock Cafe) and hotels on the small island, you could really make a day of it, or even have a mini vacation there.

For us obviously it was a cheap day trip. It's incredibly easy to get to by train and then we just walked around the island, had lunch at the food hall and relaxed on the beach.

Despite the entire island being eerily similar to Spooky Island in Scooby-Doo, it's nice to get out of the city for a day. It's also got some pretty cool photo opportunities.

Gluttons Bay Food Market

Located just off the bay this place provided me with the best food and drink I had in my time in Singapore. It's street food, but upmarket - but for the same price as all the other street food you find in Singapore.

Also, if you are there, buy the lemon ice tea from the stall on the end at the far left. It is the best thing I have ever had. That isn't me over exaggerating for the sake of this blog, it is just that good.

Gluttons Bay Food Market

Watching the Sunset in Marina Bay   

I know I have spoken about the observation deck, but to quote Karl Pilkington:

"I'd rather live in a cave with a view of a palace than live in a palace with a view of a cave."

Which really just about sums up why you should see the sunset in the Marina Bay from as many angles as possible, as they are all beautiful, and of course - free.



Sure we had our problems in Singapore: the hostel, the Grand Prix closing off all of the roads, but these were small niggles which were soon soothed by how Singapore runs like utter clock work.

The trains are excellent and cheap, the food is delicious and once again I would like to express how awe inspiringly gorgeous the city is at night.

I have only two real problems with Singapore, in fact I won’t even call them problems as that feels unfair, instead I will call them observations.

Firstly, Singapore is expensive. It is a city for the rich and successful - the shopping malls, whilst delightfully air conditioned, are for those who like to spend thousands of pounds on Gucci watches and the hotels are gargantuan beacons of pomposity and wealth.

Even us wee backpackers on a budget felt the sting of the prices. It probably wouldn’t seem that awful to you, but we came to Asia as it is cheap to travel. Singpaore is as expensive and more so in some places than London and that is not a sustainable budget plan.

Secondly, is something that I hope I can explain properly, Singapore felt, in parts, sterile.

It’s something that has only really occurred to me now we are in Kuala Lumpur. The center of Singapore, Marina Bay, is gorgeous and pretty and clean and all the rest of it, but only out of necessity. It’s a place for the wealthy; a place for people used to the best and only that.

Take my home capital city, London, as an example. It feels like a real city in it’s culture and history. Almost every street has a story and every building a significance spanning centuries. In the centre of Singapore this has been obliterated and pushed to the outskirts to make room for this immaculate metropolis.

If you want a metaphor, Singapore is an iPhone 7. It’s clever and amazing and you want to show it off, you’re proud to have one but it costs you a lot of money and you’re always half terrified it’s about to break and a part of you knows that you won’t ever love it like you did your Nokia 8310, which played snake and you could drop from a building and wait for it to bounce back up.

Kuala Lumpur: A Bad First Impression

I believe my bad first impression of Kuala Lumpur stemmed from the journey to get there from Singapore: 12 hours of travel, including a tube journey, two buses, two different immigration points, two more trains, another metro system we had no idea how to navigate and finally, a walk in 33 degree heat to our hostel. Add to that a stinking cold and you have the perfect recipe for a bad mood.

Needless to say, my first impressions of Kuala Lumpur were not...the best. I was hot, bothered, tired and ill and the city was a world away from the neat, immaculate city of Singapore, of which we had just left. Was it too late to hop back on the train and go back? Maybe I could just spend 6 months in Singapore, oh wait, I couldn't because it is DAMN expensive. 

Kuala Lumpur is, in a word, manic. It is a fast moving city, where there seems to be no rules or order on either the roads or the pavements. Motorbikes seem to be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want. They want to ride on the roads? Great. Weave in and out of traffic, bashing into cars as they fly by? Yeah, cool. They want to skip the traffic and ride on the busy pavements instead? Sure, go for it. They want to do a U-turn in the middle of a main road? Why not.

And don't even get me started on the roads.

At first we assumed every pedestrian crossing in the city was broken. You'd press the button and wait, and wait, and wait, but nothing would happen. Oh wait, that's a lie, something would happen: your skin would slowly fry in the blistering sun as you stood next to the road like a total lemon because you'd been waiting there so long. The locals seemed to ignore the glaring Red Man on the crossing completely and just waded across moving traffic to the other side of the road. We watched with open mouths. Were they completely insane?! 

We were too British to follow suit. We would wait until we were told to cross. (Of course this never happened and in the end we learnt to run across, whilst simultaneously praying we wouldn't get flattened.)

Eventually we found out from the lady who works at our hostel, that the locals treat the level crossing as more of a "reference", which reminded us of this:

Now that we've been here six days, we are pros at crossing the road like the locals: avoid eye contact, hand up and RUN.

We are still alive, so it must be working.

Another thing I didn't like about KL was the toilets. In a lot of places, instead of toilet paper, they have a hose. A fucking hose. A lot of people seem to use it to jet wash the entirety of the toilet, as the whole area, toilet seat, floor, walls, are often SOAKED. I like my creature comforts. So this was not OK. 

Now, I am a bit more used to walking into toilets only to see the working set of the Poseidon Adventure, but it does take some getting used to.

One thing that really struck me about KL was how much work is being done around the city and there's new hotels and skyscrapers popping up all over the place; it really seems like an up and coming city that could one day rival somewhere as high tech as Singapore. 

Despite the bad first impression, I am really loving the city now - so much so that we have extended our time here by three days. The chaos and mayhem once seemed overwhelming, but now it has become part of the buzz I love about it. My favourite part of the city is definitely how it merges the surrounding forests and mountains. One day we did a hike (which you can read about here) and as we climbed, on one side we could see the concrete jungle of the city and on the other was untouched forest, which our guide told us was still home to some tigers! How amazing is that?!

We've had a great time here so far: we've drank at the Sky Bar, drank some more on a Helipad Bar, done a sunrise trek and eaten some of the most amazing food. We can't wait for the next few days now.

The Hike Up Bukit Tabur

After spending countless hours walking around cities and shopping malls I finally had a chance to choose what we did. Don’t get me wrong I do love the cities and I am very lucky to be doing what I am but I would take a walk in the woods over a crowded pavement any day. 

It was because of this that I made the executive decision to book us both onto a hiking tour with our hostel which started at 6am. It was the first time on this trip I had been allowed any authority or responsibility so needless to say I needed a home run, a rather impressive home run as Emma wasn’t too impressed when I told her we needed to be ready to go at 6; so we would need to be up at around 5:30pm. 

The alarm going off was painful; we haven’t really adjusted well to the time difference, falling asleep most nights in the early hours and waking up in the late afternoon. 

The hike started in total darkness, our guide had already pre-warned us that the first hundred meters or so was very steep and more of a scramble than a hike. No matter we thought, we could do a bit of hard graft as we are relatively fit and active people. 

Halfway to the very top our guide let us stop and take a rest and Oh. My. God. had I been wrong about this. The word "hike" must not really translate in Malaysia, as what this had turned out to be was a full blown rock climb up sheer rock using the smallest little crack and tree roots to heave ourselves, sweating and panting toward the top. 

Emma looked at me, I understood, this was strike one. 

We pressed on, higher and higher in the hot humid air as the sun broke over the horizon. Unfortunately we couldn’t see it rise whilst we walked on the “path” as we were surrounded by trees. 

We stopped again around two thirds of the way up, the guide suggested we take on some water at this point. Unfortunately neither Emma or I had been awake enough when we started out to consider the fact that we might need water on a 5 hour hike in Malaysia. 

Emma looked at me, I understood, this was strike two. 

As we pressed on, dehydrated, tired, hot and ever so slightly terrified for our lives as we overhung sudden drops on crumbling rocks I started to pray that the view at the top was worth all this. 

And it was. 

I had done it, I had made a decision and it had turned out to be a good one, even Emma admitted it had all been worth it. 

It was a good thing I asked, as had I asked Emma what she thought of the experience at the bottom she may have taken us back to the top just to throw me off. 

Let me just explain that I enjoyed the hike up and down. It was a challenge, it’s something that most people just don’t do and it’s something that you might not always be able to do in years to come, with so much of the untouched wildness of the world being tamed and built on. 

Emma meanwhile, found the going up tough yet rewarding, the way down for her, however, was a tale of woe and despair. It might have been her shoes, or the tiredness that had seeped into her legs, or maybe her less than lofty height which stopped her from reaching footholds and roots. 

Personally I think it was a combination of all three, mixed in with some just general poor coordination. 

Emma fell over. A lot. 

I think by the end it was about 11 falls, one of which was spectacular. This made her nervous on coming down the more challenging parts and slowed her to a crawl. Which put me in a dilemma, do I stick with her and offer her advice about where to tread? But then that might be patronising and I had a feeling I was already scating on stick thin ice. 

I pushed on, which turned out to be an equally bad idea. As by the time we were descending the “path”, it had become quite busy with teenage locals. And I became somewhat of a star attraction. In hindsight taking selfies with groups of locals probably wasn’t THE most supportive thing I could of done whilst Emma scaled down the side of a particularly steep cliff, but that’s just the price of fame I’m afraid. 

We made it to the bottom, with a dozen new mosquito bites each, an array of bruises and a bleeding leg on Emma. I loved every minute of it and would go again in a heartbeat and I think Emma would too, just maybe not with me.

Singapore Photoblog