See ya later SE Asia!

Back in Singapore, in a beautifully luxurious hostel. There are duvets on the beds, two pillows, amazingly comfortable beds, western-style toilets with running water, hot showers, and best of all: drinkable tap water!! This is a great in-between spot to be on my way to Auckland.

Making my way here from Langkawi was not easy. I had really wanted to take a night train, so I decided to make my way all the way down the West coast of Peninsular Malaysia to Singapore. The journey began in Alor Setar where I learned that my first train was three and a half hours late. The train station was simply a platform with a roof and the mosquitoes were more than happy to take advantage of the buffet that was set before them. At 11:15pm the train finally arrived and I was grateful to the bed that awaited me within. 10 hours later I was in Kuala Lumpur.

As irony would have it, I had three hours and twenty minutes to make my connection in Kuala Lumpur... so my first train arrived just minutes after my second train was scheduled to leave. Luckily this second train was also late, departing an hour and a half after schedule! At 10:25am the train left with a very tired Aki on board. We arrived in Singapore around 5:30pm and I was simply exhausted by then. To make all this even worse I had woken up with a cold in Langkawi the morning of departure!!

This morning things look a lot better. Thanks to a bunch of traditional Chinese remedies and a bunch of Western cold medicine I feel almost human again, awaiting my ten hour flight to New Zealand, leaving at 8pm tonight!

Things that I'm looking forward to: good bread, cheese (ANY kind of cheese), yogurt, toilet paper that I don't have to carry around, the thin layer of stickiness due to humidity and heat, salad -- actually vegetables in general that haven't been cooked in oil, drinkable tap water, lack of cockroaches.

Things that I know I'll miss: curry and noodles on every corner, beaches and warm oceans, beautiful warm smiles, good meals for a dollar, mis-mash of religions and cultures, small narrow streets, smells of little India and Chinatown, roti canai.