Our flight from Kuala Lumpur to Sandkan had us stopping in Kota Kinabalu. There isn’t too much to do in the airport, except to drink $2 bottles of water and shop at a few overpriced boutiques. We arrived in Sandakan after a beautiful sunset flight over the spectacular Mount Kinabalu. Luckily we met up ... (read more →)

Our next destination was Bandar Seri Begawan, the capital of Brunei. We flew through Kota Kinabalu to get there. The Royal Brunei flight was on time, a modern plane, and great service. It was pricy however: $200 one way from KK.
We were staying at the Jubilee Hotel and had arranged ... (read more →)

The Kuala Lumpur airport is one of SE Asia’s newest airports, and is immaculate, modern, and super-efficient. Although located 70 km (40 miles) out of the city, the brand new KLIA Ekspres train takes you right downtown in 28 minutes. Don’t be suckered in by the cabs offering cheaper fares then the train – ... (read more →)

Our bad luck continued at our hotel.  The Coral View Resort seemed to have a somewhat reasonable price, but the non-fan rooms only offered single beds that couldn’t be pushed together.  They are also high up on the hill and require climbing over rickety stairs to get to. We upgraded to the A/C room ... (read more →)

We arrived early at the bus station in Penang.  The intercity buses are very well run, we were even able to reserve front row seats for our trip to the east coast. The scenery was spectacular – we were glad we decided not to take the overnight bus. At one point, a police officer ... (read more →)

We arrived on the island of Penang after a flight from Chiang Mai in Thailand. We arrived in the airport late at night. After hitting an ATM, we paid for a taxi coupon to get to our hotel, such as it was.
The drive in from the airport to Georgetown took ... (read more →)

  The people of Malaysia were incredibly kind. They were always tripping over themselves to help us. They treated us very well and were happy to see tourists. This certainly made our time more enjoyable. Oh and by the way, many people spoke excellent English.
However, overall we did not enjoy our ... (read more →)

The next morning we got up early to go to the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, about 1 hour back towards Lampang right off the highway. We had frustratingly passed it the previous day on the road in to Chiang Mai, but couldn’t figure out how to get the bus driver to stop, let us get ... (read more →)

In the morning, we got going early again to Chiang Mai. The bus left on time and was comfortable.  We grabbed a Tuk-Tuk to get to our hotel through the narrow twisty streets of the old city. We were staying at the Libra Guest House.  This was another wonderful budget Thai hotel – probably ... (read more →)

We tuk-tuk’ed to the bus station in Ayutthaya, as it is outside the main city and quite a walk. The bus station is set up in a pretty strange way. It is not possible to buy a ticket until the bus arrives. In our case, the bus originated in Bangkok. The ticket agent’s English ... (read more →)