history of a man

After a few days in Singapore, it was time to continue my trip to new lands. I had a night flight to Tokyo booked from Kuala Lumpur, and my idea was spending the day there before taking the flight, so Pier and me left early that morning. After the six hours bus ride, we arrived to KL, and I left my luggage at the bus station for visiting the city.

The KL monorail	Coming closer to the Petronas

The main objective was the Petronas towers, that impressed me again as the first time I saw them, even if it’s been a while since they were the tallest building of the world (the title was for the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, although it is not so impressive in my opinion), and both have been already surpassed by the Burj Dubai that will soon reach the amazing height of 818 metres… I’ll have to go to Dubai some day to see that in person.

Close look to the Petronas

After the “serious” pictures, Pier and me made some fun shots with the tower in our back. Afterwards I went with Pier to buy some souvenirs, and he left for going back to Singapore. Then I went to the Times Square building and bought some books and had a coffee at the Starbucks. Then as I went out it starting raining hard, so I decided to finish the visit.

Some “fun” shots

After picking up my luggage I went to the airport. The night flight was quite tiring but without incidents, and around 7am I finally arrived to the Narita airport.

More pics in my flickr set: 2008-AsiaTrip-02-Kuala Lumpur .

After two days going out at night, and possibly also influenced by the timezone and weather change , on Sunday I woke up exhausted, so we took the day really easy. The afternoon we walked around the Marina Bay and Esplanade area.

The Esplanade	Th “big durian”

We went to the Merlion (the city simbol) and we had a coffee in a cafe nearby, and we went back home. At night we had dinner at a place close to Brenda’s house, then chatted a while a checked internet, and went to sleep early because the day after was going to be hard.

The Merlion	Coming back home

Even after the long trip and the party of the previous day, I didn’t have any jet-lag symptoms, so after a small brunch Brenda, Pier and me went to China Town and walked a bit around. I also bought the bus ticket for Kuala Lumpur that I would take a couple of days after.

Typical houses in China Town

Afterwards we went to Sentosa, a small island to the south of the city, that is some kind of touristic park. I was already there during my previous visit to the city, but in these last two years they have constructed several new things, and in particular there is a new train service that makes accessing to the island quite easier.

Sights from the coast facing Sentosa	New tourist centre in construction at the entrance of Sentosa

After riding in one of the attraction we went to Newton to have dinner. It’s a big square with lot of small Asian food restaurants on the sides. After that Brenda and Pier were quite tired, so I decided to go out alone. My friend Fer had told me about a Spanish party that night, but before I went to meet my friend Serene, from Singapore, to have a beer.

Serene and Fiona	Myself with Serene in Clarke Quay

Once there i got a text from Fer telling me that he could not go out, so I stayed with Serene and her friend Fiona, and afterwards we went to Clarke Quay for a while.

More pics in my flikr set “Asia Trip 2008: Singapore”

On October 30th I left Madrid direction Singapore. I had to make a transfer at Heathrow airport (London), and the flight there was delayed more than 2 hours, so after much walking around the airport I finally took the flight. The flight was quite long, 12 hours, and I spent most of the time sleeping, watching films and reading.

Finally, with two hours delay I arrived to Singapore. The plan was going to my friend Brenda’s house to to leave all my stuff before going to celebrate her birthday, but because of the delay I had to go directly to the bar where Brenda was with all her friends. It was Halloween night, so I guess many people that show me thought that sweaty european with two big backpacks was wearing a backpacker costume :p

Brenda’s birthday party at Alley Bar	My birthday present

We were at Alley bar drinking something and playing a weird card game until 11 or 12, and from there we tried to go to Zouk (a quite famous party place in Singapore) after leaving my stuff and Brenda’s presents at her place. I was supposed to meet Fer Martin (a friend from my Vulcanus time in Japan) there, but unfortunately it was absolutely full so we decided to change place and went to Clarke Quay, the most typical party area, until 3 more or less that we went home to sleep.

The birthday cake	Party at Clarke Quay

More pics in my flickr set “Asia Trip 2008: Singapore”

Since I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my next trip I’ve been thinking a lot about the itinerary. Even if my intention is mainly to improvise on the way, I think it is also a good to have a general idea of the places I want to visit.

Main view of the travel map

Right now it seems that the trip will be similar to what you can see on the maps. According to the page I used for creating the map (Travellerspoint) it will be a total of 40.710 kilometres, and that’s using straight lines and not counting possible intermediate stops or the trips inside each main destination. A very long trip indeed…

Detail of the trip plan in the continental Asia

The list of main destinations that are marked on the map are:

* [30 Oct 2008] Madrid, Spain
* [30 Oct 2008 - 03 Nov 2008] Singapore, Singapore
* [03 Nov 2008] Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
* [03 Nov 2008 - 11 Nov 2008] Tokyo, Japan
* [11 Nov 2008] Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
* [11 Nov 2008 - 15 Nov 2008] Bangkok, Thailand
* [15 Nov 2008 - 16 Nov 2008] Sukhothai, Thailand
* [16 Nov 2008 - 20 Nov 2008] Chiang Mai, Thailand
* [20 Nov 2008 - 23 Nov 2008] Luang Prabang, Laos
* [23 Nov 2008 - 26 Nov 2008] Vientiane, Laos
* [26 Nov 2008 - 30 Nov 2008] Siĕmréab, Cambodia
* [30 Nov 2008 - 02 Dec 2008] Phnom Penh, Cambodia
* [02 Dec 2008 - 04 Dec 2008] Mekong Delta, Vietnam
* [04 Dec 2008 - 07 Dec 2008] Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
* [07 Dec 2008 - 12 Dec 2008] Hoi An, Vietnam
* [12 Dec 2008 - 20 Dec 2008] Hanoi, Vietnam
* [20 Dec 2008 - 21 Dec 2008] Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
* [21 Dec 2008 - 22 Dec 2008] Singapore, Singapore
* [22 Dec 2008] Madrid, Spain

In many of the places (Chiang Mai, Luang Prabang, Hoi An, Hanoi, etc) I’ve included more days for visiting nearby places that look interesting, and at the end of the trip in Hanoi I left some days too to take in account delays or detours from the planned route. If there is anyone who’s been to this are and thinks I’m missing an interesting place or that I should spend more/less days somewhere please tell me in the comments.

Just three days left… I’m so nervous!