Author Archives: andrew

The main goal of the drive to Kuala Selangor was the fireflies on the Selangor river.  There’s a small boat-launch where tourists hire electric boats (or rowboats) to cruise around in the dark.  The fireflies only live on the mangrove … Continue reading →

I’m not sure why this was part of the tour, but at some point we stopped and rode a strange-looking jitney up a hill to look at some old European fortifications which overlook the straight.  The main draw of the … Continue reading →

So far, most of what I’ve seen of the countryside of peninsular Malaysia consists of palm-oil plantations.  Our tour-guide Saan’s father used to work as an engineer at an oil factory, so Saan is full of palm-related factoids. The trees … Continue reading →

Today we’re taking a long, slow, daytime train from Kuala Lumpur to Butterworth, and then a ferry from Butterworth to Georgetown in Penang. This train is the slowest transport option along this route, and I’ve selected it so I can … Continue reading →

I was really impressed at the handiwork of these guys — they turned this escalator completely inside-out. They must’ve been a bit smug about it too, because when I started snapping pictures they lined up and posed like big game … Continue reading →

The next few sets of photos are from Chinatown in Singapore.  It’s Lunar (aka ‘Chinese’) New Year next week so there are zillions of temporary booths and candy shops set up.

I’m on a train, on the way to the border.  Because of yet another pointless dispute between Singapore and Malaysia, we’ve already officially entered Malaysia (this happened at the train station) but we’ll have to get off the train and … Continue reading →

I just packed up my room to move out — Mom and Dad and I are going on a brief tour of Malaysia.  Among the debris on my desk was the above chopstick wrapper which I carried here from Japan … Continue reading →

The only thing requiring explanation here is this next bromeliad photo.  There were a couple of buildings which were disguised by having bromeliads stapled all over their outside  (I wonder what the r-value is?).  That meant that from any distance … Continue reading →