So Not Lost!

Christ Church - Click to View Hi-Res Image

The Christ Church in Melaka (Malacca), Malaysia is a Dutch colonial Protestant church. Construction began in 1741 and was completed in 1753 (as inscribed on the face of the church). Originally built by the Dutch, it was re-consecrated with the rites of the Church of England (and renamed Christ Church) in 1838, following transfer of Melaka from the Dutch to the British. In 1911, the white Christ Church was repainted to its current red color.

I hope you enjoyed the TravelTuesday Picture of the Week! Enjoy the rest of TravelTuesday on Twitter and follow me @hyperren. Come back next week for another PotW!

And so the adventure ends.

It was my biggest and longest trip since last year’s three-week Southeast Asian trip, and my first major one this year (not to mention the first one with my new passport). It was an exciting one for me, too, visiting a new country for the first time, and revisiting a city I’d been last year, even for just a few hours. I decided not to set my plans in stone apart from my flights to and from Laos. In the end, everything worked out amazingly.

Revisiting Kuala Lumpur was nice, especially since I was visiting (and being hosted by) someone I’d hosted here in Singapore. I had a great time with him, even as we did the touristy thing and posed for photos in front of the Petronas Towers. Kuala Lumpur was also a nice little middle ground, a sort of transitionary destination between the orderly cleanliness of Singapore and the developing dustiness of Laos.

Petronas Towers

Flying into and landing in Laos was an amazing feeling. There are few things better than looking out the plane window and knowing that you are about to set foot in a whole new country. It was practically a sea of green that was greeting me on my arrival in Vientiane.

Vientiane was a lovely little city, slowly coming into its own but still one of the most relaxed Southeast Asian capital cities. Sure, it doesn’t have the ease of getting around that Singapore does, but it doesn’t have the hectic hustle and bustle of Bangkok or Manila, nor is it in any imminent danger of suddenly sprouting skyscrapers like Phnom Penh. (There is currently a law prohibiting the construction of buildings taller than the seven-storey Patuxay.)

Patuxay Park, Vientiane

Vang Vieng was everything the guidebooks said it would be: Packed with backpackers going tubing, full of restaurants and bars playing nothing but Friends and Family Guy. Some might not like that, but I definitely enjoyed myself and ended up staying a little longer than planned. Traveling by myself allowed me to meet a lot of new people, including (and especially) one that became my travel buddy in Vang Vieng.

partying at Bucket Bar in Vang Vieng

When a trip ends, there always seems to be the feeling that you never have enough time to travel. Maybe I feel that way because I’ve yet to do a trip longer than three weeks long. In Laos, I met a handful of people who were winding down on their seventh or eighth month of travel, and were just about ready to go home. But I only had a week, and while a week might be plenty for some people, it simply wasn’t enough for me.

And so this Laos adventure ends. I think I’ll definitely go back; there’s still a lot I need to see in Laos. Now I’m looking forward to where my travels will take me to next!

Tonight, I begin my week-long holiday as I journey into the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, better known as Laos. I fly from Singapore into Kuala Lumpur via Tiger Airways tonight, then tomorrow I take an AirAsia flight from KL to the Lao capital of Vientiane. I return to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur one week later, on the 24th.

Patuxay in Vientiane / image by Many Moon Honeymoon

I don’t really have any solid plans, although I do know I would like to pass through the typical backpacker trail of Vientiane, Vang Vieng, and Luang Prabang. I don’t know where I’ll stay, how much time I’ll spend in each city, or how I’ll get from place to place, but hey, that’s part of the fun!

monks in Luang Prabang / photo by Many Moon Honeymoon

I’ll do my best to blog (or at the very least post a couple of photos) while I’m on the road, but I can’t promise that. Perhaps the best and easiest way to get updated is either through Twitter @hyperren or by liking my Facebook page, as it’ll be easier and faster to post quick updates through those methods.

If you have any suggestions on where to go, what to see, and what to do, or if you’re going to be in Laos between now and the 24th, post a comment!

Photos by Many Moon Honeymoon licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

View of Petronas Towers from KL Tower - Click to View Hi-Res Image

The Petronas Towers are the world’s tallest twin towers, but you can’t view the city from the top; free tickets can only take you to the Skybridge on the 41st and 42nd floors. On the other hand, you can go all the way to the top of the KL Tower (the fifth tallest telecommunication tower in the world). This grants you a great view of the city, and as you can see in this photo, you can view the Petronas Towers from this vantage point. There are even guides in the tower that helpfully point out what exactly you’re looking at from above.

I hope you enjoyed the TravelTuesday Picture of the Week! Enjoy the rest of TravelTuesday on Twitter and follow me @hyperren. Come back next week for another PotW!

I woke up on Saturday morning wondering if I made the right decision to stay for just one full day in Kuala Lumpur. On one hand, I’d already seen all the major sights and destinations that I wanted to visit: Petronas Towers (even if I didn’t get to go up on the skybridge), KL Tower, Bukit Bintang, Merdeka Square, Little India, Chinatown, and Jalan Petaling. On the other hand, there were still a lot of things I missed out on. I didn’t get to enter a single museum, for example, though whether or not that was such a big loss is still debatable. I didn’t stay long enough to get the hang of the railway system. I missed out on some quick day trips outside of the city center, like Putrajaya or the Batu Caves. As I started to gather my things, I contemplated staying in Kuala Lumpur just a little bit longer.

I didn’t have a set schedule for Kuala Lumpur and Singapore; all that was set in stone was that I had to be in Singapore by Tuesday morning to catch a plane to Macau. I debated whether or not to spend a little more time at Kuala Lumpur at the expense of time spent in Singapore. Ultimately, I decided that not seeing everything at least gave me some incentive to return to Kuala Lumpur in the future. With that decided, I called up the bus companies to figure out the departure times of their buses to Singapore. I settled on one that left at around noon.

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