Gong Xi Fa Cai This is to wish you all a Happy Chinese New Year on 31st January. Penang is the place to be for festivals as there are so many cultures and nationalities here. We are in the middle of Thaipusam, a Hindu festival that consists of a silver chariot carrying a statue of Lord Muraga being pulled through the streets with devotees smashing coconuts and having baskets of offerings blessed. We got up early yesterday to watch the procession in Little India...

Close encounters of the Orangutan kind The 12 days of Christmas are coming to an end and I hope you all had a wonderful time. We certainly did in Malaysia and then Indonesia. We spent the 2 weeks prior to the holidays back in Penang recovering from a month away and getting excited about the children plus Sean' s girlfriend, Lisette joining us for 2weeks. We had to do a 2 day trip to Kuala Lumpur to get our Myanmar visas for January. We stayed in a small hotel, ...

Have finished our travelling around Indochina with 5 action packed days in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. The great parts were the arrivals at both places by large public speedboats after 6 hour journeys. We left Chau Doc, Vietnam, completed Vietnamese and Cambodian immigration on floating jetties and then sat back to watch the life on the river and riverbanks. As we sped further away from the towns, the boat people and floating fish villages were more spread out and...

Am now back in the lovely surroundings of the E and O Hotel in Penang after 8 nights in India! For those who thought l was having too good a time, this was my comeuppence. It was a fascinating experience, both great and not so great at times. Should have realised when we got off the plane at Guwahati (pronounced Goo-hart-tee) accompanied only by Buddhist monks and all the other Westerners stayed on to fly to Bangkok, that we were in for a challenging time!!! To ...

Have been in Georgetown for 2 weeks now and we are still enjoying every minute. We try and do something different every day despite the unsettled weather. I loved the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion which is just around the corner from us. It is externally the most gorgeous bright blue and was the family home of a very wealthy Chinaman. The house was used during the filming of 'Indochine'. Midweek we hired a (bright turquoise!!!!) car and drove around Penang. Georgetown...