well, first off, our brief stay in sydney was excellent. i (james) saw everything that anyone wants to see in that particular city, the harbour bridge, the opera house, and taronga zoo, while tim saw it all again! seriously though, sydney is a very cool city, it was, however, very strange not having anything to do and going to sleep resonably early after the shanigans in fiji! following sydney we jetted off to singapore. this city is unbelievably clean, you are not allowed to chew chewing gum or jaywalk ($65 on the spot fine, or thereabouts!), however, the locals dont seem to obey this rule much, so nor did we. we didnt get caught for anyone worrying! the merlion statue is a very neat place (see chris' pics, ours are pretty similar except the weather was nicer as was or hostel me thinks! after a day and a bit in singapore we jumped on a bus with loads of leg room and drove up to melaka in malaysia, which is where we are right now! the city looks very rich as you drive in however conditions deteriorate slightly in the centre. we went along to the chinese night market in town which, as you can imagine, seels pretty much anything you could want, accompanied by the soothing aroma of hundreds of different insense burners everywhere! after the market we rode back to the hostel on a kind of three-wheeled bike thingy. it was all decked out malaysian pimp style with tinsel, flashing lights and spinny things with an accompanying soundtrack of MC hammer and ricky martin, what a ride! anyways, back at the hostel now which has a definite japan style to it and off on the bus to KL tomorrow (seriously, not much to do in this place!) james