KL, Singapore and Perth

Paul here, and as some of you may have guessed, this is my first entry on the blog, (so it probably won't be as detailed / good). Since the last post we've spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur.

That was a far as Fossie got and it's been over a week since he did that so I'm just going to finish off this post. We spent 2 days in KL. It was a fab city, really clean and modern with great public transport. We did a few of the touristy things there. The first morning Foss queued for ages for tickets to the Petronas Towers (he is good for something) so we could go up to the Skybridge and get a glimpse of  the view out over the city.

We went to the Lake Gardens too and visited the Orchid Gardens there. I spent ages taking loads of photos there while Foss sat and waited patiently.

They had a craft village there as well and I got to try my hand at some batik.

This was what I produced at the end.

The picture was traced but I had great fun doing the wax outline and painting with the dye .

After KL we got a bus to Singapore. It was similar to KL, being such a modern city. There were loads of shops there too. I don't think I've ever seen anywhere with such a high concentration of shops and shopping centres. Besides shopping, we visited to the zoo there. It was definitely the best zoo I've ever been to. Although I don't know how much competition Fota and Dublin Zoo really provide. We saw loads of different animals there and the whole set up seemed really good. We both loved it.

That was the end of the South- East Asia leg of the trip. I can't believe it's over. Seems like absolutely ages ago that we were in India. We have seen and done so much since then.
Anyway we flew to Perth from Singapore  where we met up with Mum and Dad. It was great to see them. Siobhan and Mike have been spoiling us all since we arrived. It's great to have your own personal tour guides. They brought us to see so much that I don't think we would have gotten to otherwise.
One of the places they brought us to was the port town of Fremantle. It's only about half an hour away, but Mike took us the scenic route to show off some of the views out over the river so it took a bit longer but we loved getting to see so much.

Australian Mother's Day was last Sunday so we had a picnic in King's Park. It's amazing that they have such a huge park area in the middle of the city. It's very popular though and was absolutely jam packed for the day that was in it.The Australian idea of a picnic is a bit more upmarket that the Irish one. Not a ham sandwich in sight and I'd say we were the only ones drinking our flask of tea from tin cups, though I think our cake stand made up for that.

Siobhán and Mike took us on trip to the Swan Valley Winery area. We stopped in Sandalford Winery and sampled some of the wines there. Then in was on to the chocolate factory where we had a 'few' of the free samples, tried out some real hot chocolate and indulged in a chocolate fondue with all sorts of goodies for dipping.

After that we had a little stroll and came across a kids playground. Some of the 'ould wans' got a bit unruly on the spinny-around-thing.


And sure you couldn't go to the playground without getting some ice-cream so we made sure to drop into the the ice-creamery afterwards. On our way to the next winery we took a detour to Bell's Rapids and even though the river was low and there were no rapids there was some magnificent scenery there.

Going back into town we couldn't drive past the Feral Brewery without sampling some of their wares.

We never did make it to that second winery in the end. It was closed when we got there!

In between all of that we managed to get to Floreat, Cottesloe and Scarboro beaches. The 3 of them were beautiful but the water was a bit colder than we've become accustomed to.

Mum and Dad left Perth Tuesday night for Cairns. After we dropped them out to the airport we took a spin to South Perth to admire this beautiful view of the city all lit up at night.

Foss got lucky on the way back!

We reluctantly left Perth this morning for Alice Springs. Hopefully we'll get to go back there again. We really liked it. The whole lifestyle there seemed so nice, very active and outdoorsy, but I think the weather has a lot to with that.
Foss was delighted to meet up with his parents this evening and in the morning the 4 of us are setting off for Uluru.
Maybe Foss will write the next blog post about that!!!

Jan and Paul.