Having decided that the threat of dengue fever and/or malaria is preferable to putting up with the cold weather for a moment longer I have decided to flee to the tropics. To that end I have scraped together such of my possessions as are appropriate for a trip to climates tropical and purchased a 44 gallon drum of insect repellent which I have to find some way of smuggling through customs.
The Malaya Madmen ASL tournament will be held in Singapore at the end of the month. With this as an incentive I have decided to travel to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia. Along the way I will apparently indulge in sea-kayaking. I'm not entirely sure what that is and the only picture my mind can create involves Eskimos hunting whales which doesn't seem entirely correct. After careful consideration I've decided to leave my sealskin overcoat and harpoons at home.
More positively I get to ride on a train as I and a bunch of like minded foreigners are trundled from Bangkok to the more Malaysia adjacent parts of Thailand. After which a combination of transport modes which hopefully don't include much walking will carry us down the west coast of Malaysia stopping in at Penang and Kuala Lumpur along the way.
Eventually our journey will spit us, panting and dishevelled, onto Singapore a nation which, like Hong Kong, proves that the best people to run British colonies are the Chinese. Once there I will do my best to avoid amusement parks and steep myself in the local culture. No I won't, I will wander around in the sweltering heat, reeking of now rancid insect repellent taking random photos of random buildings which I will later try to construct a coherent blog entry around. This should go as well as all my other attempts to construct coherent blog entries.
I visited Singapore briefly some thirty odd years ago. The one enduring memory I have is of the heat which almost beat me to death the moment I left the airport. Perhaps for that reason Singapore airport itself is now a tourist destination. I also hope for great things from the Singapore public transport system which is apparently both cheap and ubiquitous. It's also air conditioned which could be the difference between life and death.
I shall of course be writing blog entries about my travels whenever I get the opportunity. If they seem a little more disjointed and nonsensical than usual you will know that a mosquito managed to slip through the repellent and I'm now raving with fever. Or possibly not.
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