Friday, 2nd June 2006. Surat Thani to Penang (Malaysia)

We decided that if the clutch still had pressure this morning then we would try to make it at least to the border without stopping. Luckily we did make it and it was only at the border that Mark thought that the clutch was starting to feel a little light.  We made it through the border and even managed to stop for Diesel and money, before the clutch went again.  We were on the super north-south highway about 100km from Butterworth and the bridge over to Penang Island, when Mark checked to see if there was still pressure, sadly there wasn't, and we knew that at some point in the very near future we were going to have to stop at a toll booth where the car would stay until repaired.  

We decided to keep going for as long as we could, as we wanted to be as close to the Land Rover garage on Penang as we could.  We managed to get 20km from Penang before a toll booth appeared and brought our journey to a halt as once again we rolled to a halt on the side of the road. Mark called the Land Rover garage who said that they shut in half an hour and didn't re-open until Monday due to the coming bank holiday weekend.  Mark managed to persuade them to send a recovery vehicle to our aid and to also make sure that somebody would be there when we arrived.  Everything was agreed, and we even got towed from the side of the road through the toll booth and to the service station on the other side to wait for recovery by the highway police.  Half and hour later the recovery vehicle arrived (a flatbed thank god) and Hector was loaded on. I (Amy) didn't fit in the front of the cab so had to ride inside Hector on the back of the flatbed, great fun.  

We had to take the ferry instead of the bridge as a lorry had broken down on the bridge.  The traffic on Penang was heavy again due to the bank holiday weekend and we eventually completed the 20km journey from the highway to the Island in no less than 4hours, only to find that the security guard had gone home for his dinner.  He had left his telephone number on the door and in no time at all was back at the Land Rover garage unlocking the back.  We unloaded, paid the recovery guy and arranged a lift into town to find a hotel.  We hadn't booked, and hadn't realised before today that this was a bank holiday weekend, so our chances of finding a hotel were slim.  The friend of the security guard drove us to a 'cheap' hotel in town, but his cheap was RM400 (£65), ours was RM100 max, we tried another but they only had one room for RM170, still too expensive. We got our driver to pull over whilst Mark explored the area quickly by foot, it took 20 minutes to find somewhere to stay, but he did eventually find somewhere for RM46 per night, and we were soon eating our first proper meal of the day at 9:30pm!  What a day!

Hector being loaded onto the flatbed.          Hector secured and ready to go.

Saturday, 3rd June 2006, and Sunday 4th June 2006. Georgetown, Penang.

Two days spent wandering around aimlessly.  On Saturday we walked to the Penang Adventist Hospital to try to book our Chest X-Ray appointment, but they were closed due to the bank holiday, a wasted 2 hour walking trip.  On Sunday we walked over to the Land Rover garage as the security guard had said that he would be there, and we needed to collect a few left items, the guard wasn't there so yet another wasted 1.5 hour round walking trip.

Monday 5th June 2006 Penang.

Today I (Amy) called the hospital and made some appointments, but their earliest was Thursday... oh well never mind.  We then went to the LR garage to explain what was wrong and to collect the left items, we still forgot everything.  The afternoon was very boring just wandering around the town.

Tuesday, 6th June 2006. Penang.

Today we visited the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, which is a really big mansion painted royal blue and named after it's creator and owner.  A really interesting place to visit, and it killed a couple of hours. Again afternoon very boring as we tried to kill time whilst we wait for our hospital appointment.

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion.                       Happy tourists!

Wednesday, 7th June 2006. Penang.

Today was a cinema day, Benchwarmers in the morning, and Omen in the late afternoon. Benchwarmers was very funny, but the Omen was absolute rubbish. At least the cinema here costs less than £1 each! 

Thursday, 8th June 2006. Penang.

Today was the big day - our Chest X-Rays.  We arrived at the hospital at 9am for our appointment there was slight confusion as to which department we had to go to first as most referrals for the Australian government have to have medicals first. We were eventually put back where we had started at the Radiology department where we had 10 minutes of confused conversation as to whether we were doing the Visa's online or manually as we had a referral letter.  All very confusing but we eventually got there and they found us on their system.

!0minutes later we were called in to have our X-Rays done and then we had to pay, this was where we were concerned.  Being a private hospital we though that the prices would be quite high, in fact it was only £25 in total for both X-Rays.  We paid up and then had to wait half an hour for our copies to be copied onto CD, yes that's right Mark and I now own pictures of our lungs on CD, and the CD allows us to add colour or view the blood vessels, all really fascinating, and obviously the best thing about today was getting a clean bill of health - nothing out of the ordinary for either of us!  This afternoon Mark called the LR garage to check on the progress and was told that the car was ready to be collected, so we'll do that tomorrow then drive up around the coast and spend the weekend there before heading down to KL and sorting out the shipping to Australia. As long as we get our Visas in the near future, we're aiming to ship to Sydney on the 20th June. We've had to change our original plan of shipping to Darwin and then driving down the east coast of Australia as it costs US$1000 more to ship to Darwin than to Sydney!

Friday, 9th June and Saturday 10th June 2006 Penang.

Today we collected Hector, and headed towards Batu Ferringhi, which is on the North of the Island. The chaps at the Land Rover garage did a great job replacing the clutch Master and Slave cylinders- and they very kindly gave us a 50% discount! It was great to be back in the Landy as we drove out of Georgetown towards the beaches and a motel that the chief mechanic at the garage recommended. 

Unfortunately that motel was fully booked for the weekend, as were most other places along the shore. When we were up here last time we camped on the beach with Lucas and Jeanne, but fancied having a shower this time. Eventually we found somewhere with a room and settled in. We only spent two days up there as the motel we were staying at was showing the football matches on the telly with umpteen spectators right outside our room which had no sound proofing and at 2am it gets a bit tiring, so we decided to head to Port Klang on Sunday.  Oh I (Amy) also got my Australian visa on Friday night, so we're both off to Oz asap!

Sunday, 11th June 2006. Penang to Port Klang.

A rather easy drive today, and also quite sad.  Today was the last driving day of our trip...come on where are the tears?!!!   We arrived and checked into the Talents Motor Park which served us well last time we were here.  Down to tesco's in the evening for some nosh.

Monday, 12th June 2006. Port Klang.

Today Mark called Johana at Haperwira to arrange a meeting as soon as possible, today at 2:30pm, OK by us.  We emptied the Landy completely so that we could remove all traces of dust and more importantly dirt like soil!  It was great fun this morning unpacking everything and seeing souvenirs that we had forgotten we'd even bought.  At 2pm we hailed a cab to take is to Haperwira as we had no clue where they were.  Within 1.5hours everything was sorted for the 20th June.  They were really nice there, and have agreed to take Hector on Thursday 15th when we will get him fumigated and locked up in the container.  We then have to wait for the carnet to be stamped which will either be Friday or early Monday.  Payment was awkward as they don't accept credit cards, so off we went to the bank to get a cash advance, oh if it had only been that simple, the banks have a limit that we can draw out on our cards, so I (Amy) also had to try to get an advance, nope they didn't like my card - declined!  We eventually got there though and paid up - All done until Thursday, thank goodness.

Tuesday 13th June 2006. Port Klang

A real cleaning day today as we have to get Hector as clean as possible to get him into Australia and past the Australian Quarantine Service. According to their website, used cars have to be "as clean as when new" to get in...well, there's no way on this earth or any other that we can get the old boy that clean, so we decided to do the best that we could and hope for the best. We found a car washing place where the owner had a proper high pressure hose and we told him to get Hector as clean as he possibly could. 3 hours later he came over and said that he'd finished and to be fair he did a fine job...but not good enough for Mark who persuaded him to hand over the hose so that he could have a go. The owner was aghast when Mark lay down in the muddy water, crawled under Hector and started to scrub the chassis rails, getting filthy in the process...but the mud that came off...and when he hosed out the inside of the chassis and a torrent of black mud spewed forth, the poor old owner looked a bit crest-fallen. So, after another couple of hours of Mark doing a really thorough job (and ruining the clothes that he was wearing in the process) Hector was as clean as he was going to get - the chassis was black again after being caked in mud and dust for so long, and you could eat your dinner off the body-work. Lets just hope that it's good enough for the Australians!

getting Hector clean

Wednesday, 14th June 2006. Port Klang.

Yet another day spent cleaning - this time the inside of Hector. Again, we made sure that we did the best job that we could (really there's not that much else to do in Port Klang!) We unbolted and took off the rear decking for the first time since we left home, scrubbed the roof lining clean and spent ages trying to get all the dust and mud out of the thousands of little nooks and crannies that Land Rovers are blessed with. Eventually we re-packed him with everything that we're taking with us, and chucked out a load of things that we either don't need or which won't get past customs or Quarantine. We also managed to book our flights to Sydney today. The cheapest that we found were flying from Singapore to Sydney direct with Quantas - £468 for both of us leaving at 9am on the 21st of June, so we have another 10 days left in SE Asia. We've decided to spend a couple of days staying in the middle of KL (which we can do after we leave Hector in his crate) and then another couple of days in Singapore itself before flying out. 

The cleanest the back and the front have been for a good while. We had to throw out our home made seat covers as they were filthy - they did the job very well though.

Thursday, 15th June 2006. Port Klang and Kuala Lumpur.

Up early today to pack Hector into his crate. We were expecting a re-run of India with lots of waiting around, but how wrong were we! We followed the agent to the warehouse, where our crate was waiting and we handed the keys over to the loading manager and that was it - they said that they would take things from here and that all we had to do was to go back to the office on Monday to collect the stamped Carnet and our copy of the Bill of Lading...as easy as that! We did have to give the guys a crash course in how to drive a Land Rover, and made sure that they knew to let some air out of the tyres before trying to drive him into the container! With a final plea not to drive him through any muddy puddles, we got a lift to the station and went into KL to our hostel and we spent the rest of the day pootling around town.

Friday, 16th June 2006 to  Sunday, 18thJune 2006. Kuala Lumpur.

KL really is a great city, we really like it here and we made the most of our last days here. We even met up with Chris and Elke again as they are shipping their bikes back to Europe from Port Klang. We also made the most of the cheap shopping and treated ourselves to a new lap-top as the old one is beginning to show signs of having had enough of rattling around inside an old Land Rover. We'll really miss SE Asia, and we wish that we had worked things so that we could have spent a bit more time here- maybe next time!

Farewell drinks with Chris and Elke     Delicious night market food

Monday 19th June 2006. KL to Singapore.

Back to Singapore on the train again - this time it only cost us 60 Ringit as opposed to 60 Singapre Dollars! We found our hostel with no bother and re-acquainted ourselves with the delights of Orchard Road!

Tuesday,20th June 2006. Singapore.

Round the town again today making sure that everything in Australia was sorted out for our arrival. We've booked ourselves into a Hostel in Kings Cross for a week, during which time we plan to find ourselves a flat and start looking for some jobs. The plan is to spend the next year living and working in Sydney to try to earn enough cash to fund the return "Cape to Cairo" leg of the trip! Very excited today about our flights tomorrow! Australia here we come!

Singapore harbour at night