PICTURE GALLERY PAGE 1
The pictures are divided after respectively country:
THAILAND
Bangkok
Bangkok is a good starting point for the Asia journey. The capital town has about 10 million citizens, is very chaotic and not very beautiful.
Here you stay suitably a couple of days to visit the interesting temple areas.
There are about 400 temples just in Bangkok and about 30000 in the whole country.
The most famous one is Wat Phra Kaew and Grand Palace with Wat Pho which are in the same area (Wat = temple).
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Wat Phra Kaew 1 |  |
Wat Phra Kaew 2 |
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Fresh juice directly at the pavement |
One popular sightseing use to be a visit at a floating market. We visited Damnoen Saduak in the Rajburi provinse. The Market is located 100 km south west of Bangkok. Here you can buy clothes, fruits, vegetables, beautiful woodcarvings or just looking at all the people.
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Cooking in the boat |  |
Hat seller |
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Crowd |  |
Matilda and Sara together with a thai dancer |
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Dangerous Cobra |
About 30 km outside Bangkok the town Samut Prakarn is located.
There you will find one of the worlds largest outdoor museums Muang Boran - the Ancient City. The area is larger then 500 km2 and consist of copies of the most famous monuments in Thailand.
Some of them in natural size, some in a smaller scale. Today there are at the moment 109 monuments.
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Muang Boran | This part of the museum shows an example of a floating market. |
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Recently entered the area | We were guided by teachers and pupils from the school that we visited in Samut Prakarn. |
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Matilda and Sara were taken good care of by the pupils |  |
The girls have a really pleasant time |
River Kwai
| A lot of people takes a one-day trip from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi to see the famous bridge over the river Kwai and the war museeum. The bridge was bombed in 1945 and was rebuilt later. Here you can go by train over the bridge and further on for some hours on the "death railway". | ||||
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The bridge over river Kwai |  |
At the "death railway" | Listen to the lead song from the movie! |
Koh Samui
| After one night at the train to Surat Thani we arrived by boat to Koh Samui. The Island, which was discovered by backpackers, has fine beaches but the roads look as though theyīve been air bombed a day before. The most tourists live near Chaweng Beach or Lamai Beach. |
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A morning at Lamai Beach |  |
Waiting for a good dinner |
Kao Sok
| 100 km north west of the Island Phuket the national park Kao Sok is situated. In this park you can ride elephant, canoeing, go by rubber tire in the river and try out to stay the night in a tree top ! There are also some trails and camping possibilities. We were also shown how rubber is made. Kao Sok is a large national park with a lot of jungle and a marvellous athmosphere and nature. Here are large mountains of limestone and up in the hills there are tigers. |
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On the way to Kao Sok |  |
In the national park Kao Sok you can try canoeing in a wonderful nature. Here we were able to see a King Cobra in a tree. |
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Jungelride with the elephants |
Phi Phi Island
| Two hours with boat from Phuket is the Island Phi Phi. Phi Phi Island is split in two Islands, Phi Phi Don (where you can live) and Phi Phi Lee (now famous from the movie "The Beach"). Here you can live in bungalows directly at the beach. There are corall reeves very near and it feels like swimming in a giant aquarium with a lot of colerful fish below. |
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Viewpoint | View over the beaches Ton Sai and Lo Dalam at Phi Phi Don. |
MALAYSIA (Peninsular)
Malaysia is comprised of West-Malaysia (Peninsular) and East-Malaysia (Borneo). The country is divided in 14 states where two of them are located at Borneo.
Langkawi
| Langkawi is an Island in the North West corner of Malaysia.
The Island has some great beaches, the most famous ones are Pantai Cenang and Pantai Kok. At the beach Pantai Kok there was coulisses from a temple. It was the american movie "Anna and the King" (which is a story about Thailands first king) which was shot at this place. Langkawi is a tax free zone and it is preferable to shop in the capital town Kuah. Other places of interest are Underwater World, a crocodile farm and excursions to different waterfalls at the Island. There are also some golf courses present. |
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Waterfall | Matilda and Sara at the Durian Perangi waterfall. |
Kuala Lumpur
| Malaysias capital town Kuala Lumpur or K.L has about 2 millions citizens where old and new buildings are mixed. The worlds tallest building is located in K.L and the name is Petronas Twin Tower. The goverment owned petroleum company (Petronas) owns 49% of the building and that has given the building its name. With its 88 floors the towers are reaching up to 450 m. The K.L Tower that reaches a height of 400 m. is also worth a visit. |
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Twin Tower |  |
K.L view | View from K.L Tower with Twin Tower to the left. |
| In Kuala Lumpur there is a lot to see. Nice buildings, temples, mosques, a lively Chinatown, shopping and more. Here is also the worlds largest pewter factory, Royal Selangor where many beautiful and famous pewter articles are made. |
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A visit at Royal Selangor | ||
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Masjid Jame Mosque |  |
Abdul Samad Building |
| Among the most known attractions in Kuala Lumpur are the Batu Caves which are located about 10 km from the city.
The limestone caves were discovered about 100 years ago. A small Hindu temple, (named Cathedral Cave), was built in the largest cave. Every year in January or February as much as 1 million Hindu pilgrims gather here under the yearly Thaipusam-feast. Here they confess their sins and the most fervent of them punish themselves by piercing the toungue or cheeks with skewers or by put hooks in to the bare body. For the most tourists the climbing up the 272 steps in tropical heat seems to be painful enough. |
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Batu Caves | The steps up to Cathedral Cave. |
MALAYSIA (Borneo)
Borneo - the name itself has an exotic sound. The worlds 3:rd largest Island which greatest part belongs to Indonesia shares also the Island with Malaysia and Brunei. Malaysia and little Brunei are located at the north part of Borneo. At Borneo there are two states that belongs to Malaysia, it is Sabah at the north east side and Sarawak at the north west side.
Sarawak
Kuching
| The name of the largest town in Sarawak is Kuching (Kuching means cat in Bahasa Malaysia) and has about 380000 citizens. 70% of the people in Kuching are Chinese. |
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Kuching | The State Mosque Masjid Negara. |
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Around an artificial lake there is a group of houses from the seven different peoples at Borneo. Here you can find a typical Malayan house, a Chinese house, longhouses from Bidayuh and the Iban people, house from Penan-nomades, Melanau and Urang Ulu-people. Longhouse is a kind of terrace-house with a common veranda which is following the whole side. Here are the whole village living in the same house. The house is split in different sections with a door facing the veranda and there is room for one family. Beyond looking at houses and chatting with the village people you can also try a blow pipe, play spinning (a game with a "spinning top") and look at dance shows. |
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The Iban peoples longhouse |
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Cultural Village | At the front of the artificial lake with the large Melanau house in the background. |
Bako National Park
| The first national park in Sarawak is named Bako and was founded in 1957. Bako is located on an Island about 40 km. north of Kuching and consists of 27 km2 untouched tropical rainforest. There are 16 marked trails with a total length of more than 30 km. To get there you can take a boat from Kampong Bako which will take you about 30 min. We also hired a guide out to Bako. |
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 Bako |
Trekking in tropical rainforest. |
 Pause |
Our trail ended up at a beach where we recovered our breath and drank a lot of water. |
 Jungle |
After 4 hours walking we felt no abnormal tiredness. The fascinating experience meant that you didnīt feel that tired. |
 Proboscis Monkey |
Borneos unique Proboscis Monkey. |
Sabah
Kota Kinabalu
| The Capital town in Sabah is Kota Kinabalu (or simply K.K) and it has about 200000 citizens. The citizens are mainly Malay, Chinese and immigrants from the Phillippines. K.K is of course the starting point for further jungle adventures in Sabah, and to get permission and to book accomodations at Mount Kinabalu. |
Mount Kinabalu
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The mountain Mount Kinabalu is the highest mountain in South East Asia with its 4101m. The mountain is located in the middle of Kinabalu national park. To climb up the mountain there is no need for ropes or other climbing equipment but a good physic condition and warm clothes are needed. We stayed over night in a cottage called Laban Rata which is located at about 3300 m. Here, the temperature was only a few degrees above zero and it was really good to have a radiator in the small room. The plan was to climb up to the top in the early morning to see the sunrise but we had bad luck with the weather. It was raining and storming and the guides adviced everyone not to climb any further. |
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 Climbing |
On the way up at Mount Kinabalu. |
Sepilok
| Sepiloks rehabilitation center for orangutangs is located outside Sandakan.
This is one of the largest sights in Sabah. In this center they take care of hurted orangutangs
and apes that have been captured as pets by the locals. The orangutangs are trained to take care of themselves and are later released to the jungle life. Two times every day the orangutangs are fed at a platform. The more they learn to adapt themselves to the wild life the more food they can get by themselves, and then they donīt need to come to the platform. When we were there we saw about ten orangutangs and they were all amazing. It was a great experience to come that close to them. |
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The orangutangs are only living at Borneo and Sumatra. |
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Orangutang with a baby |  |
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Meeting at the food platform. |
