I’m writing this from the dining area of the Lavender Lodge in downtown Kota Kinabalu. I’ve been here since Saturday, and if it weren’t the start of the week, I probably wouldn’t be blogging this early.

I meant to write a day to day update, as I did for previous trips, but I figured I owe it to myself to have a break from blogging and to travel just for the love of it, and not because it’s a great material for my blog. The daily recaps of my travels take a lot of discipline and energy and somehow made it seem as if everyday should be interesting just so I would have something to write about. I’ve done a lot of interesting things this weekend, though I wouldn’t write about it until the coming days or weeks.
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I honestly wasn’t looking forward to tallying up my expenses for my last trip, yet at the same time, I was eager to see just how much damage I did. And if I really spent enough to buy the 50mm f1.4 lens I wanted. I didn’t, but a couple more thousands and I could’ve bought the 35mm f1.8. I’m just consoling myself that at least I’ve finished my Christmas shopping in one go and bought some things I really wanted for myself.

Also, I realized how relatively cheap Malacca is for a daytrip from Singapore. The drive from the island to the heritage town is more than double the time it takes to drive down from Kuala Lumpur to Malacca, but it’s a better alternative to Johor Bahru, where most Filipinos go for a visa run. For about Php 2,000, you can do this day trip from Singapore. That already include the bus (public bus from Singapore to Johor Bahru, domestic bus from Larkin Terminal to Malacca), admission fees, meals and transport within Malacca. Melaka is compact enough that you can just walk to see the main attractions. I’m definitely heading back there when I go to Singapore.

Oh, I’ve omitted my personal shopping expenses from this travel budget. It’s certainly not for public consumption.
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Like most blog posts, I started writing my birthday entry in my head. However, I was in such a state earlier that everything came out sounding like a eulogy.

Rui at the Melaka Sultanate Palace Museum

I suppose it is something like a parting — me parting with my much loved youth and heading towards a new phase in life. Eeew.
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I’m writing this from my room at the Twenty Guesthouse in Malacca. Marvin highly recommends this place, so when I was making my reservations for this trip, I didn’t bother checking other places. It costs much more than other guesthouses I’ve stayed in, but it’s right smack in the middle of Jonker Walk, and the place is gorgeous. Its nondescript facade gives no clue to the homey guesthouse inside. They even have a resident cat.
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I missed going to Malacca when I went to Malaysia last June. When were able to convince the Tourism Malaysia people to let us go to this Unesco World Heritage City, we rejoiced but at the same time, saddened that we missed a lot of places. You can see how fitting my title is for this quaint little town.

The clock tower and the Christ Church

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The Manila office of Tourism Malaysia is holding a contest for Filipino members of the Tara Na Sa Malaysia Facebook Group. The contest is very easy, actually. Just post a picture of you with the Petronas Towers in the background, and set it as your profile photo on Facebook. Don’t have a photo? You can just photoshop yourself using the group’s profile photo of the twin towers. WOW, I do not know how to read *facepalm* Martin clarifies that if you do not have a photo, you can just use the profile photo of the group featuring the twin towers.

Dolls don’t qualify. Booo.

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You know I’m out of topics to blog about when I start posting my travel budget. This one is from my one-week trip to Thailand and Malaysia at the beginning of the month. The main purpose of the trip was for the tennis, but we ended up dollie shopping in Bangkok instead. I extended my trip to include a week in Penang, just because.

This trip is expensive, compared to my month-long trip back in June spanning five countries. However, it still came out cheaper than the budget I drew up when I was still planning for the trip. And this is the moment when I admit that I really cannot be a hardcore backpacker (that sounds sooo wrong). Haggling will never be my forte, and I will splurge whenever I can. And I will never stop buying doll clothes and books.

Shopping aside, the biggest expense in this trip was my 4-day stay at the Sunway Hotel in Georgetown. I needed to work during those four days, so I splurged on a hotel to ensure that I have a stable Internet connection. Ironically, the Internet at the guesthouse where I transfered to was much better. Hmp.
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I’ve been back in Manila since Monday morning, and I’m now waiting for another flight out. I’ll just be gone for the weekend, to attend the Visayas leg of the Philippine Blog Awards, since I missed the main event in Manila. But this post is not about this trip, it’s about my last weekend in Penang.

Sayuri at Penang Hill

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