Hot & humid, is the order of the day here, and pretty much every day from what I can find out lots of rain, well they don't call it the rainy season for nothing. Malaysia became completely independent from the UK on 31st August 1963, and if I'd written this when I was there I'd be able to put more fact into this. The general gist of it goes the Portuguese colonized Malaysia in 1511, followed by the Dutch in 1641 then by the British in 1786 and finally by the Japanese during the second world war, so you could say that haven't had the best deal, when it comes control within their own borders. you can read more at http://www.kinabaluweb.com/malaysia_day.html if your interested.
The pics here are among the few that I have remaining after some thieving robbing scrotum buggered off with my camera, they could have done the decent thing and left the bloody memory card behind. Anyway the cyclo pic was taken in Melaka, nothing too unusual about the bike apart from the flowers and fairy lights, it was the hard core drum & base music blaring out at a volume that would put most XR3i drivers to shame that got me. The photo of the black looking clouds was taken about 15mins before the sky fell down. A most impressive volume of water.
The others are the Petronas towers at night and one in the day where you can see one of the towers has sprouted ears, the last pic is the public park right behind them.
The Crossing from Piction (South Island) to Wellington (North Island) was entertaining with a rough sea, Strong winds and lots of rain. Standing out on deck getting battered by the elements is kinda fun, with the ferry pitching and yawing like a child playing with a plastic duck in a bath. The only thing that concerned me about this crossing, was avoiding the line of distinctly green looking people on the inside of the door,waiting in eager readiness to add just a little more volume to the Cook straight. The Video clip is going from Christchurch to Picton following the Pacific Ocean coast in places literally only meters away. The bad weather continued for a few days while I was in the capital, so I hired a car for a day to trot around in. I'm guessing the staff thought I was a little forgetful so they decided to put my name on the side of the car just to make sure I brought the right one back. I spent almost 7 hours in the Te Papa museum, 5 floors containing art and history about New Zealand and it's Original Maori descendants. Very interesting and free to get in.
In the heart of the South Island there is a plateau called the MacKensy basin, almost in the centre of this is Lake Tekapo, with practically no light polution and the surrounding mountains keeping the clouds at bay. This area gets the most consistently clear nights in New Zealand. These conditions make this place the ideal location for an observatory, partly sponsered by the Japanise the 7million dollar telescope is the most advanced astronomic resaerch facillity the kiwi's have, so a little better than bog roll 2 lenses and some sticky back plastic. Along with several other smaller telescopes, all this set up on Mount John only 4km away from the very small town of Tekapo. I went to the observatory on a night tour and during the day, to get the pic's I have posted here. The views as incredible, this basin was also used in the filming of 'Lord of the rings'. If you look closley at the video clip, tilt your head to one side and squint you may be lucky enough to see Gandalf charging around on Shadofax weilding a beer.
