Mumbai to Malaysia

We flew from Trivandrum to Mumbai where we had an 8 hour stopover to fill.  They have a system at Mumbai airport, where you can't access the departure terminal until 4 hours before your flight. So after killing nearly 2 hours at an over priced restaurant, where we could buy a cold beer, we decided to get a tuk tuk into the city for a bit of a look around. Spent about an hour and a half being driven around, the driver took us past some of the pavement dwellers living right on the streets, very sad to see how some are forced to live. 
We arrived in Kuala Lumpur early the next morning but unfortunately the train to Butterworth that we had planned on catching, didn't leave til late afternoon and would not have got us to Georgetown soon enough. We caught a cheap domestic flight instead that got us there in good time.
Georgetown turned out to be 'tourist central', but not in a garish way, just lots of people everywhere, wandering around with their heads buried in maps. We had 4 nights there at a nice guest house. Really enjoyed the street food (literally eating out on the street in some cases!) Not like NZ where cafes have to fight to put tables on the footpath, here they just put a couple of cones in the road and set up their tables!  We checked out the old chinese 'Clan Jetties' where they still live in houses built out over the water.  The old part of Georgetown is a UNESCO World Heritage site now, so a number of the old early chinese buildings are being restored. We also took a bus ride out to the suburbs to see a really large buddhist temple that had a 32 metre statue and a 9 storey pagoda as part of the complex. Quite impressive.
Thought we should have a couple of days in KL to check it out.  Saw some of the low lights, around our hotel area, (Chow Kit - an older area) and saw the contrasting side of things at the Twin Towers complex with all the usual high end label shops.  2 days was enough, now we are in Malacca for the night as a stop before spending our last 3 days in Singapore. Malacca sure has changed from 30 years ago when we were last here. Lots of tourist orientated attractions now, and over blinged rickshaws, but some things like the old church still look the same.
Reality is starting to sink in, our trek is nearly over...
Home on Saturday morning and looking forward to seeing family and friends again.
Hoptrek signing off.

Kerala: Alleppey, Varkala, Trivandrum

Dave's cold that he had been incubating, decided to arrive in force as we boarded our overnight backwater houseboat.  We were still also feeling a bit cautious with too much spicy food, so unfortunately most of the delicious 'typical Kerala' food remained uneaten by us.  The cook and captain had generous leftovers!  The overnight trip around the backwaters was interesting,  but could probably have been covered easily in a half day trip.
After the night on the boat we transferred to a guesthouse in Alleppey for 3 nights.  Dave was absolutely dripping with sweat as soon as he moved a muscle, so on the 2nd day of this our host took us to a local private hospital for a check up.  The charges as a foreign tourist: Consultation, ECG test and prescription charges - $8 NZ.  Unbelievable.
Moved on to Varkala, on The Cliffs, a laid back community consisting of quite a number of expats and tourists.  Found a great 'real coffee' place which we frequented for breakfast. Dave was still swallowing his tablets and sweating flat out so I had a couple of solo swims in the pool.  We were really just taking it easy and filling time until our flight out of  India.
Short taxi ride down the coast to Trivandrum for our last night in India. Our hotel was gorgeous, had a swimming pool and was also close to the beach, so we spent some time watching the local fishermen pulling in nets and launching their boats. It was a real spoil for our last night.