I arrived in Kuala Lumpur without a lot of fanfare. I've been trying to find my way around and get to know the city. I found a nice little Hostel to stay in that isn't too expensive and is near lots of fun stuff.

I got extra pages put in my passport today at the US Embassy. I love the US Embassy. Its so nice to walk up, flash my US passport and walk by everyone else in line. I was through security, pages filled and out within 30 minutes. Amazing. Someone I don't think my experiences with the rest of the embassies are going to be as nice.

I decided that maybe the best way to keep all of you up on my travels was to send postcards from the different places I'm going with pictures (when possible). Here is the first, from Kuala Lumpur.

I've been in Kuala Lumpur for about a week and a half now and have been all over the city (mostly walking). KL has some of the phenomenal eateries. All very cheap too! Its a mixture of Chinese, Malay and Indian food which is really spicy and good.

I've got a couple more pictures from Singapore that I took my last morning there.

The first one is the skyline from my friend's appartment complex. I share it with you so you can see the skyline of almost all of singapore: more appartment complexes!

As most of you know, I lived in Bandung for three years only a little more than a year ago so my time here is kind of like a reunion/final farewell. I've spent most of my time at the school where I taught and many of my friends are still here although it is interesting to see how many are now married or seriously dating someone.

Anyways, to start things off, here is a picture of the gate at the school.

Stephen and I have spent the last few days on Perhentian Kecil Island after an overnight bus trip from Kuala Lumpur. We decided to go after dropping our passports of at the Kazakhstan Embassy and being told that we would have to wait till friday to pick them up. We decided instead of hanging around KL for a whole week, we might as well head to the beach. Everyone said Perhentian Kecil was the best so we headed there.

We decided to take a train from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok which just happened to have an eight hour layover in Butterworth on the way there. Butterworth is a short ferry ride away from Penang island so we decided to make a quick trip there.

While there we visited Fort Cornwallis

We arrived last night in Bangkok and wandered around Khao San for a while. It is incredibly packed with backpackers, more so than anywhere I have ever been.

This is Khao San filled with backpackers. Where's Stephen? (He's there)

Even with all the hastle getting to Angkor Wat, it was well worth the trip.

Taking the bus from Luang Phrabang in Laos to Kunming in China was definitely an experience. The bus ride was 40 hours long but was a sleeper bus which made it bearable. The four of us attempted the trip and were greeted the first night by northern Laos roads. By roads I mean a patch of potholed land that a good vehicle can probably pass over. Trying to sleep while passing over these roads was like playing football and sleeping at the same time, where you are the football. We were jostled left, then right, then up, then down constantly.

UPDATE!!! Photos for the last three posts have been fixed. Enjoy!

Chengdu is more of a transition city for us and there isn't really a whole lot here we were excited about doing except for going to the Panda Research and Conservation Park. This is where the majority of the captively bred pandas have been born in the world. So this morning we hopped on a bus and headed over to check it out.

This is a photo of Jing-Jing.

We had a great day exploring around Kashgar. We saw the huge statue of Mao, sections of the old wall and old buildings. Of course we took plenty of good pictures however, I forgot to put the memory card in my camera so none of them were actually recorded.

We arrived in the Fergana Valley (Kyrgyzstan) from China and were in for a huge change in culture. It is amazing what crossing some mountains can do. We went from a rice and noodles culture to a bread and cheese culture.

A short busride from Samarkand is the city of Bukhara which is famous for cruelty and Great Game politics between the British and Russians. We arrived after our fun bus ride and quickly found a great place to stay called Komil's B&B. Komil was a very friendly guy and spoke great english. He told us that the place we stayed at in Samarkand, Kamila is the female version of his name so we had to stay at his place to complete the pair.

Last Saturday, November 4th my Grandfather, Robert Nichols, went to be with his Lord. He was buried at Fort Snelling in Saint Paul with full military honors. We'll miss him.

We traveled up into the mountains in Kyrgyzstan to a town called Arslanbob. It turned out to be one of the most idyllic and beautiful places we have been yet. We didn't stay in town long though, only long enough to head up into the mountains. We were going camping for a week which is really great since we have been lugging around many pounds of camping gear for months. The mountains around the area were absolutely stunning. Much of Kyrgyzstan is mountains and all of the cities are in valleys. Makes for a beautiful country.

We took a quick taxi across the border to Kazakhstan (three hours) to the former capital of Almaty. We didn't really have any reason we wanted to visit here except that it is a convenient place to catch the train to Moscow. There are a couple of museums and things but we didn't really get around to seeing them since we were only there for a day and a half. We did wander around the central shopping area a couple of times which is mostly remarkable for its large number of guys sitting around drinking beer on park benches. Not the most friendly of places.

We arrived in St. Petersburg after an overnight train from Moscow for our last destination. It proved to be one of the most beautiful and amazing cities we had been to on this trip, well worth the effort of getting there.

St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great of Russia and was designed after European cities, created to Europeanizing the Russian Empire. It was the capital of Russia until the Soviet Revolution which actually began in St. Petersburg with Lenin.