Tokyo, vol. 3

Our flight home to Finland was through Tokyo, where we spent one whole day and one night in a capsule hotel. Here we also had a reunion with our favourite snack: onigiri (the sushi triangle)!

Even though we didn't have much time we still did quite a lot. We visited the gardens of the imperial palace:

The Sanja-sama shrine in Asakusa:

The gaming district of Akihabara:

And in the early morning before our flight, we also strolled around the Tsukij outer fish markets - a famous fish market that is going to be closed in Oktober. Here we bought a japanese kitchen knife and some sushi and saw an enormous fish head.

After that we hopped on a Finnair flight back to Helsinki and our amazing 5,5 months abroad had come to an end. We saw so many amazing places and experienced so much that it's hard to pick out the real highlights of our adventure. Perhaps we'll see things clearer when a little more time has passed. For now we'll just so happy we went!

Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur was the last new city on our journey. Even though it’s a very big city, it still felt very nice and friendly. And there’s a lot to see from modern buildings to colonial era architecture to religious buildings and street food stalls.

You can’t leave Kuala Lumpur without seeing the famous Petronas Twin Towers. In the evening there was a nice light show with music in the fountain in front of the towers.

 

 Then we visited the national mosque of Malaysia - the first mosque we stepped into. In the nearby museum we also saw some very pretty korans.

Since the ramadan was still on, we took the opportunity to shop some delicious food and snacks at the ramadan market. The ramadan market was located in a more traditional part of the city and the contrast was enormous! There were small, wooden houses and just a short distance behind them in every direction you could see the skyscrapers of the modern city.

KL Tower is the other big sight in Kuala Lumpur. It also had a light show in the evening.

For our last night we moved to a hotel with a wonderful rooftop infinity pool with stunning views of the city. A perfect ending to our Malaysian adventure!

Melaka

Time for our last new country on this trip: Malaysia. This too - like Indonesia - is a Muslim country but at least in Melaka we chose our living quarters more wisely and were able to sleep all through the night, even though it's still Ramadan.This didn't mean that we didn't see any mosques - on the contrary. Here we saw one of the most beautiful mosques so far: the Masjid Selat Melaka.

Melaka is an old port town and has been listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site for all the old shop houses in the old town/Chinatown. At first glance the old town looks a bit shady and worn down, but once you start looking more closely at the buildings, you start to notice all the nice details.

This was also a good place to try some Malay food: Popiah (a delicious stuffed, fresh roll) and laksa (a coconut based noodle soup).

Here we visited Bukit Cina - the biggest Chinese cemetery outside China. The atmosphere was almost spooky as the old graves (some from the Ming Dynasty) were scattered quite loosely over the hill.

Last but not least, Melaka is famous for it's pimped up rickshaws. We didn't take a ride but very much enjoyed watching all he Pikachus and Hello Kitties going around and playing remixes of both old and new pop songs (including Despacito).

Singapore

Time for the smallest country on our trip: Singapore! We didn't really know what to expect and were pleasantly surprised to find a modern yet multicultural city with lots of things to see and do. You could easily spend a week here, but we spent only three nights.

One of our absolute highlights was the Marina Bay area. This is the modern part of the city with tall skyscrapers, the Marina Sands complex and a sunning light show in the evening.

Close to Marina Bay you can admire Gardens by the Bay, Singapore's famous vertical gardens with high, tree-like structures covered in plants. Here too they have a beautiful light show every evening.

We also visited the huge botanic garden with it's beautiful orchid garden - the national flower of Singapore. Did you know Tarja Halonen has an orchid named after her?

And what would a visit to Singapore be without a Singapore Sling?