We've been in Malaysia now for two weeks, and it's been a total change compared to Thailand. Mainly a change in how often we've moved around; our average in Thailand was about seven nights per stop - so far we've stayed in seven different towns around Malaysia, averaging 2 nights per stop. I guess we felt we'd not seen enough of Thailand, but to be honest it's more like we've not found anywhere we've wanted to stay for that long.
Our first stop after the eight hour journey from Krabi (the mainland port near Koh Phi Phi) was a place called Georgetown, in the north east. The guidebook promised a strong British influence and quite a bit to see, so we figured it would be a good start after the beach-out that was Thailand. It turns out that the budget accommodation in Georgetown is mostly aimed at people doing visa-runs from Thailand. Both Malaysia and Thailand offer short term (one or two month) visas when you enter the country, so people who want to stay longer have to pop over the border for a night and then get a new passport stamp on the way back the next day. These people do not seem to care much about clean sheets or having creatures in their rooms, and consequently the accommodation is definitely what you'd called basic...
Oh what a glorious night we spent at "Blue Diamond"... the rough guide even gave it a good write up but oh how wrong that turned out to be. We found ticks on the sheets, the light switches were actually outside the room, the window just had bars (no glass) etc the list goes on... and to top it off they had a band playing non-stop James Blunt covers right outside until 2am. Just what you need after a long journey. We can look back and laugh now, but neither of us were laughing much when we checked out angrily the following day!
Things changed for the better the next day, when we realised we could get a really nice room in a mid-range hotel for what we'd been paying for guesthouses in Thailand. Clean sheets and windows with glass in them and everything. We thanked our lucky stars we wouldn't have to spend another night in the hovel, and went exploring the town.
It was a nice place to take a stroll around, with a lovely mix of old British, Chinese, and Indian style. One road has a mosque, a Hindu temple and a big old church pretty much one after another. This mix set the stall out for what we'd see in the rest of Malaysia, there is huge Chinese and Indian influence in the places and definitely the cuisine.
Mmmm, tasy. That night we ate in the food market, but neither of us tried the fish heads. It was a great place as you could grab bits of loads of different types of food to create whatever kind of meal you fancied, for hardly any money as well. We left there happy and rather well fed.
We'd kind of run out of things to do already so the next day we signed up for a local tour, which was useless. In the evening we decided to cheer ourselves up and treat ourselves to some tasty steak and red wine at a nice looking restaurant we'd seen the day before. From the outside we had no idea what a wacky place it would turn out to be inside...
It felt like the inside of an ants nest inside, with giant pod-like seats, and then it all went a bit Alice in Wonderland with loads of doors stuck to the ceiling. Very odd, but pretty cool none the less. The steak wasn't anything to write home about, but it was lovely to have a "proper" meal with some wine and desert and everything. So two nights running we left feeling nicely full up.
From Georgetown we set off into the Cameron highlands in the centre of the country. We stopped in a town called Tanah Rata, and had a very enjoyable few days exploring the mountains (to be honest, they were more hills that mountains) and enjoying the low temperatures - for the first time in the trip I actually needed to dig my jeans and warm jumper out. Alex was obviously freezing cold and within minutes had bought a cosy hoodie to wear.
We spent our first full day there doing a bit of walking, and it was quite adventurous but nothing on the scale of India or the craziness of Vietnam. The only real danger was getting lost, but we made it back in one piece easily enough.
There weren't all that many places to eat or drink in the evening, and it was exclusively Indian and Chinese food on offer again. Alex quickly found one unique dish, the tasty-sounding-but-not-so-good-in-reality "Steamboat".
It's not a million miles away from those hot rock efforts you get in the Alps - basically a plate of raw stuff with a boiling hot pan of soup inside of the heated slabs of rock. The potential for hideous food poisoning was equally good however, with raw beef, chicken, prawns, jellyfish and mussels all piled up on top of each other waiting to go. The waiter cheerfully popped by and suggested we simply needed to pop them in for a couple of minutes and bobs your uncle. To be honest I'd have preferred a good twenty minutes to be on the safe side, but hunger took over and we did as we were told. Fortunately we escaped without any unwelcome visitors, but neither of us would try a Steamboat again, that's for certain.
We signed up for the main tour of the area the next day, which started with another jungle trek to find their famous enormous smelly flowers :
They grow out of the roots of the bamboo trees (I think) and can grow to be over a metre across. They only last for five days before they turn rotten and shrivel up, so the guides have to keep searching for new ones every few days. This one was halfway through its brief life and had lost a bit of its smellyness, but it was pretty impressive none the less.
The next stop was a nearby village where the indigenous hill people have set up a tourist trap. There was some shpiel about them not living in the jungles any more since the government built the main road through the hills, and now the kids can go to the local school etc. It was ok though as we got to have a go with their hunting blow pipes (which they may or may not have actually used depending on how much you believe)
It turns out Alex is some sort of ninja blow-pipe specialist. There were another English couple on the trip, and compared to the all powerful Bentley-san we couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo. The target was a leaf attached to a white polystyrene board, and we had to shoot from about ten metres away (the pros can hit it from 25 metres apparently.) Alex's first shot hit the leaf, and her second hit it dead centre. The locals were suitably impressed, but the rest of us could barely hit the board let alone the leaf. Good fun though - they tried to sell us miniature blow pipes to take home but didn't seem to understand it'd be tough to get the pointy needle darts back through customs...
The last stop on the tour was a Butterfly Farm, which seems to be a catch-all term for anywhere with bugs in cages so far in Malaysia.
Alex kept up her ninja skills by wearing poisonous insects as shoulder ornaments.
I wouldn't want to bump into that on a dark night that's for sure =)
That was it for the highlands, and the next day we grabbed another Super VIP bus - three huge seats per isle rather than four, and really fierce air con - to the capital city, Kuala Lumpur.
This was quite the change from the chilly highland hill town, and the heat hit us like a wave as soon as we clambered down from the bus. It took us a while to get our bearings, but we soon headed towards the China town area to find the budget accommodation. We used the standard 'James sits with the bags, Alex goes to find somewhere' approach but for once Alex came back with sad face and said all the cheap places were a bit nasty. There was a super nice place just over the road so we thought we'd splash out for once.
The place was called the 5 Elements and it was sooooo nice compared to the places we'd been staying. Super luxury, and we got a pretty good deal too - can't imagine staying somewhere like that for 30 quid a night back home that's for sure. It was so nice we barely wanted to leave the room, but we managed to drag ourselves out for some sightseeing.
The top thing to do on our new favourite website - TripAdvisor.com - was the KL Bird Park. This is a huge walk in aviary where you get to commune with the birds face to face. We were a little sceptical that this could be the number one thing to do, but it turned out to be really quite good. They had all sorts of birds there, from Ostriges and Emus (obviously these had to be kept in enclosures) to little baby chicks and ducklings you could pick up. Oh and don't forget the cheesy Ace Ventura-style photo area...
That night we went on a big old walk around the city, trying to find the famous Petronus twin-towers that dominate the city's skyline. We struck a zig-zag path across the city and got to the base of the towers after about an hours trek.
(For some reason we were inspired into godzilla poses, it must have the size of the towers, or the wine we'd had along the way, who knows which.)
We decided to try and visit the next morning, so we arrived back there early in the morning and queued up to get tickets to go up to the viewing bridge halfway up. We left it a bit late to get there so we ended up with tickets to go up at noon. That meant we had a few hours to kill, and as the first 4 floors of the towers housed a fancy shopping centre the decision was easy to make. Despite the presence of a Top Shop, Accessorise and M&S, Alex demonstrated remarkable self restraint and only ended up buying a book. The budget breathed a sigh of relief as noon arrived and we headed up the tower.
The view (which you can't see very well in the photo, sorry) was pretty good, but nothing too spectacular compared to the places we'd been in Shanghai. The bridge was only halfway up, and the towers in Shanghai are slightly taller as well. But still pretty impressive, and worth the trip.
That was pretty much it for the major sites, so we decided to hit the road again. It had been at least a week since we'd seen a beach, so we headed north again towards the Perhentian Islands. But we'll save that for the next update, which hopefully wont be took long in coming...
