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Published: March 7th 2009
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Finally found somewhere with modern enough PCs to upload our pictures and a quick enough internet connection for me to write a couple of blogs without going mad!
After getting the ferry back from Tioman to the (bed-buggy) port town of Mersing we went to the coach station to book tickets to Kota Bharu in the far north east of Malaysia, just under the Thai border. Unfortunately, we arrived back in Mersing at 10am and the coach didn't leave until 8pm. Ah well, a day to kill in Mersing. We mooched around, eating lots (more Nasi Lemak!) and surfing the internet at maddeningly slow speeds. Finally we wandered back to the coach station for a horrendous journey. Mersing is on the east coast but more than halfway down so the coach had to go almost all the way up the whole country, along the east coast. It left at 8pm and didn't arrive until 6.30am the next morning. The frustrating thing was, it would have been about 3 or 4 hours quicker had we not stopped for various lengthy and lazy fag breaks, toilet breaks, food breaks, nose picking breaks and general sitting about breaks for the driver. Every time
we stopped he didn't feel like telling us whether we were going to be 5 minutes or an hour meaning that everybody on the coach had no idea whether to get off or not and so just stayed on to be safe. Sometimes we would get moving again after only 5 minutes, sometimes we'd be an hour. And he didn't speak English so we couldn't ask. Fun. The one time I did venture off the coach, around 3am to get some water and go to the toilet I found the dodgiest looking coach station in the world so did my business and hurried back onto the coach!
Eventually we arrived at Kota Bharu and got a taxi to the guesthouse we had booked online via the excellent www.hostelworld.com. If you're ever travelling and need good budget accomodation I highly recommend you use them. We've not had a bad place through using them and the one time we didn't use them we got bedbugs in Mersing.
True to form this guesthouse was also excellent. We were met by the owner, a lovely Chinese man called Mr Lee, at the property, on the outskirts of the town. He showed us
to our room for a well needed shower and a power nap and asked if we would want to explore the town later. We decided that we would so he agreed to come back and drive us into town free of charge at around 1pm, to give us enough time to get a few zzzzs that were vitrually impossible on the bumpy, noisy, smelly coach.
Mr Lee took us into the centre of Kota Bharu and we walked to some museums. First was the Handicrafts Museum where had a look through some of the batik clothing (more of which later), the silver crafts and various carvings. We bought a fan which has since turned out to be a very wise purchase! Next was onto the Royal Customs Museum, a small but attractive building that had information and artifacts detailing all of the weird and wonderful customs the Malay Royal Family has to follow, including the marriage rites, birth, circumcision (performed in front of a crowd - nice!) and death. Very interesting but air con wouldn't have been a bad idea in the stuffy interior. The temperature is around 35C.
Afterwards we walked along the Kelantan River and towards
a famous food and clothing market called Pasar Siti Khadijah. The market is spread over four floors of a hexagonal building and staffed almost entirely by women, an unusual occurance in Malaysia. As we were nearing the market we approached by two local girls called Elly and Dayah who asked if they could talk with us for a school project. We of course agreed and wandered around the market with them, talking about our trip and what we had done in Malaysia so far. They were very helpful and told us about the batik clothing that was being sold in the market and about Muslim life. They also asked us what living in England was like as they would live to visit and maybe study. Of course we told them that they should come if they could! They had excellent English and were very friendly and helpful and we promised that if they did ever come to England that we would help show them around.
Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country and it is an unusual but great experience to be walking around and suddenly hear the call to prayer come from Mosques all around at certain times of
the day. Some places the Muslim influence is more obvious than others and Kota Bharu seems to be one of them. A lot of the architecture looks Muslim and you frequently see mosques around. Kota Bharu doesn't seem very touristy (most people only visit as a stepping stone to more islands off the north east coast) and sometimes we are watched by the locals just as much as we are watching them. It is a little disconcerting at first but you quickly realise that it is just interest and nothing hostile. The best response we have found so far is to flash a big toothy smile. Older ladies in headscarves who seemed to be looking disapprovingly at us quickly change their expression and beam back and the young guys seem especially interested in Amy. People in shops seem to fall over themselves to say hello and a couple of Malay words, clumsily pronounced, make friends quickly here.
At 7pm the markets that we were walking around became quieter while evening prayer was observed and we sought refuge in a quiet coffee shop until everybody was back outside again. At around 8pm we walked to a different market, full of food stalls for dinner. There was a dizzying array of different types of local cuisine and we decided to have little snacks from lots of different stalls to try the most things possible. One item particularly of note was murtabak, a doughy, oily Indian bread folded around either a chicken, or vegetable filling with onions and sauce, served with a sweet vinegar. Lovely. On a sweet stall we found little squares of sticky brown rice that looked inviting and decided to buy some, assuming it was sugared rice or something. Only when we tucked in did we find that it was durian rice! After the initial shock we realised that it was actually delicious. The sugar and rice had taken some of the power out of the durian flavour and highlighted the really gorgeous flavour that was lurking underneath. I can see how people become addicted now.
After lots of food Mr Lee met us at the market and drove us back to the guesthouse for a good night's sleep.
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