Australasia 2006 - Phase III - Peninsular Malaysia

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As soon as we crossed the border between Singapore and Malaysia, we could feel a lot of the difference between these countries. From the urban setting of Singapore to the rural parts of Malaysia, I felt a lot more at ease with the simplicity here. I am a simple person. The vegetation during the trip reminded me a lot of home in Brasil.

We arrived at the bus station in Melaka around 9pm. Took a cab to the central part of town to look for shelter. Communication is getting a bit harder, but we managed to find a nice, simple little guesthouse, with an air-conditioned room (the heat is nearly unbearable at night). I had a nice time talking to one of the owners, while watching the rerun of the Brasil game. The people here seem very friendly and simple, like us brasilians.

In the morning, we strolled around the city. Visited the temples in Chinatown. And walked around the Maritime Museum, set inside an portuguese ship. Melaka was colonized by dutch, portuguese and english colonizers at different times of its interesting history. It is funny how a couple of Brasil soccer jerseys atract attention everywhere we go. We constantly hear people shouting "Brasil!", "Futebol!" or "Ronaldo!". We feel very welcome here. In the evening we caught a cab back to the bus depot to go to Kuala Lumpur. The cabbie was really excited to meet a couple of brasilians (probably very few of us ever make it to Malaysia).

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur only to find out that the hotel we booked was right in the middle of the Chinese Street Market. Tents everywhere selling anything you could think of. Vendors screaming, announcing their prices. Restaurant waiters trying to convince you of eating at their restaurant. Agoraphobia to the max!

We got up early to go visit the Batu Caves. The Batu Caves are a hindu temple inside the caves on the outskirts of the city. On the stairs, we laughed when one of the numerous monkeys stole the offerings that one of the ladies was taking to the temple. That bad karma would come back to haunt us later, in Bali (you'll know later why). On the bus back we met Andy, an american that looked really confused with the chaos of the third world. Coincidently she was staying at the same hotel we were. We made plans to visit the National Mosque together, later on that afternoon. We met again after lunch, and visited the beautiful mosque (but not without getting lost between the numerous viaducts of KL). We made plans to meet Andy again for dinner, but we never saw her again.

Before leaving KL, we tried to visit the Petronas Towers, but the line to go to the skybridge was huge, and we only saw it from the outside. Left KL towards Jakarta, but these 3 days here left us with the decision to try to avoid big cities for a while. We had to improvise and decide where to go from here.

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Comments

[Jena]

Wow!
Batu looks breathtaking!