The big city, the jungle and the islands

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Hi, folks.

Our sincerest appologies for the notable delay in this blog. We've been rather busy of late and have been stuck in the realms of satellite broadband, which is not overly slow but is excessively expensive. It is quite a shock to get fast internet access in the middle of the Malay jungle however, given this feat is not always available in suburbs of certain large towns in the UK!
As it is I must now regale you of our escapades in KL, Taman Negara and the Perhentian Islands on the Malay peninsula.
Well, where to start?
We arrived Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago now intending to spend a few days there and then flying directly to Malaysian Borneo but a slight mishap with the flight booking meant that we actually ended up with far more time on the mainland than we had intended. Instead we spent five days in KL checking out the city before heading off to the jungle.
Whilst in KL we took a tour up the KL tower where the viewing deck (at 260 odd metres above street level) gives impressive views of the city (checkout the photos on flickr if you haven't already). The Patronas towers require people intending to go up to the view platform (the 180 metre high skybridge) to queue up in the early morning to get a time slot in which to return to go up in the lift. We were given a slot in the mid afternoon and so spent the intervening time walking around the butterfly park and bird park. Linz was not too keen on the examples of the spiders present in the Malaysian jungle, which was to be our next destination.
The Patronas towers are an extremely impressive achievement and the Malays are all rightly proud of these buildings.
The following day we headed to the water and amusement park, Sunway Lagoon, for a day splashing down the water slides and riding the rollercoasters. Its is possible to surf there on their artificial wave machine in the manmade lagoon but it proved too expensive for us so we simply watched. Maybe next time!
The bus journey to Taman Negara was fairly short by our standards (about 6 hours) and was followed by a 3 hour boat journey into the jungle. Our resort was not too bad. We'd paid for a dorm room but ended up in a double. Sadly the bed had seen better days and was now the shape of a banana. OPM once sang 'heaven is a half pipe' but they clearly had never attempted to sleep in one! Never the less we had a good time in the jungle, the first night's jungle walk tested Linz's nerves to the limit. Happily the resident black tarantulas and various poisonous snakes stayed away from the walking trail and all we saw were a few large(ish) spiders (one quite poisonous according to our guide) and a lot of stick insects.
The following day included a canopy walk (apparently the highest of its type in the world) and an exhausting trek up a hill to the viewing point across the jungle canopy. At the top the view was quite staggering. Also staggering was the quantity of sweat that I was able to ring out of my shirt!
Once down we had a few hours off before a boat ride to shoot the rapids (we got absolutely soaking) and visit a local tribe. These types of visits are often sullied in these parts by the fact that nearly everyone in the 'tribe' is wearing a premiership football team shirt of some description (usually Liverpool, Chelsea or Man U), Linz was pleased to see our guide had chosen Everton as he adopted team. Whilst there we were shown how they make fire and Linz had a (very successful) go at shooting a blow pipe at a stuffed toy tiger (which she got right in the belly).
We headed from Taman Negara to the Perhentian islands in the north east of the country. The first night we tried the local firewater, monkey juice (also known as Orang-utan) and the results will, no doubt, soon appear on flickr. Not pretty!
The coral in coral bay is quite superb and the snorkelling there was really good with a vaqst array of tropical fish right near the beachline. The sunsets are breathtaking too.
Unfortunately we decided to stay in some beach huts in the middle of long beach and were right next to the only bar on the island that thought it was on Koh Phangan. Basically we had absolutely no sleep whilst on the island (aside from passing out on the first night) but really enjoyed the crystal clear waters and bright sunshine before getting a sleeper train back to KL for our eventual flight out to Malaysian Borneo.
That is where I shall leave as my fingers are beginning to kill me.
Take care, everyone and we'll blog again as soon as we find affordable internet again.

Bri and Linz

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