Malaysia

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The journey from Samui was via a three hour propellor driven plane. It was tiny! I had been on a plane of its size before, when travelling around the Caribbean with my squash buddies in 2007. But, unlike me, this was Charlie's first experience of being on a plane so small.. The Fireflyz plane had two comfortable seats either side of a central eisle. We were given chocolate muffins and a drink during the flight!
Malaysia is a richer country than Thailand and therefore, the currency is stronger and things cost more to buy. Thailand is geared towards the traveller/tourist as people have been flocking there for many years to see the culture and beautiful scenery. KL is a city of many tall skyscrapers that is trying to pull the whole country forward to becoming a developed nation. The rail and road links are very good and getting around is not really a bother as the transportation is not as busy as back home.
We landed in one of the two airports in KL, fortunatly the quieter one, to be greated by little security (not the height of the people this time!). Our bags went straight through the x-ray machine before having to sit in the foyet area and assess how to get to the hostel we had booked in the centre of the city.
We landed at 5pm and grabbed a taxi as the best form of transport to wizz through the traffic. The traffic was very busy! After several near misses and another car actually driving into us(!) we were dropped off a five minute walk from our hostel. We asked several people for help in finding the location and eventually found a lady that told us where to go.
The sign for Sunshine Bedz greeted us at the roadside before having to travel to the third floor to get the reception. This hostel had received nothing but rave reviews from previous guests and it easy to see why once we got through the door and put our bags down. Patrick (the owner) greeted us with a handshake and an invitaton to come to the pub later that evening. Politely, and unlike us, we declined. We were exhausted from the travelling and needed a good nights sleep! The room we walked into was very clean.
After bedding down for the night we woke, fully refreshed. We ate breakfast and asked about the best way to get around the city and where to go. A handy map had been roughly drawn on a computer telling us where things were around the city.
Turns out, the hostel is in the busiest part of KL and if i were to liken it to a place back home, it would be like having a hostel in the middle of Oxford Circus. We walked around, battling our way throught the crowds of people and cars on the then roads and took in the local food streets, shopping malls and main roads around. We spent most of the day seeing what was in the immediate vicinity of the hostel.
The following day Charlie and I decided to walk to the Patronas towers. Completed in 1997, just before KL hosted the Commonwealth Games in 1998, these twin towers were, at the time, the tallest buildings in the world. They are named after the Patronas oil and gas company that built them to house their head office. The towers are located by the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC). The KLCC is an area where, obviously, the convention centre is, but also many other things. There is a park area for people to relax along with an indoor food court and aquarium.
The aquarium was massive! Not only did it hold marine life, there were semiaquatic mammals on display along with insects, spiders (teranctulars), geckos and many other wierd and wonderful things. Charlie and I spent about 3 hours walking around the aquarium. We saw the feeding of the main tank, holding inside it three Sand Tiger Sharks measuring around 3m each in length, many Stingrays and one measuring 1.8m across! There were many green turtles over 1m in length and lots and lots of fish! There were many other tanks with fish and turtles inside. One such tank had species of fish that live in the flooded areas of rainforests. One such fish was MASSIVE! The picture of Charlie standing in front of it does not do the fish justice. The one thing about the glass is that it doesn't account for the light refraction caused by the water. This has the effect of the fish in all tanks to look about a third smaller than they actually are!
The last show of the day was the feeding of the Piranas. As they like to do in places like this, they wanted to put on a show to disprove the Piranas image of eating anything thats in the water. With queues of people pushing for the best position, we managed to get a good spot in the middle of the crowd, looking at the middle to the tank. It is at times like these that i do enjoy being a westerner! We both found our height to be an advantage for viewing as all the people of malaysian and oriental descent had to bob and weave their heads in a Muhammad Ali-esk fashion to see the action! The little malaysian, and part-time comedian wannabe, commentator showed us the two fish that would be dangled into the tank on a hook and asked the crowd how long they thought it would take to reduce the fish to their bones. Cries of "30 seconds" and "45 seconds" were shouted. In fact the fish, together around the size of an A4 piece of paper and around and inch or two thick were not massive. This drew eager calls of less time before they were dropped into the tank. I was unaware of a few facts about Piranas. Firstly, that they have relatively weak eyesight but and incredible sense of smell, being able to sniff out a drop of blood in 200 cubic meters of water. Even when the bait was above the water, they could smell it and started to get aggetated. Secondly, that Piranas, like many packs of animals have a leader. The biggest and strongest of the group! They eat first and the smallest eat last. If one of the smaller Piranas tries to eat at the same time as one of the biggers ones and gets a nip to warn it off, the blood drawn can start the other Piranas eating that one!
It took the school of around 75, two minutes to reduce the bait to nothing but bones.
Following the Pirana show, we made a swift exit to head back to the hostel.
We knew that Dom Wells, one of Charlie's closest friends was going to be in KL around the time we were. Having moved to Singare 7 months previously, Dom was having the most amazing time travelling around South East Asia fixing and helping local mechanics fix Mercedes cars. After numerous texts and phone conversations on where to meet, we settled on Chinatown. Hoping to find a good restaurant to eat and catch up. We struggled! Chinatown in KL is basically a large market. We did find a Reggae bar that served food, so off we went inside to drink, eat and tell each other the stories of our travels.
We let Dom head back to his hotel, a 5 star, around 1am so he could go back to work the following day.
We kept extending our time at the Sunshine Bedz hostel as we hadn't really planned what to do next. In this extended time travelled to little India. Like Chinatown an area of markets, but a few more restaurants. We did find an amazing place serving a lunch curry for £1. We left the curry house to try to get back to the monorail station and in doing so were greeted by hoards of people walking towards us. Papparazzi snapping and video cameras fixed on a small man in the middle of the group. Not wanting to get the way, Charlie and I stepped to the side allowing the masses to go through without disruption. The little man in the middle stopped and looked at us, he smiled and shook both our hands. "Hi, how are you? Where are you from?". We replied with "London" and smiled. The man next to him was shouting and pointing at him saying "Malaysia Prime Minister....errrr...Kuala Lumpur Mayor". Only for the Mayor to say "Welcome to Malaysia, this is little India". The cameras were on us during this interchange and I am sure, if you look hard enough on the internet, you will find the video. Drama over and the group moved on. We were both shocked, but i suppose it was a random incident that will never happen again. We caught the monoail back to the hostel and bust through the door telling everyone who we had met. Patrick and the rest of the staff were shocked we had been so lucky, but then he did go on to say he didn't like the mayor as he is corrupt.
During our time in KL, there was a large Ducati stand in the shopping mall opposite our hostel. We didn't realise when we arrived, but this was due to the Moto GP happening the weekend we happened to be there. We also didn't realise that, during the night we went to meet Dom, Valentino Rossi was unvailing a new bike in the mall. Can you believe it? The one chance of getting close to a genuine worldwide celebrity, we were off away from the area!!
This being my first time seeing the Valentino Rossi fanfare, I did not realise the popularity of the man. Everytime his name was mentioned, it was followed by a cheer from the crowd, and at the race, everytime he drove by, the crowd went bananas!
Charlie and I spoke about whether we would be around for the Moto GP. After looking into the price of the tickets, we decided this is a chance not to be missed. At £12 a ticket to sit on the first bend of the main straight was a bargain! When buying the tickets at the mall, we had a look at the bikes on display and wow, they are stunning. Also on display was the Moto GP championship trophy. We duely both had our pictures with the trophy. Once we decided to actually buy the tickets, Charlie was super excited, we both love racing, but for Charlie, this was her thing.
So, Saturday arrived and with both of us super excited, around lunchtime we headed off to the track via monorail and bus. The qualifying was good, but we both knew the better experience would be Sunday and the race. We hung around and watch a few laps of the bikes before heading off to look around the shops and exhibits on display. We caught the bus and monorail back to the hostel and got an early night as we would have to be up early to get back to the track the following day.
Sunday arrived and we indeed headed out early. When we got to the track it was twice as busy as the previous day. Saturday was busy, but the Sunday was incredibly crowded! We found some good seats in our stand and stayed there for the whole day. There were three races planned for the day, 125cc, Moto 2 and the Moto GP. The races started with the 125's and they set off coming towards us. On the first bend, we saw two riders come off straight away! The 125 race was a lot of thrills and plenty of spills with 8 riders in total coming off just where we were, brilliant stuff! Next was the Moto 2 race. The championship leader had come off in qualifying and broken some ribs that prevented him from racing, this made the race very interesting and the rider in second place in the championship race won. Again, plenty of thrills and spills! And so we got to the final race of the day, the Moto GP. The stands were full now, people were watching from every vantage point. We were sitting next to the aisle to give us an easy way to move in and out of the stand. Little did we know when purchasing the tickets that the stadium had a 'sit where you please' policy. This included every railing and up and down every aisle. We were basically wedged in!
It was well publicised on world news that after one and a half laps, Marco Simoncelli lost his life in a crash with Colin Edwards. All this happened on the other side of the track, and immediatly after the incident the riders drove straight into the pits as the red flags were waved. At this point it was not clear what had happened, we knew something serious had happened as the replay on the large screen was not forthcoming immediatly. The crash was only shown once causing mass groans from the crowd. After 1 hour and no announcements people were starting to leave. We both waited until the stewards had started to leave before knowing the race was definatly over. We still had no clue as to why the race had ended. We could see from where we were that, from the crowds displeasure, they had thrown their water bottles and anything else they could onto the track. We left the seating we were in and walked around the rest of the track. Sepang is a beautiful track, its made for driving fast with good overtaking opportunities. We finally started to make our way out of the track complex and ended up getting a taxi back to the centre with two Australian men. They informed us of what had happened on the track. To say Charlie and I were shocked was an understatement. Charlie was actually quite upset and close to tears.
We finally returned to the hostel and went straight on the net to see the news and confirm what we had been told.
It was a very sad end to one of the best weekends I have experienced. RIP Marco Simoncelli.
Over the next two days, we decided to leave KL and after reading our travel guide, set out for Penang. Penang is a small island to the North West of the mainland, easily accessible by the 13.5km bridge that was built in 1985. Many travellers stop here on their journeys in and around Malaysia and Thailand.
Penang is an acient island that was once home to the British Navy as the colonised Asian contienant. We spend 5 rather boring days in Penang. Its a small island with little to do. There is a bars district, but where we stayed on Love Lane was a bit too far to walk. We did however, find an amazing restaurant with many choices. This was especially good for Charlie as being a vegetarian, trying to find any restaurant in Malaysia that would serve this was tough. We had already been thrown out of two restaurants in KL for only being able to eat vegetarian. So we ate at Micke's Place most of the time, finding him to speak very clear English and adapt his menu to provide Charlie with alternatives to his main meals on his menu.
Unfortunatly for the guest house we stayed in, this was not up to the same standard as Sunshine. Only being open 4 months and having a better score online than Sunshine, it was nowhere near as good! The dorm had an unpleasent smell, the outside light would come in through the curtains and the music from the downstairs bar stayed playing loudly until at least 3am.
Before heading down South, we decided to head back to Thailand to visit the west coast of Phuket, Phi Phi and Krabi.

Tune in next time to read about our journey back to Thailand.

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Photos

Our View of the track
The bike rode towards us from the Start!