Malaysia Peninsula - Take II

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Dave & the Durian -K.L.

Tea Plantation - Cameron Highlands

Back in Kuala Lumpur

The flight back was pretty uneventful, and without such luxuries as t.v we spent the entire time reading our newly swapped books - currently on a random fantasy book, and a socio-economic book called 'The Tipping Point'... strange what you end up reading whilst travelling!

Landed to a dreary looking K.L. and caught an express bus back to the centre, incidently two hours must be classed as 'express' in Malaysia (it should take one hour). Checked back into the Green Hut and spent the rest of the day vegetating on the couch.

Dave had been complaining of ear pain since our diving off Sipadan Island in Borneo, and with the last doctor's trip being less than successful, he bit the bullet and spent the next morning at a local clinic. Luckily for him he just so happened to visit the clinic of a leading consultant (and true fan of the British medical service - yay for the NHS!) who identified the problem straight away as an middle ear infection, aka 'glue ear'. Tympanostomy surgery was necessary, and so a very brave Dave had a needle inserted into his ear to suck out the 'glue'
and flush it clean with alcohol. The lack of response to earlier drugs given by the 'we're not sure he was even qualified' doctor also suggested a strain of MRSA, and so the relevant chest examinations were made before a course of intraventous drugs could be given. Already feeling much better, he was finally prescribed a full course of colourful drugs, just to make sure. Fantastic treatment, at a cost our insurance company is probably not happy about. If you ever need a doctor in K.L. look up Dr. Chong Wei Min at Clinic Doctor Oorloff & Partners, and you'll leave cured and a little more patriotic than before you went in!

Needless to say, Dave rested for the rest of the morning, and in the afternoon felt well enough to try Durian fruit (that must be a speedy recovery)... see video. The garlic-flavoured fruit that looks like jaundiced chicken breast was sadly not a winner for either of us, but a passing tramp was made very happy. The rest of the evening was then spent in the Times Square building, cheap noodle dinner and the cinema for £1!


The next morning we went to Batu Caves just outside of K.L. centre. The caves are famous as a sacred place for the Hindu's in Malaysia, and the venue for the annual Thaipusam festival, where devotess seek penance by carrying 'burdens' usually with the use of hooks and skin piercings on the body...for more info visit Thaipusam. As we were not there for the festival (usually around January time) we didn't see any devotees, but instead were mobbed by long tailed-macaques as we climbed the 272 steps to the cave temple ...deepening Saz's fear of 'evil monkeys'. Do not feed the monkeys, and remove anything shiny!!

We then caught the bus back into K.L. centre and visited china town for a hawker stall lunch and to search for a book-binders. Fed up with the weight of our 'Southeast Asia on a shoestring' Lonely Planet, we had it seperated into handy sections by country... a fantastic idea!

Cameron Highlands

The bus to the Cameron Highlands took 4 hours and since it was mostly boring, we slept until the turn off at Tapah. From there the road zig zagged up into the Highlands, making it impossible to sleep and also making us more than a little sick! The change in landscape was amazing...from the industrialized K.L. to the vast green mountain range dotted with wooden huts. Tanah Rata (the main tourist town) is not what we expected as it is heavily built up compared to the surrounding countryside, but it still holds charm and the tea plantations give the mountain view a green jigsaw puzzle look.

We ate lunch on the main street, and then checked into Father's Guesthouse - war bunker-esque 'chalet' rooms facing the hills beyond. Night-time welcomed a distant thunder storm, which lit up the sky like an amazing light display as well as providing a welcomed reduction in temperature! Fancying Indian food, we sat down at a place and in true backpacker style ended up befriending a couple, Zoe and Dave, whom we talked to for most of the night.

It wasn't only the incessant beeping of the alarm clock that struck us awake instantly, but also the realisation that we were sharing the inside of our mosquito net with bedbugs. Dave spotted four of the critters as soon as he opened his eyes hiding in the top of the net 'teepee' and it wasn't long before there was a full-blown bug massacre. We gave up counting after twenty, and decided that we should just pack our things (after dragging everything onto the path outside for inspection) and move somewhere else that morning. Following those two hours of fun, we checked into Daniel's and struck out walking in the direction of the nearest tea plantation. We managed to find a local bus going our way, and got dropped off at the end of the Sungai Palas Boh Tea Estate access road before continuing the walk toward tea and scones. Suitably refreshed, we went on a tour of the tea factory where we learnt the relatively simple processes of tea production for various teas. A holidaying Malaysian couple took pity on us when they saw us walking up the slopes to get back to the bus, and kindly picked us up and dropped us into Tanah Rata's neighbouring town of Brinchang. Having had enough walking after that day's 16km's, we plodded back to the Indian we went to the night before and ended up sitting back with Zoe and Dave. Back at the campfire at Daniel's we chatted most of the night away and taught them what we believed to be enough card games to keep them sane through their travels.

Sunday was to be another day of tea and walking, where we caught the local bus back up to Brinchang and struck west for the summit of Gunung Brinchang, the largest mountain in the area. At a quarter of the height of Everest, the weather wasn't cool enough to stop us sweating through our climb up through the jungle, but it was rewarding to reach the top despite a constant battle with slippery mud and angles of upto 60 degrees! Unfortunately we were above the clouds and didn't get a particularly amazing view, but we traipsed down the tarmac road winding down the other side that everyone else had used to gain the summit (where's the fun in that?!) back to the Sungai Palas Estate for more tea over lunch. Walking all the way back to Brinchang ourselves this time before the bus reached us meant we clocked around 22km's of hilly terrain that day, which is more exercise than we've done for a long time! And the only real way to follow lots of exercise is to eat lots of good food, which is exactly what we did at a steamboat restaurant that night. With one container of chicken and one tom-yam (hot & sour) soup bubbling away on our own personal stove, we threw in nineteen samples of veg, meat and seafood at a leisurely place in what proved to be a perfect sampling of the local malay cuisine.

Penang

We may have been on a VIP bus down from the Cameron Highlands to Penang, but having slightly larger seats did nothing to help Dave from feeling very sick on the winding roads all the way down to Ipoh. After hours of fun, we got dropped off somewhere in the middle of Penang island and managed to find our way to our desired destination: Georgetown. We stumbled across the SD Hostel, and decided to snap up a room straight away when we found out that it was their first day open and everything was new; to us this meant no bedbugs waiting for midnight feasts! Suffering the effects of 94%!h(MISSING)umidity, we had a much needed shower before booking our flights to Bangkok online. Since Dave was banned from diving for a month after his treatment, we deemed it best to postpone travelling Thailand properly until we would be able to appreciate the Thai islands in the full, and plan to get to Vietnam before the wet season hits the north of the country. Having had a night off of Indian food the night before, we hit Georgetown's Little India for what our Lonely Planet described as an Indian pizza. Slightly disappointed with what we had, we cut through Chinatown back to the hostel and planned what we could do the next day.

Raw eggs in a cup was not what we expected to accompany toast when ordering hard boiled eggs, but that's exactly how our Tuesday morning started. Following that, we managed to find our way up to the 59th floor of a government building in our search of a tourist office, and after Saz bypassed the ticket counter to have a cheeky peek of the surrounds from the building's viewing deck we left armed with various brochures and the all-important Malaysia sticker for Saz's diary. We caught the free shuttle bus to the Yap Kongsi Temple for the start of our self-guided tour. After a brief rambutan snack stop, where Saz also got interrogated by a passing cyclist while Dave was visiting the loo (including questions like:

why no married? why no children yet?

), we continued past a mosque to have a quick look into another Temple of the Goddess of Mercy. A further bus journey had us within walking distance of the Kek Lok Si Temple, the largest Buddhist Temple in Malaysia, which dominating a large part of the neighbouring Penang hillside. With the most admirable architecture seen to date, there was scrupulous attention to detail with every inch of the four walls covered by Buddha's varying from metres to just 6 inches tall. Having acquired pictures of the prayer halls, pagodas and buddhas, Saz got herself a little souvenier before we set back to Georgetown in the rain. Reknowned particularly for its food, we could not leave Penang without trying a local delight, so as well as our satay and duck-rice dinner we picked up a Khar Kway Teow on the way home for a later snack!

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Photos

Durian Fruit
Would you eat this?

Evil Monkeys!!!
Do not be taken in by their cute appearance

Trekking - Cameron Highlands
Very muddy uphill climb, but lots of fun!

View from the top - Cameron Highlands
Our reward for our hour hike up the mountain