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Published: August 7th 2008
Chicken and Rice
A staple of Penang. Hainanese poached chicken, rice & broth. You could eat it till the cows came home. This place was very famous locally.We left Laos behind on a wet Monday & ventured back into Thailand. After a brief stop in the riverside town of Nong Khai we catch the first of two overnight trains to Malaysia. Towards the end of our journey we get into conversation with a Malaysian chap who turns out to be a real character. He talks at us periodically over a few hours. He is one of those people who does not necessarily listen. He doesn't like children on trains because they "make too much noise & can't pee into the bowl leaving the loo stinking of urine". He tells us that the Da Vinci Code (film) was "bullshit" & nearly tells us the ending (this is Gaynor's current reading matter and she's only just begun it!) He tells us he is "getting stiff buttocks" and to top it all tells us that he "didn't want to get involved" when we were getting short-changed by a moneychanger at the border! Why couldn't he have done that considering all the other things he did tell us? Cheers mate!
Malaysia
We arrive in Butterworth & take the ferry over to Georgetown on Penang and begin the search for accommodation. We
Naughty Boy
This sign was on the wall of our hotel. Strange methinks walk up Lebuh Chulia, which is in Chinatown & the main centre for budget accommodation. We check out an Indian guesthouse & the rooms are small, dark & dirty. The shared bathrooms leak so we say an emphatic "No." We didn't even ask how much it was. We pass a Chinese hotel & everything looks up. Hurrah! If you ever come to Malaysia and you look for budget accommodation, it's actually quite expensive in relation to everywhere else. It's definitely worth paying more to get a decent room. Chinatown and Little India are on our doorstep. This place feels so less foreign than everywhere else so far.
We spend the next few days exploring Penang, which is a mixture of old colonial buildings with modern high rises in the suburbs. Graham states that he is "Asia-ed out" but I am still quite up for any challenges Malaysia has to offer. We enjoy the harbour area around Fort Cornwallis. The sea is incredibly blue and very clean even though it's near quite a busy port. We discover the joys of traditional Chinese coffee shops and beat the heat with drinks of iced lime juice with sour plum. They put a
Fort Cornwallis
In Georgetown (Penang). if you sit on this cannon, you become pregnant apparently. I'm currently two-months gone expecting triplets & I'm a 42 year-ol podger! dried plum in the bottom of the lime juice and by the time you have drunk your drink it's rehydrated again! It's an acquired taste though! We also get our first taste of the famous but simply named "chicken rice". This will become a staple throughout the next few weeks as we travel though the Malaysian peninsula and onto Singapore. The roasted chicken comes with a chicken broth, a chilli and tamarind dip and some green beans or beansprouts. Yum! We discover that beer is horrendously expensive. The most cost-effective remedy to this is to drink Royal Stout. At 8% abv, it's a sensible, tasty but strong choice. You can get mildy bleutered without spending too much. You can also get Skol here! The last time I saw that was in Mucky Tony's in Saltburn about ten or eleven years ago. Carlsberg Special Brew is also a popular beverage. Scary!
We move onto the Cameron Highlands. Gaynor's father was stationed there for a while. The final section of the journey there is the highlight. Steep hills/mountains and really good roads make for an easy journey, which makes a change. It's remarkably cooler up here & due to this you
Temple in Georgetown
The joss sticks in the centre were 3 feet long. This is on the edge of Little India. have a great growing climate. This means pick your own strawberries and tonnes of tea. The tea plantations make great patterns because of how they have been planted. In short they are beautiful rolling hills all covered in that glorious drink. We visit a couple at the end of walks and it's great to see lots of families out for Sunday-runs finishing off with a tea and scone stop. We visit a butterfly and bug farm one afternoon. If you don't like seeing the huge local beetles, do not visit one of these places - stick to the orchid farms instead. Some of the stick & leaf insects were amazing, Perhaps the most interesting creatures were the large frogs that look just like brown leaves (the Malaysian Tree Frog) - what an amazing defence-mechanism. We went on a short jungle walk and saw the amazing "pitcher plants" so prevalent in Malaysia (they look like jugs with a lid on top.) Big G spends the best part of two & a half days on the toilet due to my choice of restaurant. I chose a German/Swiss sausage spot & "it done the big fella in". All this time travelling through places
Tandoori Man
Great Tandoori chicken to be had here. juicy, juicy juicy & dirt cheap. I wish I could say the same about the beer though. you expect to get ill & it happens in a relatively developed place.
After the CH we have a two bus and one ferry journey to Pangkor Island. It is low season and we pile onto the ferry with locals. We alight to the strains of "Stairway to Heaven", which is a bit unnerving... We stay at the smallest & quietest seaside village we have ever stayed in and watch the fantastic sunset with a retired Aussie couple who are spending their last night here. The beaches here have exactly the right composition for me (Gaynor). The clean, white sand is bordered by lots of huge boulders covered in creepers and there are trees for just the right amount of shade. The locals have rigged up wood & rope swing seats from some overhanging branches, which allow a perfect view of the fantastic sunset. The Aussies invite us to have dinner with them and we eat huge local prawns and squid. They warn us about the sea lice in the water, which we we do feel when we go for swim the next day. We haven't encountered this before and it's not a pleasant sensation. We stay at the
Meditation
Quiet contemplation at the Masjid Kapitan Kling Mosque in Georgetown. Ombak Inn, which I can recommend. We have a bungalow in the sprawling garden and huge hornbills keep landing on the banana trees. It's great to be able to watch them close up.
After a couple of days we press on to Kuala Lumpur, which as most of you know is all high rise. The LP speaks of its "crumbling pavements" and they're not joking. We haven't seen a place this pedestrian unfriendly since Delhi! Guess what, someone's been stealing the manhole covers here as well! KL is very firmly Islamic in design and the Chinese and Indian Malaysians we chat to speak of the increase in corruption, and I quote "racism" on the part of the government. A few Moslem women I chat to speak of its multi-culturalism and quite often use the phrase "so far" when they talk about how well everybody gets on. It made me think about how the Yugoslavians used to talk about their country.....
We stay at the fab "Number Eight" guesthouse. which is central to everything and despite its backpacker clientele has uber-clean en-suite rooms with TV & DVD Players! We have some memorable meals including ordering the "special drink" from
a menu, which turns out be a mixture of fruit and cream with a whole chocolate ice-lolly dunked upside down in it! Bizarre but not unpleasant. The bars are big on "Ladies' Privilege" here, so I end up with several free Cosmopolitans at an oyster bar we hang out at. They have a resident DJ who has an obsession with 8Os music. We sit at the bar getting sloshed to the sound of Yazoo, Bronski Beat and Howard Jones. We keep scampering up to request songs and the Malay DJ seems delighted that anyone is remotely interested. I suffer the next day and Graham is very kind to me as I wilt in the heat during photo ops.
We get up early one day to be sure of getting free tickets for the Petronas Towers. We take a taxi and are in-line by 7.45am. We queue for an hour in the basement, are given 3D glasses and then made to watch a propaganda fim about Petronas Petrochemical Inc. before we're allowed to take the lift on an ear-poppingly fast ascent to the 41st floor (not even half way). This floor is the world-famous Skybridge. It's incredibly spacious & the
Orchid Mantis
Up in the Cameron Highlands, this beautiful insect was spied. views are good despite the heat haze and air pollution. We descend and wander through shopping malls, where we find something very interesting taking place. Mel, Alan & Laura Hood please pay special attention now. We walk into a spelling competition like the one in "Spellbound". The main differences being that all the girls competing have their heads covered and the boys seem to be overweight Indians. The event is being sponsored by the "Straits Times" and a local pretzel company so we sit on our newspaper and munch our free cinnamon pretzels whilst feeling the kids' individual agonies. It certainly passed the afternoon away.
After the modernity of KL we take a bus to the small historic town of Malaka. This makes me (Gaynor) laugh as it's pronounced the same as the Greek word for "wanker/tosser". Small amusements but there you go. We spend ages finding accommodation; more time than we have spent ANYWHERE ELSE on our whole trip. This is because the LP recommendations are absolute crap. In the end we book in at the fab Hotel Puri in the heart of the old town. It's a very deep Chinese shophouse style with little marble courtyards, water
Gaynor at the Beach
On Pangkor island on the west coast of Malaysia. This is a coral beach. Really white but coarse sand. features and gardens. It's all very cooling when the heat gets too much. We do a lot of sight-seeing, including the largest Chinese cemetery outside China. It reminds me of a crazy golf course. Lots of the old town street lights have red paper lantern shades, which look great in the darkness. There are lots of trishaws decorated with gaudy plastic flowers & their own sound systems, which we don't use because we're not lazy bastards like the new-money Russians we see chain-smoking as they are being driven about. We visit the Stadthuys which is a leftover from Dutch colonial times and read the exhibit about the history of the Malalysian education system. This involves seeing one of the biggest translation howlers we've seen on our travels. They have used "capital" punishment instead of "corporal "punishment throughout the whole exhibition! Bit of a blow for any slow learner, eh? We walk along the river bank and because it's us, of course, we see a HUGE monitor lizard lifting its bulk out of the water. We see a few others further on and I am thankful that I'm not one of the poor families who live in the shacks by the
Welcome to...?
These were the figures that welcomed you to a genuine temple on Pangkor island. river.
Singapore
Next stop Singapore. It's incredibly well-policed. There are wonderful notices about 'respect" and "graciousness" eveywhere. You feel very safe here and the streets and public transport are packed until late at night every night.-a clear indication of how safe people must feel. The zoo is fantastic and we go on the night safari , which is wonderful and enables you to see lots of animals that venture out after dark. Highly recommmended. We stay at a wonderful backpackers' place called The Inn Crowd in Little India. We stay in a mixed dorm which is very clean and even has air-con! We were worried about staying in a dorm but here it was a really good experience. We make the most of all the cheap food courts and and visit street markets at Bugis St, have fab jackfruit smoothies and try durian-yeuch. The botanical and orchid gardens are great here and shouldn't be missed. We join others on the grass at an outdoor film festival- a Malay film from 1963, which is a comedy about bigamy! It was actually very funny.
NZ & Rarotonga
Our brief relaxing time in Singapore sets us up for the horrendously-long flight to
Casting
Chaps stood on these rocks fishing at dusk. I can only assume that it was the best time. Auckland. We are surrounded by babies in bassinets and Graham has to endure nine hours of a four-year-old. We arrive in Auckland at night. It is drizzling and is 9 degrees. Given that Singapore was a scorching 36 when we left, it's all a bit of a shock. NZ in winter. We get our pre-booked shuttle and are dropped off at The Top Floor Backpackers, which is cold and run down (a shithole actually). We haven't had accommodation this bad since Mumbai! Luckily, we're only booked in for three nights. We don lots of layers and do some sightseeing. Auckland is pleasant and Kiwis are some of the friendliest people we've encountered yet but given the weather we're glad we decided to cut our month in NZ to ten days. After three nights in the shittiest hostel EVER we are collected and taken to "Wilderness" where we take charge of our fantastic camper van. We travel to Raglan and Whale Bay. The beaches are volcanic but beautiful. The weather is stormy. The scenery is stunning. Everything is rolling and green. We wake up to sunshine and a new swell rolling in (big!!). The weather on the coast is incredibly windy
Hornbill
The national bird of Malaysia. This big birdie spent the afternoon in the garden. and we travel inland to Rotorua, where we base ourself for the remainder of the trip. It's sunny but there is snow on the hills, which locals say they haven't seen in decades! We have access to hot thermal pools and it's great to warm through in the evenings after a cold day's walking. It's great looking up at the stars with the steam rising from the pool. We watch Hong Kong films in the evenings and drink Monteith's beer in our toasty camper and all's right with the world. A Brucey Bonus from the hire company are the "Wilderness Bucks" they gave us. These are vouchers for various places which are a kind of winter incentive. We choose to go to Waimangu Thermal Valley and an afternoon's luging at The Skyline on these funny little luge carts. Both places are great. The luge was a real rush and you can get up to some speeds. We did some walking in the forest at Redwoods and also went to Te Puia to see huge geysers and witness lots of Maori culture. The bubbling mud was pretty impressive. We are sad to leave our van at the end of the week
Hauling in the Catch
Man & wife hauling their catch in. but the warmth of the Pacific Islands beckons.
We fly to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. We cross the international date-line so actually get two 9th Julys i.e. another day in the Cooks! We are welcomed by a ukele-playing man in a floral shirt at the incredibly small airport. Rarotonga is tiny. We hire a scooter and it only takes 45 mins to drive round the whole island. The snorkelling is great as the visibility is some of the best in the world. The water is FULL of fish. Lots of people come here for scuba diving and we decide to do the same and book ourselves on a PADI course. Graham does well but I find it too claustrophobic with all the equipment on. Hey ho, back to snorkelling. I meet other people who couldn't get away with diving either so I don't feel too bad about it. We do some walks into the interior, which is lush and see lots of butterflies and blue-tailed lizards. The views out over the reef and to the Pacific Ocean are fantastic. One morning we step out of our beachside bungalow and join others watching two humpbacked whales swimming by! They
Victorian Fountain
In Kuala Lumpur down by the maidan (cricket pitch). look massive even though they're a fair distance away, just outside the reef. I remark that I'm glad I hadn't decided to drop over the reef when I was snorkelling. One Kiwi surfer remarks "Yeah, it would be like a MACK truck going past you". It would have been a shock that's for sure. During the next few days we see other migrating whales and it's so wonderful to see their huge tails and the water spurting high from their blowholes. Even in the banks the "island-style" is ever present. They wear hibicus shirts as their uniform! A dog we name Stinky (because he stinks) adopts us for nearly a fortnight. We buddy up with a Canadian couple Nathan & Amber and make a pact to change Stinky's life. They buy him a flea collar & we feed him. Time passes slowly here as there is not a huge deal to do. It's winter so the weather is quite changeable. The one constant seems to be the wind. It's always stronger than a breeze but lighter than a gale, which makes snorkelling a somewhat chilly affair. Big G manges to photograph some visiting spongers up at Edgewater. A shallow and
View from the Petronas Towers
Your not even half way up yet. Hazy view over Kuala lumpur. short left-hander. Most waves here are left-handers during the winter as the swells are southerly to southeasterly. During cyclone season it's the opposite, with waves becoming right-handers. There are not many stand-up surfers here but the waves are world-class.
It's time to leave these shores & move on to our last stop before we come home. As we leave Rarotonga the wee ukalele player serenades us with "Leaving on a Jet Plane". We feel a little sad. Our final stop is a week or so in San Francisco & then home. We hope you have enjoyed the blog and the pictures. We will see most of you quite soon.
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