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Published: September 28th 2009
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The border crossing from Singapore into Malaysia was relatively straightforward. Aside from the fact that first you leave Singapore and then you drive through ‘no man’s land’ for half an hour in awful traffic and queue up again in another non descript building, this time to get into Malaysia. The process itself is very straightforward, smile and hand over your passport.
Our first stop in Malaysia was Melacca or Melaka depending on which road sign you looked at. We had read a fair bit about the city and its fascinating history and it really didn’t disappoint. To give you a brief overview the city was a very important trading port for hundreds of years, back when Singapore was still just a village. This made it a highly sought-after city and between the 1500’s & 1900’s it was taken over and occupied by the Dutch, the Portuguese, the Brits of course and then the Japs during WWII. Meanwhile the Chinese were also coming and settling in the city, marrying the locals and creating the Baba-Nyonya culture. And there has been a steady influx of Indian over the years, beginning with a wave of Tamil labourers in the early 1900’s. So
Melaka has very unique cuisine, culture, architecture and is also known as ‘the birthplace of Malay civilisation‘.
We spent two days in Melaka and were blown away by it. Aside from the aforementioned reasons which made it very interesting to walk around, the people were just lovely and the owner of our guest-house even sat us down for a half hour history lesson and orientation. The guesthouse by the way was one of the most stunning buildings we’ve seen so far. Dark wooden floors, very high ceilings and sitting right on the river with a lovely terrace to sit and enjoy the view.
After Melaka, the plan was to head to Kuala Lumpur early the next morning. We decided there was no need to call a taxi company, as we had seen hundreds of taxis during the previous two days and would just hail one on the main road, 5 minutes walk from the guesthouse. Of course 10 minutes went by and not one empty taxi had passed by and we had walked up a little so we were now 15 minutes from the guesthouse, not worth turning back, and about 2 km from the bus station. Were
you running late for your bus? I hear you ask. No we still had plenty of time but the lack of taxis and the ever increasing weight of the rucksacks made us a little bit anxious.
Next we saw a little yellow and green taxi coming along the road, it was empty and it looked as though he was pulling in for us. As he drew closer we could see why it was empty. The car looked as though it had been a prototype for the ‘automobile’ back in the 1870’s. And the driver looked as though he came from the same era. But as you can imagine, we were in no position to be fussy. So once we negotiated a fair price, about 2 Euro, we were on our way - well almost. The boot kept popping open even at the slightest movement and the driver had to practically jump on it to get it to stay closed. All the while, we were being roasted to death in the back seat, and of course there were no handles to open the windows so there was no relief! When we arrived at the bus station we were promptly dropped
on the main road outside the car park, the driver explaining in his basic English ‘no road worthy, can no drive taxi rank’. No shit Sherlock it’s not road worthy, Gareth had to lift my door about 5 inches to let me out. It was actually one of the most interesting journeys we have taken, just wondering how the car was actually going!
Nevertheless we arrived in plenty of time and hopped on our quite comfortable bus to Kuala Lumpur, 2 hours north.
We found our hostel quite easily with the help of an overcharging (2 Euro instead of 1.50) but very entertaining Indian taxi driver who despite the fact that we agreed a fare before setting off, still brought us on a mini tour of the area. Obviously feeling he had missed his calling as a tour guide. Don’t they all!
The first thing that struck us was how dirty the city was compared to Singapore and Melaka, compounded by the fact that there was a pile of rubbish bags stacked outside McDonalds that looked like it was trying to compete with the Menara KL Tower for the title of tallest building in the city. But
once we started to hit some of the major tourist spots, it was clear that they had selective rubbish collections, ‘clean only where the tourists might stray’.
Each morning at 8am 1400 free tickets to the Petronas Towers Skybridge are given out. So this meant an early start the next day to ensure we would get two tickets and get our chance to walk along the bridge. The Petronas Towers were once the tallest buildings in the world and the walk along the bridge that joins the two towers together half way up was pretty cool to get to do for free. But as you know, we are fans of heights so we also paid a visit to the Menara KL Tower, which is the tallest building in Malaysia and the forth highest communications tower in the world. So up we went and even though it was a little cloudy, the view was very impressive. Unfortunately there was no option for jumping off the tower so we’ll have to pop back to Auckland if we want to do that again. We didn’t know until we got to the tower that they also have a small zoo next door which
we got into for free. More snakes and lizards than I wanted to see but some very cool monkeys too. These ones were in cages to my sunglasses were safe!
There are markets galore in KL so we also spent a few hours wandering around and picking up some very cheap souvenirs. The markets really sell everything you could ever want and thousands of things you would never want and it makes for an interesting afternoon trying to stay polite while saying no thanks to 10 people at a time, trying to sell “DVD Movies, watches sir or a belt for you, trainers maybe.”
Next up was the town of Tanah Rata in the Cameron Highlands. I had my eye on this place months ago when I heard that they get regular rain and the temperature gets down to the teens at night. And it was a fabulous change from the hot and sticky places we’ve been so far. I got to wear a hoody and jeans and we whiled away two days walking around the little town from café to park to shop to café, even getting a little bit of torrential rain to make us feel
at home. We also found a little shop that sold Cadbury Chocolate Eclairs for 10 Malaysian sen, which is 2 cents so we got about two hundred of them! Easily pleased!
After the Cameron Highlands we jumped on a bus to Penang, while is an Island just off the north west coast of Malaysia, linked to the mainland by a very impressive bridge. Georgetown, the islands capital, is a huge city and not exactly what you might expect for a small island. The city was the first British settlement on the Malay Peninsula in 1791 and it has retained a lot of the colonial architecture, making it well worth a short visit. We only stayed for a day which was enough to get around a see most of the places of interest.
The next morning we were on the 8.15am ferry to Langkawi Island which is 30km off the north western tip of Malaysia. The island is tax free and it means that the alcohol is quite cheap. Perhaps even too cheap 😊 We booked ourselves into a small hotel, which was 100m from the beautiful beach and also had a big pool and garden. As you can
imagine the three days were spent drinking some very cheap alcohol, shopping in very cheap shops, eating in actually quite pricey restaurants compared to elsewhere, and swimming in water so hot we were almost looking for the cold tap to balance it out a bit :p
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