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Published: November 2nd 2011
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An old house in Melaka Well it has been a while... we just arrived in the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia. It's tea country, home to rolling hills, huge flowers (the largest flower in the world, the rafflesia, grows here and in Indonesia, and right now it's only flowering here) and tea tea tea. It reminds us of Ella in Sri Lanka, except on a smaller scale. The other thing is that the temperature here is actually quite reasonable. It is currently 19 degrees, overcast, and it feels like May or early June in Vancouver. It's really refreshing compared to the heat, humidity, and general stickiness of the places we've been visiting for the past few months. Our hostel (Kang's Guest House) even has a resident dog, a young energetic thing named Rocky, who loves being taken out for walks. We are going to take him with us when we explore and look for geocaches tomorrow.
But this is all getting ahead of ourselves. I'll start from the beginning. We took a bus our of Singapore and arrived in Melaka, in southern Malaysia, about a week ago. We took the city bus from the bus station, and it dropped us short of our destination in front
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Deepavali decorations of a large mall. It was a bit of a mind trip; the state-of-the-art Singaporean bus took us to a tiny run down roadside bus stop, and then the creaky rusted city bus took us to one of the most modern malls I've ever seen. Malaysia is a mixed bag that way.
We had a bubble tea at the mall while we figured out where we were. An interesting thing we noticed was that Malaysia has the cheapest Big Macs we've ever seen. Everywhere else we've been has the same price for a Big Mac as back home, regardless of the exchange rate. The same goes for things like Starbucks, and the only thing more ridiculous than a $7 coffee is a $7 coffee in a country where minimum wage is $55 a month. But Malaysia, for some reason, is different. McDonald's (and KFC and Starbucks and all those other chains that have no business in a country with such amazing and varied food) seems to have cut its prices here. We don't know why, and we don't eat the stuff anyways, but it is interesting nonetheless.
Anyways, after our bubble tea and our fast food observations, and walked
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the biggest incense sticks I have ever seen the ten minutes to our hostel in Chinatown. Chinatown is the place to be in Melaka, and Jelan-Jelan Hostel is the place to be in Chinatown. We got a small room with a mosquito net and a fan for about $11 a night and went out to explore the area. There isn't much to do in Melaka, but it's a great place because despite the fact that there is a population of about 700,000 it feels like a small town. The buildings are all 2 stories, there are little restaurants everywhere, and people are friendly. Our hostel had a great community of people and we spent many an hour there drinking tea and playing cards and listening to music in the common room while the monsoon rains raged outside. We also discovered some choice restaurants.
We had arrived the day before the first day of Deepavali, the festival of lights. It's a little like Christmas in that there is a lot of buildup before the festival, people decorate houses and streetsz with bright lights, and everyone opens their houses and kitchens to neighbours and friends and family. The day after we arrived our hostel owner took a dozen or so
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old lime-based wall plaster develops interesting patterns after a couple hundred years of us to visit a community gathering and have lunch. The host was one of the caretakers of the oldest Tamil temple in South East Asia, and he was a really nice guy. Everyone was welcoming and the kids running around the yard were cute and well behaved. The food was good, too. It was a great way to start our time here.
We spent a few days doing pretty much nothing. We ate, slept, read our books, and on our last day we explored the old church, a new maritime museum built in the shape of a pirate ship, and a couple of old fortifications. Then we got on a bus and went to Kuala Lumpur.
Kuala Lumpur is OK but not exactly the most fascinating place I've ever been. The Twin Towers were closed, so we could only stand at the bottom and look up at them (they aren't actually as tall as I'd expected. They are tall, for sure, and from a distance they look huge, but up close they didn't quite blow me away. I think I had set my expectations a little too high. Pun intended.)
We also went to Batu Caves, a
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Evon in a guard house little ways out of town. Despite what the taxi drivers say, it's easy to bus there and back, and the ride through the city is quite pleasant. They say it's one of the greenest cities on earth and you can really get a sense of that when busing. Though they are not extensive, the caves are a lot more impressive than we expected. The ceilings are very high and the sounds of drums and prayer rebound nicely through the stalactites. There is a long set of about 300 stairs to get up to the caves, and I knew that I was finally over the last of my illness when I could do the entire set without pausing. Victory! We explored the caves a bit, took some pictures, watched a group praying (a lot of them had bright paint on their arms, and they were playing drums and chanting - it was mesmerising) and then meandered on home as the afternoon storm hit. Every afternoon around 4 or so there is a brief but intense storm. The sky goes dark dark grey, lightening flashes every few seconds, thunder rolls almost without stop (seriously, I've never heard a clap of thunder go
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the gun show! on for so long) and everything gets completely soaked.
Other than those things, we spent a lot of time wandering around market places, eating delicious food and fresh fruit from roadside stands, and having a couple beers on the rooftop of our hostel (The Original Backpacker's) with whoever else was up there. It was a good group, we met a huge variety of ethnicities and nationalities, swapped stories, advice, and favourite destinations, and that was about it. One thing we all agreed on was that the backpacker vibe around town was a little off. Not only are there more travellers in general than we are used to, but they are different kinds of travellers. In most places we visit, we find that there are a lot of backpackers, a few older professionals, and a few fresh out of highschool types. In KL, there were tonnes of 'flashpackers' (the more expensive kind of backpacker, flashpackers often have rolling suitcases, more than two pairs of shoes, and they tend to take taxis everywhere), lots of older couples fully kitted out in quickdry and floppy sunhats, and a herd of young couples who seemed new to the backpacking game and a little
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ancient church #1 standoffish. Most places, if you sit down at a roadside watering hole and order a beer you will get a nod 'hello' from a couple of travellers at another table and you'll find yourself in conversation with them within about 10 minutes. But we couldn't seem to get the comraderie going anywhere, at least until we hit the hostel's rooftop bar. Anyways, long story short, KL is worth a stop for a couple of days but we are glad to be out of there, and it sure is nice to be somewhere cooler for a bit.
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