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Published: September 24th 2007
Oh no, not another bus!
cried Paul when he realised how we planned to get from Singapore to our next stop in Kuala Lumpur. But this was no ordinary bus. It was a Super Luxury Sleeper Bas Ekspres! This means a full size ultra-modern coach but with only 18 seats and there was enough legroom even for lanky types like us to stretch out fully without even touching the seat in front. The 6 hour journey cost us just under 14 quid each. National Express could learn a thing or two...
Kuala Lumpur It was easy to tell when we had arrived in Kuala Lumpur. The empty highway suddenly became an enormous traffic jam and exhaust fumes started to filter into the bus. All of a sudden we had 'arrived'. The driver told us to get off - not in a bus station, but in the middle of a street of shops. It was hilarious, like being dropped off in Addlestone High Street outside 'Shoe Fare' and being told you're in London! Luckily a local taxi driver was there waiting, trying to spot a honky with a wallet full of western money and we were quickly whisked away to our hotel.
DISCLAIMER
Before 
Entrance to our 5-star hotel
We're backpackers, don't you know?!we write any more it is important that you, our beloved readers, understand that we've been travelling for more than 3 months now. We've endured many hardships (like having to share dorms and toilets with others and speaking to French people) and needed to take a break.
Upon arriving in Malaysia we quickly realised two things:
- The majority of people in Malaysia are very poor
- It is SO UNBELIEVABLY CHEAP FOR US compared with anywhere else we've visited so far!
...and that meant that we could afford to stay at the rather splendid 5-star Prince Hotel & Residence for a few days FOR PEANUTS!!!!
There were two bathrooms between three of us, the most enormous beds, robes, slippers and a SWIMMING POOL with its own poolside bar on the 10th floor. We all had a nice swim and a few Tigers. Absolute heaven.
We emerged from the hotel later in the day feeling like different people. Malaysia was celebrating 50 years of independence from the English - Merdeka as they call it. There was a huge military tattoo celebration at the stadium in the centre of the city but the 100,000 tickets had
Eating Malaysian style
The kind of spice that burns you twice! completely sold out. To console ourselves we ended up going to the karaoke bar/restaurant next door to our hotel for some dinner. There was a good cover band on and we ate some more firey local cuisine, remembering to put toilet rolls in the fridge when we got back to our room.
To make up for missing the tattoo, Iain had spotted in the newspaper that the Royal London Circus had set up their big top on the outskirts of town. We were on our second taxi driver before we found the place, just behind a giant Tesco's supermarket. No joke, Tesco's have invaded here too!
The circus was fantastic, although there wasn't very much 'London' or 'Royal' about it. The Russian acrobats in bondage gear were phenomenal, as were the trapeze artists. As a general rule none of us like seeing animals being forced to perform but made an exception for one of the most original acts we'd ever seen. Picture this: a pony doing laps of the big top with a poodle on its back, whilst standing over the poodle is a labrador. Then add the piece de resistance - a monkey standing on the labrador's back
doing backflips. Except that everytime he did a backflip he nearly fell off, so he had to cling on and find his footing again. Monkeys are funny anyway, but this was something else. How did someone come up with the idea?! Iain was laughing so hard the floor was shaking. We couldn't tell what happened for the next couple of minutes as we were laughing too hard and had tears in our eyes. In fact we're laughing now thinking about that monkey. Priceless... The final act involved a big hollow metal mesh ball being rolled out into the middle of the floor. Then 4 men on motorbikes rode round inside it without hitting each other. We're not quite sure what the point was but it was nevertheless impressive.
The bus ride home took 45 mins and cost less than a pound for all three of us. A top night out.
After all that excitement, the next day we felt inspired to seek out Malaysia's colonial British past and decided to head for Fraser's Hill, a village 1,500m above sea-level surrounded by Malaysian jungle. It was a place where British servicemen used to go with their families for holidays. To
Wild monkey on Frasers Hill
But not all monkeys are friendly, as we later found out... get there we chartered a taxi - less than 30 quid for a 2½ hour journey. Our driver Mr Singh entertained us all the way, both with his interesting conversation about modern Malaysian politics and his 'enthusiastic' driving style. In particular his attitude to hairpin bends and the laws of physics. We have a feeling that he may be chosen as the works driver if the Malaysian Proton Team make a late entry into next year's World Rally Championship.
Q. What's faster up a winding mountain road than Imogen in a campervan?
A. Mr Singh in his 18 year old Toyota Crown taxi.
Fraser's hill looks a lot like an alpine village. You can only get there using a 9 mile stretch of winding mountain road known as 'The Gap'. During the day you can only drive
up it if the hour is an even number, (e.g. 2pm, 4pm etc.) and
down on the odd number hours. Interestingly it becomes 2 way after sunset. Thank God we got there by mid-afternoon! Our accommodation was a place called 'Ye Olde Smokehouse', which was a mock-tudor cottage that would not have looked out of place on the
outskirts of Guildford. It didn't look like anyone had touched the place since it was built, lending it a tired elegance and charm. The walls were peeling and there was mould and dust all over the place, but we all had 4-poster beds and loved it! In true colonial style we took tea and scones with jam and cream on the terrace for tiffin and said 'what what what' to each other a lot.
Within a few minutes walk of the hotel were several marked jungle trails you could trek through, so we attempted to arrange a guided tour. Sadly no guide was available but undeterred we thought we'd have a go at a short one by ourselves, especially as we'd been through Possum's expert jungle tuition in Australia. The track we followed turned out to be the main pedestrian route into town and we only spent about 5 mins in the jungle and saw absolutely nothing in terms of wildlife. The trek followed the main road back to the hotel where we sat down for a dinner of typical English fare, which was actually a welcome relief after several days of spicy cuisine. After dinner we retired to
the bar for beers and cards when suddenly we noticed a big fat leech heading across the door away from us and were very relieved not to have encountered one.
After a great night's sleep, eggs and bacon were served up on the terrace. As Paul sat there eating his breakfast he noticed some red marks on his foot. Investigating further he rolled up his trouser leg to reveal large quantities of dried blood all over his calf and a big hole in his leg. Very quickly he realised that the leech he'd seen the previous night had dropped off HIM. Further examination found his jeans and bedsheets also covered in blood - it looked like someone had been murdered! Yet another example of Paul 'taking one for the blog'!
Mr Singh arrived to take us back to KL and we had another high-speed journey in his Toyota. He managed to knock 30 mins of his personal best. There are wild monkeys living in the Fraser Hill jungle and we'd seen them on the road on the way up. This time we were ready to feed them with bananas stolen from the hotel, but the cheeky gets never
appeared. We love monkeys.
We returned to Kuala Lumpur and decided to take a walk over to the Petronas twin towers, KL's trademark buildings which are 452m high (and were controversially claimed to be the tallest buildings in the world until the still-being-built Burj Dubai stole the title in July this year). A tour of the towers is free but there is a limited number of tickets issued daily which had already sold out for the day. Undeterred we went to the second highest building in town, the 421m Menara Communications Tower for a decent view of the city from its 335m high observation deck. To get there we had to negotiate some more Malaysian jungle which meant we had to stop every 2-3 minutes to check for leeches! Finally we made it to the tower but by the time we had a final leech-check, bought tickets and took the lift to the top it was already dark! As lady luck was clearly not on our side, we consoled ourselves with a swim and some drinks back at the hotel.
Our final day in Kuala Lumpur saw a visit to the National Museum before heading over to the
Our train cabin
On the way to Butterworth modern and impressive KL Sentral station for our 9pm night-train North to Butterworth. We had cabins with beds and the whole thing was similar to the Euston-Aberdeen train we've used before in England. It was due to arrive at 6am the following morning so after a few beers and some rounds of cards we tried to get our heads down. The track must negotiate some pretty tricky terrain because all of a sudden it became something of a roller-coaster. It's very hard to stay asleep when you're being fired out of bed! Everyone was cranky when we arrived the following morning.
Penang The town of Butterworth is the gateway from the Malaysian mainland to the island of Penang. A taxi took us across the 13km causeway that links them and into Penang's capital city, Georgetown. This was where the English first settled when Malaysia became part of the British Empire and we looked forward to seeing some more classic faded English colonial architecture. But our first impressions of Georgetown were that it was a complete armpit, especially in heavy rain. Our hotel was called 'Hotel Mingood' which seemed rather apt. Actually the hotel was fine (more of a hostel
than a hotel), but a walk around town later on did little to change our opinion of the place. The traffic was horrendous which in turn lead to great clouds of pollution in the narrow streets. It was impossible to walk along the pavements due to a wide variety of obstacles which forced you into the oncoming traffic.
Then to top it all the heavens opened, or more precisely they fell out all in one go. This was rain on a Biblical scale, from which waterproofs offered no protection. We had to shelter in a doorway under an overhanging roof and were stuck. After a couple of minutes we realised we were stood outside a small bar, and as we had no option to go anywhere in the near future, we sat down. It took several minutes before it really registered just how awful this bar was. There was the unconscious junkie in the corner face-down on the table. The man on the next table was having a fantastic conversation even though he was sitting on his own. The panel of burnt out electrics on the wall gave little confidence in heavy rain. The large rats and cockroaches scurrying across
Us with Zack
Oh look, he's got a whisky in his hand... the floor are also worth a mention. But huge 660ml bottles of Tiger were only 12 Malaysian Ringgit, so it wasn't so bad! Once the rain slowed we made a run for the hotel. Sadly the weather and polluted air took its toll on us all, especially Iain and we all felt pretty rough for the next day or so. Combine this with continuous torrential rain and we really didn't get to see much more of Penang, apart from a nice meal on the last night. The next morning we made our escape to the island of Langkawi, which we hoped was going to be better (it couldn't really be any worse!).
Langkawi Oh God, another ferry ride, this time for 2½ hours. Paul was not impressed, and less still when 40 noisy schoolchildren got onto the ferry with him. But their sweet munching, coke swilling revelry soon turned to vomiting and crying once the boat hit the open water and started listing and bouncing. At least we were escaping from Penang. In fact, Paul wasn't sick at all, unlike nearly all the children (his secret? : sit near the back and look out of the window at the
Paul in a pooey Proton
The dodgy car we hired for the day horizon). Imogen remained completely unperturbed and read her book quietly as usual, while Iain spent the journey laughing at the chucking children.
Once in Langkawi we headed for our hostel called 'Zackary Guest House' in a beach-side village called Pantai Tengah. The hostel owner Zack looks permanently stoned and must be about 650 years old. We challenge you to get a picture of him without a 'cigarette' in one hand and a whisky in the other. This meant it was an amazingly chilled-out place to be, only 200m from the beach and a big swimming pool. All amenities and loads of nice restaurants were within a short walking distance. Fabulous!
The sun had also come out and it was Iain's last day so we decided to hire a car to explore. The 'car' we ended up with definitely wins a prize as the worst hire car in history. It was a Proton Saga, possibly the original one and had no brakes or steering worth mentioning. It was quicker to list the parts of the bodywork where there
wasn't any damage! Paul managed to hit 100km/h with all one cylinders roaring, but otherwise we just pottered around trying to keep
Imogen and Iain charm a snake
At the Snake Sanctuary in Langkawi away from anything which might mean having to brake. We visited the Snake Sanctuary in the afternoon where a certified nutter gave us a guided tour of all the many species of venomous and dangerous snakes in Malaysia (and there are a lot!). We nicknamed him 'The Snake Irritator' as he would tell us how quickly a particular snake could kill a human, then climbed in with it and start hitting it on the head or pulling its tail to make it attack him. Nevertheless it was extremely interesting and we'd definitely recommend it.
In the evening Imogen and Iain had some Reflexology and we had a nice dinner in one of the many restaurants.
Next day it was sadly time for Iain to leave us. We set off early to drive him to the airport, in case the Proton caught fire. Thankfully all was fine and he made his plane. We spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool.
We quickly made lots of new friends at the hostel and ended up extended our stay for a few more days. We took motorbikes out to explore the island further and spent the evenings checking out the
Our friends at Zackary Guest House
We didn't drink ALL those beers... did we?! restaurants and living it up in the Reggae Bar at night. It's all so cheap!
(Click here to see us in action on our scooters) So it was with regret that we finally said goodbye to Langkawi and our new friends and headed out of Malaysia into Thailand.
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Chelle
non-member comment
5 Star hotels, dear oh dear, what happened to your backpacking Ethos? Mark and I found Malaysia to be the most expensive place when we were travelling - LOL. Next thing you know you'll start taking internal flights instead of 48 hour bus journeys (that was my personal best in Indonesia). If you can try and make it to the Perhentian Islands, very nice. Look forward to the next installment. Wheres the tan? You'll come back pailer than Root at this rate. Chelle