Advertisement
Published: April 28th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Road out of Cameron Highlands
Decided not to stay and therefore had a long journey through the jungle as night was falling - stunning sunset over the jungle was great compensation Well it’s been a while since we updated the blog so we are going to do it in two steps - first one about the places we have been and the second about what our thoughts are on the things we have seen
Firstly - we decided to change our plans once we left Thailand to go to HK and China. The original plan was to go with a group called Intrepid Travellers and Ian had booked this before we left England. The reason we cancelled that trip (2 nights in Bangkok then to Khao Sok, Penang, Cameron Highlands, Southern Malaysia, Singapore was that we had already done half in Thailand and secondly we realised that it would be very difficult travelling in a group (are we old and cranky and unsociable??) It was actually the very best decision as Malaysia has had some difficult bits where quite frankly, we have arrived at a place and left in an hour when the tour would have had us there for two days. The other benefit is that we hired a car which means you can travel to see not only more but things which are off the main routes. We have
Petrol stop in the jungle
Rather than pressing on hoping that there was a petrol station stopped to ask if anyone had some petrol - bought it from the mobile phone shop in litre lemonade bottles. Another customer sat smoking happily as they were filled and put on the counter next to him! also been to some very remote places.
So where did we end up going? We flew from Bangkok to Penang and stayed in Georgetown which is the old colonial town of Penang Flying is cheap out here with a number of low-cost airlines like Air Asia . Flights of a couple of hours are about £50 including taxes.
Georgetown has some of the best museums we have been to - easy to understand and providing lots of visual representations of the way things used to be. I suppose it’s because the history here really starts around the 1800s. Before that tribes and thick forest. Georgetown had good food in large covered marketplaces where you could watch Premiership football at the same time interspersed with locals getting up and singing their favourite western karaoke songs. Hot and humid here with the start of really heavy tropical downpours which lasted an hour and then the sun came out. Lots of lightening and thunder too Carol and I were at the Eastern and Oriental Hotel (very colonial and v swish) when the lightening got as close as I ever want to be - the lightening was followed in less than a
Malaka
..at last a really great place in Malaysia - after the 5th museum we called a stop and had a bowl of cendol (shaved ice, sweetcorn, red beans, jelly sweets, condensed milk and other stuff - believe it or not delicious and cooling!) second (I was counting). There was a tremendous explosion Carol in one movement jumped in the air turned 180degrees and was inside the building. Good fun though.
We stayed in an old house that is also a museum which was OK but on the edge of acceptable - interesting people staying there including the managers of a corporate function company that were organising an annual general meeting and evening “do” It included a Thai transvestite group who were doing the entertainment - all jolly good fun no doubt!!
Having spent some time in Georgetown (including going up the funicular railway to the Peak) very impressive and much cooler up there with great views over the Straits of Penang we hired a car and set off for the Cameron Highlands - good roads and reached the area for a scone and cup of tea in the afternoon all well and lots of tea plantations (so we have seen tea growing in India, Sri Lanka, China and Malaysia now). Then it all fell to bits - the towns were cheap and nasty (think Bridlington on a Bank Holiday) the places to stay were dirty and expensive and we had the worst
Malacca by night
First night in Malacca there was a concert in the square of Malaysian pop music, live jazz in a cafe and as we walked back to our hotel we could hear Chinese opera (or was it the cats fighting?) attempted rip off so far. We found a place which was an apartment - we had checked it as we always do now - but once we got settled in we found that in the other two rooms there was a bunch of Indians inside the other bedrooms keeping quiet!!!! We went ballistic and got our money back and left town.
We ten drove until we dropped and found an hotel for the night before bashing onto the north east coast of Malaysia - but the same thing expensive dirty accommodation that was downright nasty - so we drove on to Kota Baru which is the main city and stayed in a 5 star hotel for the night. In the evening went out to the old part of the city to see what was there and believe it or not there wasn’t anywhere you would want to eat and we ended up with a MacDonald’s (only the second time on our trip - the other place was Varanasi in India).
So next morning we got in the car and drove to Malacca arriving at 8 in the evening All in all 24 hours driving out of less than 60 hours Lovely landscapes of hills, mountains, forest and jungle but quite frankly don’t go there. Most of the Chinese Malays have left this areas and it is pretty fundamentalist Muslim - until recently men and women couldn’t sit on the same bench for instance.
However after a bad 3 days we really enjoyed Malacca It has the best museums so far - it is being developed for the visitor and emphasising its rich history - Muslim traders, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese, British and also its almost unique entrepot status over centuries between the East and the West. Lovely places to stay (we were in an old Dutch house) a great Chinatown with the ladies practising their Tai Chi and also Salsa moves whilst the men do their Karaoke thing on a Friday night on a stage set up at the end of one of the streets We went for two days and stayed five days.
Having been rejuvenated by Malacca we got an early morning bus across to the east side of Malaysia to Mersing where we caught the , ferry to Tioman Island which is supposed to be one of the worlds most beautiful and where part of the South Pacific film was shot. We arrived and then got a 4wd jeep to take us through the jungle to the far side of the Island which took 45 minutes. It was the most difficult road we have been on yet with very steep parts, sheer drops and where there was a road it was concrete with metal bars wrapped around the concrete so the tyres could grip - there are always two drivers in the vehicles in case of mishaps. Some times even the 4wd vehicles don’t travel.
However arrived at our place and just beautiful - sweeping beach 4/5 places to eat/drink and very quiet. The water is truly turquoise and the sand talcum powder soft. The bay was like something from a child’s painting of a desert island - but that will be for the next blog!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.1s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0695s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Carl
non-member comment
Is that really petrol Ian is putting into the car...
....I know service stations are rare in the jungle but really! Keep up the blogging - it is an excellent distraction from the joy of a UK winter/spring. Carl and Mary