The road to "rain town"

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It's been a week, so here's an update. We spent a few days exploring KL and visited the bird park and Batu caves. The caves have a number of Hindu temples inside and we were made to feel very welcome with a free and rather tasty lunch offered to us by local families serving food at the temple. Inside the cave we heard many bats and saw jungle millipede, a giant centipede, a cave racer snake and many cockroaches! Around the city we noticed locals carrying sandwich size plastic bags filled with a suspect yellow liquid. We were baffled for a few days as to why so many Malaysians would have catheter bags....until we clicked that it was iced tea!

On Monday we started our cycling. On our bicycles we turn many heads, car drivers have been so intrigued they miss the traffic lights changing until a car hoots from behind! I think the locals think we're crazy! We took the train a couple of hours out of the city as we didn't fancy the highways and then made a gentle start with 18 miles into the hills and palm plantations. The maps of Malaysia are challenging to say the least with only about a quarter of roads marked. It didn't take long for us to come to a dead end! Luckily, a friendly local came to our rescue and guided us to a village and we found a room to stay. He even offered to collect us a KFC, much to George's delight! Then the heavens opened and it rained and rained and we heard some very happy frogs.

Our second day we travelled 55 miles winding our way through more palm plantations, and rubber tress with pockets of natural forest in between. There is a real mixture of Hindu temples and mosques across the province. Trucks and cars greets us with a beep and a friendly wave. We stayed at a small town called Kuala Kangsar overnight and then travelled on 37km to Taiping where we are presently staying for a rest day. Only two Englishmen would choose the wettest town in Malaysia to take a break; it downpours every few hours! It's been quite refreshing after the humidity of the past week. It was the first town the English founded in Malaysia and thrived on its tin mines. We've walked (rather paddled) around the Lake Gardens and saw 3 hornbills fly over, a few kingfishers and some water monitor lizards which I was very excited about!!

Tomorrow, we're cycling over to Matang mangrove forest on the coast...

Our road kill tally stands at 2 dogs, 3 monitor lizards and 5 snakes (one of which was a rather fat python!).

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Comments

[Sue/ Mum]

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Hi, Thanks for the email George. Sounds nice where you are at the moment. When is the next update? Love to you both, Mum xxx