Advertisement
Published: January 17th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Georgetown is an old colonial city with narrow streets on the island of Penang on the west coast of Malaysia and was our introduction into Malaysian life. The many races that make up Penang's population today have all influenced it in different ways, from the many curry shops and book sellers in Little India to the chinese restaurants and money changers in the Chinese Quarter with many other peoples mixed in. Shops are squeezed into narrow alleyways with a large open sided restaurant on the corner of each street. Georgetown also has a few sights including a decent museum detailing the history of the island as well as Fort Cornwallis used by the British and formerly the Portugese. Unfortunately it rained all day incessently while we were there, not really what I expected as the monsoon is supposed to be on the east coast at this time of year. Kind of reminded me of England though, grey skies and drizzle, guess it's a good warm up to my return in a few weeks.
We were going to head to a beach resort further west along the coast of Penang but the weather kind of made that pointless so we decided
Kuala Besut
The beautiful beach of Kuala Besut mid-monsoon that instead we'd go straight across to the west coast and into the full brunt of the monsoon. We got to Kota Bahru late in the afternoon and soon found ourselves a horrible little concrete box to call home so sank ourselves into a bottle of whisky we'd brought from Thailand, whilst trying to avoid the fleas biting which inhabited the sofa in the communal area. Kota Bahru's not got much going for it. The real reason we were there was to try and visit the town where my Mum was born when my grandparents were living here and my grandfather was District commisioner when Malaysia was still under British control. When we arrived in Kuala Besut we found it to be rather a ghost town as it is normally the jump off point for the Perehentian Islands but at this time of year the islands are shut because of bad weather so all the taxi drivers and restaurant owners were sitting around playing draughts and looking bored. After some searching we eventually found a restaurant owner who spoke good English and with his help got a taxi driver to take us to the house. The building which is a
grand old colonial structure is no longer a house but the local kindergarten. We were warmly invited in by the teachers however even though they didn't understand why we were there until our taxi driver explained. I think they soon realised however as this had been the second visit by a member of my family in a month as my Mum and Dad had been there independently of me only three weeks previously. We quickly realised that we were disturbing the kids lessons though because they were no longer concentrating on their teachers but would burst into fits of giggles and hide their faces when we waved and said hello to them. As we left the teachers were all gathered round the doorwary looking at us and the kids were peeking through the windows ducking down when we looked back but as their confidence grew waved us off.
Now before I had come to Malaysia I had been led to believe that the food here was amazing, what with all the different influences on the cuisine. In our first week in Malaysia both of us had been suffering from stomach cramps, something which we've not experienced at all in
the previous four months of Asia (where the food has nearly always been excellent, well except for a couple of accidents when we've just pointed to an unlabeled delicious looking food on a stall and it's turned out to be pickled pig's colon or similar but that's been our fault), and been constantly hungry because of the inedibilty of the food. So the still frozen raw fish at the supposed 'Seafood Restaurant' in Kuala Besut was the last straw. When we got back to Kota Bahru we headed straight to KFC. Now I'm not one for supporting the big multinationals over local businesses but you've got to understand....a man needs to eat! We were just so sick of bad and/or dangerous food. And would you believe it, Sophie's chicken was so poor it was inedible and mine wasn't cooked properly. I mean give me strength! The crunchy fried crickets in the market in Chiang Mai were better and they tasted like burnt hair! I felt like all the life had been sucked out of me. Hang on - rain, grey skies, bad food....sounds more like England to me. Anyway enough of a rant, it can't always be like that.
So after Kota Bahru we headed, with grumbling stomachs, to the Cameron Highlands in central Malaysia. We arrived late as usual after a long day on buses but found somewhere to stay after some looking and the customary arguments when we're both exhausted. On the journey up the hill in the dark (Cameron Highlands sits about 1500m above sea level, hence the clever name) there was the rather spooky looking greenhouses used to grow strawberries which are illuminated by lights at night and light up swaths of dark hillside stretching into the distance. We planned to spend a few days here relaxing after about a week of constantly being on buses. Our first surprise was some decent food, with some great curries, almost as good as home (although we did somehow avoid food poisoning from a restaurant that we found dozens of complaints about in the hostel guestbook, which we read just after returning from said restaurant). It continued to rain but it didn't stop us from exploring the local areas with some good short walks. One day we headed out to one of the huge tea plantations that surround the area which was impressive with row after row of
tea plants stretching as far as the eye could see. We also fitted in a visit to a butterfly farm, with hundreds of huge butterflys and moths fluttering around and oddly lots of huge insects and snakes in cages, some of which were dumped in our protesting arms by the friendly and amusing guy who worked there, as well as some little hamsters in a cage too oddly, apparently not the snakes dinner but we weren't so sure. One afternoon we walked to an old Hotel and Restaurant, the Smokehosue Inn which was just like any Tudor style pub you'd see back in England, complete with yards of ale hanging up as well as the usual horse brass and other trinkets. We spent a few hours there, sitting on the comfy sofas escaping the rain as well as escaping back to England for a while.
From the Cameron Highlands we got another freezing cold coach (why they turn up the airconditioning to artic gale proportions for the entire journey I'll never know but it seems like it's the norm here) to Melaka. Melaka is very modern with shiny shopping malls and cafes and a very cosmopolitan feel. And best
Smokehouse Inn
An little piece of England in Malaysia, complete with Devon Cream Teas of all, we seem to have left the bad weather behind as it is now sunny and very hot and humid and the food here is brilliant. So I've just spent the last few days visiting museums and other point of interest as well as doing a bit of shopping to replace some of my more threadbare clothes. Tomorrow we head to Kuala Lumpur for a few days before Sophie and I wave our goodbyes as I head to Borneo for a week and she ends her travelling and flies home.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.047s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb