Advertisement
Published: January 8th 2009
Indian Food
Christmas come-early for Matt.We decided to see Malaysia primarily because Kuala Lampur (it's capital) provided a convenient place from which to fly to the Philippines and because we could travel there overland from the Thailand beaches. We had very few expectations or pre-conceptions upon arriving...in other words-we had no idea what to expect. Malaysia is divided into two landmasses-Peninsular Malaysia which occupies the southern portion of the peninsula hanging down from Thailand, and Borneo, which shares an island with Kalimantan in Indonesia. For this portion of our trip, we only saw the Peninsular part.
From Koh Lanta in the south of Thailand, we took two minivans and a ferry to reach Pulau Langakawi (an island off the very northwestern coast of Malaysia). We expected gorgeous beaches and more chill guesthouses like we had left in Koh Lanta. Instead, we found a duty-free shopping paradise and cement block hotels along a beach littered with jet skis. We also discovered that December is the holiday season for Malaysia and it seemed as if every Malaysian family was on holiday...which translates into booked up hotels and crowded transportation.
We had only one goal for Pulau Langkawi-to see the waterfall from which one of Chris' (the
friend we had met in Phuket) students had fallen and broken his leg, among other injuries. Chris had related this traumatic story during our short meeting and being that we were going to pass through the place anyway, we wanted to put an image with the story. So, before heading for the mainland, we rented a motorbike and set off. Well, the rain which we had left behind when we hit the west coast of Thailand (un)-miraculously reappeared. Within minutes of taking off towards the waterfall, the sky clouded over and it began to pour-to put it mildly. We were drenched within seconds and the rain stung so badly hitting our face we had to pull over and wait out the bursts of even more powerful rain. Sadly, we turned around and rode 5km back to our guesthouse. Luckily, they refunded us our deposit, no problem (our first glimpse of a very hassle-free country!) and we took off in the opposite direction in a taxi to catch the ferry to the mainland.
The only plans we had for Malaysia was to visit the Taman Negara National Park, which is supposedly the oldest primary rainforest in the world. However, we
Girls in a bus station
They took my picture with their cell phone...so I got their's quickly realized that it was monsoon season on the east coast of the peninsula (where the park is) and the stories of leeches running rampant (or, sucking rampant, I guess) made us quickly revise our plans. So, instead we set off for Pulau Penang, the culinary heart of the country. A ferry, bus and car ferry later, we arrived at Georgetown, the main city on the island. For the first time on our trip, we wandered from guesthouse to guesthouse, with each one claiming they were full. The fear began building that we were going to be left roomless for the night (something that has been in the back of my mind our entire trip, but never materialized), but of course, there is always a room somewhere and only minutes later we found ourselves a great place in the middle of chinatown.
Ok..time for a quick break from the trip details to describe a little bit about Malaysia. The majority of the country is Muslim (and thus dresses conservatively and follows Muslim rules-like no alcohol in restaurants, food must be prepared by certain methods, prayer at certain times of the day, etc). There are however, significant Indian and Chinese
Making Naan
This guy made the best naan we've ever had-we kept going back for more! minorities, with Chinatowns and Little Indias in every main town. Most tourism facilities are found in these minority neighborhoods (probably because they serve alcohol and are more comfortable serving western needs). However, despite this being our first real encounter with the Muslim culture on a large scale basis, we quickly came to find the Malaysian some of the friendliest people we had met yet on our trip. Because there are so many cultures and languages within the one country, English is widely spoken and often used between Malays and Chinese and Indians to communicate. We thus found it incredibly easy to get around and interact with the locals. For the first time on our trip we felt as if we were having real interactions with locals that didn't eventually end in some sort of offer of tourism services or other request. I had a great conversation with three Malaysian girls in a bus station, in which they excitedly practiced their English with me, we talked with families sitting next to us at dinner, and learned Malaysian words from our taxi drivers. Even though English was so widely spoken, we made a real effort at learning Malay words, since for the
first time on our trip we had finally encountered a pronounceable language. In the one week we were there, we learned over twenty words.
Back to Pulau Penang. As this was the culinary capital of the country, we decided what better activity to focus our time on than eating! Our first night there we wandered through Little India and finally settled on a small neighborhood eatery. The owner was delighted to have us there and decided that it was his personal responsibility to introduce us to the culinary delights of India. A large banana leaf was layed in front of us and the owner proceeded to spoon dish after dish onto it for us to try. We ate until we were beyond stuffed and then kept eating. The bill came, and we were terrified that we had just eaten our daily budget's worth of food-but no-it turned out to be only $4.50-for appetizers, drinks, about 5 main meals worth of food, and finally dessert. We ended up walking around for an hour afterwards just to reach the point where our stomachs stopped aching.
On our one full day on Penang, we visited the Pulau Penang National Park (easily
view from the top
at the top of our hike in the Cameron Highlands reached by bus from Georgetown). We were happy to discover that unlike national parks elsewhere in southeast asia, those in Malaysia are efficiently and effectively run! There were no entrance fees, great maps, and information boards along all the paths. We chose a 3 hour round trip hike to a beach on the other side of the park. Despite Georgetown being a bustling city, the national park was pure jungle. The beach was rugged, but gorgeous, and we even saw monkeys! It wasn't exactly a strenuous hike, but it was great to be out of the city and a very pleasant day.
From Pulau Penang we headed up to the Cameron Highlands. It had come highly recommended from a variety of other travelers and we were not disappointed! The journey there had a slight hiccup, when we reached our transfer point to realize that the rest of the buses leaving that day were already booked full, but we quickly rectified the situation by finding another English couple who was traveling to the Cameron Highlands as well, and shared a taxi. Our taxi driver was a riot, who took it upon himself to teach us Malaysian words the entire trip
and didn't let us get a word in edgewise. We stayed at Father's Guesthouse-one of our favorites on this trip yet.
The Cameron Highlands is known for it's tea plantations. The climate is cold (we had on our pants and sweatshirts even in the daytime) and moist. The little town where we stayed, Tana Rata, is full of tea houses which serve tea with scones and jam-very English! It is very popular with local tourists and was sort of the Julian (for you Californians) or the Key Largo (for you Floridians) for Malaysians. There were butterfly farms, strawberry patches where you could pick your own strawberries and tea houses up and down the highway. Our guesthouse provided us with all sorts of info about activities in the area and we spent one day hiking up a mountain to a view point where we could see the valleys covered in tea plantations. Our second day, we hiked out to a local waterfall, where we bought homemade blackberry jam, and then took the bus up the highway to the Boh Tea Plantation. The plantation was quite a hike from the highway where the bus dropped us off, and by the time
we reached the actual main buidling, we had seen enough of the tea plantations. It was absolutely gorgeous though-we had no idea what to expect from tea plantations, and the tea was delicious. We hitch-hiked back out to the main highway (with a very nice Chinese family on vacation as well), luckily, as it started pouring just as we got in their car.
The Cameron Highlands ended up being a highlight in our trip, quite unexpectedly. The cold climate was a perfect setting to get us in the mood for Christmas and the scenery was some of the most gorgeous we had seen yet-rivaling the rice terraces of northern Laos.
From the Cameron Highlands we bussed it down to Kuala Lampur for a night to catch our flight the next day. We saw the Petrona towers (some of the tallest buildings in the world) and ended up spending our entire day in a mall (probably the biggest one we've ever seen!) because it rained all day. Our flight was at 1am in the morning, but as we ran out of things to do in the city, around 8pm we hopped on the metro to a station that supposedly
The Petronas Towers
the world's 6th(?) tallest buildings had a bus to the airport. We arrived at the station to find a very dark, deserted road with definitely no buses. We took a quick look around and hopped back on the metro to the station we had left from. So, instead, we took a taxi (a very expensive one) to the airport. After looking at all the flight announcements and failing to find ours, we came to realize that our flight actually left out of the other airport (I guess there are two in KL). Luckily, there is a shuttle between the two airports. It ended up being a good thing we gave ourselves so much time to get there since we had so many mistakes, but then our flight was delayed over an hour, so it didn't really matter much in the end anyways!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.044s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0238s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
aunt Pat
non-member comment
unbelievable!
As I read your blog, I hold my breath till I get to the end. It's so exciting and a bit scary to think of all the adventures you encounter each and every day! Each of your pictures tell a story and I look forward to seeing ALL of them when you return with live narration. Be safe and continue to enjoy every moment. Thank you so much for your blogs!! Happy New Years and what a New Year it is for the two of you! xoxox aunt pat and uncle gary