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Published: August 19th 2008
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The overnight bus is an hour a late…and that’s the good bit because the Air con is broken, and is freezing cold for the next 6 hours. The driver drove like a maniac - we get about 1 hour sleep between us and arrive in Ipoh at 5.30am….Nothing is open until 10am. Great.
For breakfast we find dosa, an upside down coffee and kick-a-poo juice. We leave our packs at the hotel and find a taxi driver. The first and only stop is the Hong San Lok Caves which was a place of worship and exercise. Big buddha’s were in the caves, outside was a tranquil lake with carp and turtles. Women were doing their yoga and tai chi, just the place we needed after our bus ride from hell.
In the evening we stumble across the local hangout/drinking hall supported by the Carlsberg girls and great local food…Roast duck, lemon chicken and Malay spicy vege. That’s our 36 hours in Ipoh.
Next stop is Taiping on a ‘normal’ bus. This pleasant small town is off the tourist map and a local named Ho enquired curiously “what brings you to Taiping?” The zoo and lake gardens is a looong
Honey Bear
If he wasn't so cute he'd be ugly walk from town…why didn’t someone tell us to catch a taxi?! Lots of monkeys inside and outside the cage, one takes a liking to our shiny red bull can and tracks it until T disposes of it. Cheeky monkey flips open the rubbish bin and takes it as a prize. The zoo is like many others with the highlights being the female Orang Utang, Python and the ugly but cute honey beers.
After a shitty sleep because of the karaoke bar below us, and doing some city stuff, we left, deciding not to have another night in Taiping. With perfect timing for the 2 buses to Penang we arrived via ferry in Georgetown. Another random restaurant find is the Museum restaurant called ‘The Sire’ opened only two months ago. Most museums have a café inside it…but the Sire Restaurant has a museum inside it. A Chinese estate of royal proportions has been relocated to fill the three mezzanine floors. The western fusion snapper and salmon was divine…the best A has had in 5 months.
We spent the morning looking through antique stores, and markets on our way to KOMTAR - the tourism office on level 56 - worth
the visit to get a great view of the city. There was more security in the KOMTAR building than entering the country! A crazy Chinese Malay man spotted us and took us on a UNISCO heritage trail around the city. The most interesting area was Chow Jetty - the Chinese floating village built in the mid 19th Century. There are currently about 60 families living above the water.
Next day in Batu Ferringhi 30min along the coast from Georgetown we check into Baba’s Guesthouse for 3 nights which is located on the main beach. The beach is full of people with their water sport toys (jet ski & para-sailing) trying to sell ya15mins for 60RM. We ate dinner in a big sailing ship with ‘The Best Steak in Town” - because it was from NZ. T had lamb chops which tasted better than back home. T tried his first Shisha (tobacco, flavoured mint & strawberry) he was not impressed and neither where the Arabs next to us who put up a screen between themselves and the infidels.
Scooter time! A drives and T holds on for his life. Our first destination was the dragon boat racing - supporting
the Kaipara College Youth team who we bumped into on the beach the previous evening. We’ve been traveling 6 weeks and seen no other kiwis and suddenly there were 28 of them…They raced well and got a silver - go kiwis!
After gorging ourselves a fresh fruit platter at the fruit farm, we zoomed down hill to the butterfly sanctuary. Thousands of them flying around us, into us, mating, and feeding off the sweat of A’s hand. Had a yummy lunch at the Spice Garden overlooking the beaches. Walkies in apparently the “worlds smallest national park” to the lake - half sea, half fresh water - at last a beach with no-body on it…no-one else was stupid enough to walk in that heat, we were drained. However, we were not put off and we did another walk the following morning to Monkey Beach. It was even more challenging, and were fortunate enough to have 4 local kids as guides.
Back in Georgetown, spending a Sunday afternoon relaxing in the park, a local guy Matthew came and chatted about Penang and other current events. He also spoke about the different cultural situations both in Malaysia and in India. He
was nice enough to drop us down the road at the night hawker markets where we got dinner - we finally tried Laksa Soup which gave us a strange buzzed out feeling - the spices and chilly grounded us for about 10mins. Later in the evening we were fortunate to come across a Chinese Street theatre performance around the corner from where we were staying. The costumes were amazing, couldn’t understand the language, but understood the play.
We finally arrived on Langkawi (4th Aug) after a rough and squashed 4 hour ferry trip. Our bags survived not being thrown in the water, others where not so lucky. We hired a black Proton car with a huge exhaust…our transport around the island for the next 5 days which made T feel like a boy racer. Our accommodation was at Pantai Cenang, which is a mixture of 5 star and budget accommodation and too many restaurants. However, lots of duty free goodies to be consumed.
The seven wells waterfall was definitely not worth the walk up to the top in the heat. The waterfall itself was nice, but nothing compared to the mighty NZ ones. The cable car is a
must do for anyone visiting, and was the highlight of Langkawi for us. Holy crap it’s steep!! 700m straight up over the cliff face, A got just a bit nervous being so far above land. The view from the top is amazing and we could see all the way to Thailand - it’s really a breath taking place. Dinner was at Coco Beach Restaurant - words can not do our evening justice, so check out the photo. Andrea tried fresh whole crab for the first time, messy but really tasty. The night ended with a very well deserved hour long full body massage - bliss.
Zooming around in the bat-mobile we came across an Art Museum by a local painter - Ibrahim Husien - from Penang. His art was abstract and political large pieces of work as well as sculptures. T really liked the hidden images in his line paintings. It was a strange place to have it - really in the middle of no-where.
We got caught in two big electrical storms, where it bucketed down! We even got wet sitting under shelter at Fat Mum’s restaurant. We enjoyed the duty free alcohol, and hung out in
our beach Bungalow with the cute kitty-kat that we named zigzag because of its tail. We didn’t really think too much of Langkawi overall. The prices are set for people not traveling on the NZ dollar. There were plenty of activities to be done, but just not at the price we would be willing to pay for them.
Bye Bye Malaysia. Onwards north to Thailand.
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Tanya
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Go the meow!
Good to see that ole Zigzag was the guard cat, NOT the dinner, what a beautiful face! Am LOVIN your blog site. Makes this world of ours rather small...and I'm glad. Have fun you two...will be checking in soon. Tarns xxx