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Published: December 12th 2017
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From Koh Lanta we booked a van down to Penang in Malaysia. The journey was around 12 hours in total and it was our first overland border crossing. Other than a Thai bloke getting the hump with us for questioning why he needed more money of off us it all went pretty smoothly. When we entered Malaysia we didn’t really expect to stay there as long as we ended up doing so as we kind of thought we would be there for a couple of weeks and then head across to spend some time in either Indonesia or Phillipines but in the end we made the judgement that our budget probably wouldn’t stretch that far and we felt like we would be trying to cram in too much in too short a time. I’d been to Malaysia before to meet Danny on his travels and few mates from back home and it wasn’t the most cultural of trips so I was interested to see a different side of it this time around.
We had been a bit worried about Penang as there had been reports of flooding there the week before but when we arrived there wasn’t really any sign
of it at all apart from Penang Hill and the National Park were closed due to the clean up operation after the landslides which had occurred which was a shame but didn’t spoil our few days there. The sun was shining and I think the majority of our time there was spent trying to get round as many of the different hawker stalls selling various tasty cheap treats - my favourite being the dim sum - whilst walking around and looking at the street art around Georgetown.
From Penang we took the bus to Cameron Highlands for three nights. We were looking forward to doing some walking here and from what we had read the climate would be a lot cooler than what we had become used to so far and we weren’t disappointed. There are many trails around the area that were originally used by the military in the 1960’s in order to patrol the borders of the state against Communist forces. Again after reading some blogs online we decided to do one of the trails on our own and see how we got on and if we struggled then we would look to find a guide that
could show us around. We did Trail 7 to start with which we had read was very tough and went back down 3 and 5 before walking back to the village of Tanah Rata via the waterfalls on Trail 4. Whilst it was tough we got on just fine and the struggle we had was more down to the fact we went overboard with water and supplies in our backpack that we had to carry up the hill! The views at the top weren’t amazing but the walk itself was enjoyable and the next morning we walked Trail 10 on the recommendation of a Kiwi guy we had met on his way down 7 the day before and the views from the top there were much better than the day before looking out over the many tea plantations, strawberry farms and other greenery. The first night we were in the Highlands we had got chatting to one of the tourist information guys and he had mentioned that there were a couple of guys also from Brighton in the area and they were going on a tour the next morning. In the end we decided we wouldn’t do the tour and
spent the rest of our time there looking out for anyone vaguely recognisable from back home but it wasn’t until we boarded our bus to Kuala Lumpur did we meet Ian and Mark from Brighton! They had been travelling across Eastern Europe over to China by train which had sounded like a really cool trip and it was nice to speak to people that were also missing the same pubs and restaurants that we were. We went out for some drinks with them when we arrived in the capital city and also met up for a game of tenpin bowling a few days later.
I’d read somewhere that in Kuala Lumpur it was possible to stay in apartments on AirBnB that were part of a condominium for a reasonable price which included the use of facilities such as a gym and infinity pools. It was also possible to get a £25 voucher for signing up to the site for the first time so we booked ourselves in for a bit of luxury living and spent a couple of days in the apartment cooking our own meals, getting our laundry done, catching up on TV from back home and yes
we did manage to use the gym and pool as well! We enjoyed it so much we ended up staying at another apartment whose 37th floor infinity pool had an amazing view of the Petronas Towers and KL Tower. There is something I really enjoy about seeing a city skyline litup at night from a high vantage point - and being able to do it from a pool makes it even more enjoyable!
After a couple of days of not doing very much in KL we took a coach down to Singapore. I should say at this point the coaches here are nothing like back home - you get plenty of leg room, are able to recline your seat into an almost lying position and are fraction of the cost of a National Express or Stagecoach! We were wary of how expensive Singapore could be but we went armed with articles suggesting free things to do and cheap places to eat and I think we would have perhaps quite liked to have stayed there a bit longer if we had unlimited funds. In Cameron Highlands we met someone who had told us about a walk called the Southern Ridges
which is a long walk that joins up multiple parks spanning across 10km. It was an easy walk with the highlight being walking through the canopy of trees in one of the parks on a raised platform which had been much better than the disappointing one we’d visited in KL. From there we headed to Chinatown for a bite to eat before heading to Marina Bay to see the gardens and the supertrees that we had seen on Planet Earth. We hung around to see the gardens lit up at night and we also witnessed the first showing of the Christmas light show they had put on for the year! It really doesn’t feel a lot like Christmas at the moment as we spend most of our time looking for an air conditioned stop to cool off and have a breather from sweating so much!
After Singapore we headed back into Malaysia and to Melaka before heading back to KL for a couple of nights before we flew to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. There wasn’t a great deal to do in Melaka apart from go for the occasional walk along the river and up and down Jonker Street in
Chinatown but we were pretty happy with that. I felt like that was perhaps the case in most of the places we visited in Malaysia that once you’d been to see the touristy things there wasn’t much else to do, but we wanted to have a more chilled out couple of weeks anyway so in a way it was perfect for us at that time. I think one of the highlights was definitely the food - with the mix of Indian and Chinese cultures we were spoilt for choice with the array of different foods and flavours that we could try perhaps wanting more time here to have the opportunity to try it all!
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Kate
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Hope you had a good Christmas & Happy New Year
Happy times to you both. I hope you managed somewhere good to celebrate Christmas may be Santa found you with a couple of presents? But I afraid we couldn't help him this year.... We went off to Southampton and had Christmas with our friends down there. It was good to get together with all of them and help Jac with the preparations. There were 15 of us for lunch so it took a while to get the crackers made and the veg cut up. So our dinner was very conventional - turkey with all the trimmings. I can quite believe how the rest of the week has zoomed by. It seems horrific that working is looming up on the horizon again. Just trying to make you feel better about taking the time to go off travelling but I don't think I'll have to try hard. Hopefully the weather is really nice and warm. It has cleared up a bit this afternoon but it was very grey and dull for most of the morning. Anyway Lots of love & all the best for the new year Kate & Mark XX