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Published: December 4th 2008
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We arrived in Malaysia in a slighty tired state!!!!
However the first thing we heard was "Welcome to Malaysia" and this has been repeated to us regularly from people on the pavement, to people shouting out of passing cars and people in shops. It has been very nice.
The train was no problem at all, apart from being 22 hours long, with neither of us getting a great amount of sleep, once we reached Butterworth we crossed to Penang using the ferry, which was very easy and quick.
We hit Penang and thought we had hit India early. The cheap hotel we stayed in was run by Indians and our first meal was in Little India and involved us using our hands and served to us on a banana leaf!!! The portion (Indian) sizes are massive and cheap. Malaysia has already shocked us by how cheap it is and even cheaper than Thailand in some areas.
We have followed the west coast down to Kuala Lumpur (KL) riding past large palm oil plantations and rice fields. The roads are good with the odd rough patch, however Malaysian drivers are similar to Cambodian's in
the sense of their numbness!!!
We saw some Malaysian Muslims girls playing netball wearing their full headdress, long trousers and shirts. It was roasting and they were playing on grass!!! They actually looked quiet good and the shooter was pretty good as well, but it did look like hard work... Its been 15 months since I last touched a netball!!!
Kuala Lumper is very nice and a good city to walk around. There are lots of parks, which were very nice to visit with the many herb gardens, botanical gardens and deer and bird sanctuary. The buildings are impressive in KL with a mixture of European colonial to Islamic mosques to massive state of the art plazas and skyscrapers.
We left KL and headed to Meleka and the west coast again (it is the monsoon season on the east coast). Once we left the traffic behind we cycled through some lovely green jungle and rolling terrain. At Meleka we visited the old Portuguese forts and the maritime museum with its old ships and navy boats. Carl was in his element!! We stayed at a new and basic hostel run by a lovely women and
her family, whose main mission in life was to feed you when she could and she never wanted any money for it, the hospitality was fantastic.
We left Meleka and headed inland to Kahang. It was here that we were about to do our first bit of work in over 12 months!!! We got the work through the voluntary site Help X and knew we would be working on a organic farm, but had no idea what it would be like??
We met Mr Tam and Mr Choi, who run the farm and had great faith in us both as they let us play with their floating chalet and lots of bamboo, which needed a lot of TLC to get it back into working order. They eventually want to make them into holiday retreats, with the one that myself and Carl worked on as the deluxe model!!!
Over the 10 days that we were there the days consisted of 6-7 hours of work, 2 hours worth of eating the free food that was all organic and consisted of rice, loads of vegetables, rice milk, rice jam and lots of dragon friut (purple).....MMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmm
30mins of
watching the ducks, who were our neighbors, all 500 of them. 20mins of playing with the dogs & puppies, at least 2 words of Spanish a day with Mr Choi, then the nightly 2 hours worth of talking about absolutely anything with Mr Choi or Mr Tam.
We were also joined by a French couple called Elsa & Quentin from the Liore Valley.
Whilst we were there 4 different school groups visited the farm, with the first one being over a 100. The children were from Singapore and a little different to the attitude of the children in England!!! Put it this way I don't think a Singaporean would appreciate the state standard in England!!! We think they are in a different pay bracket over here. Singapore is one of the richest countries in the world with the average capita earning $30,000 a year and its fair share of millionaires.
Mr Choi took us to a local Malay Islamic wedding, where we were treated like the guests of honour as you will see from the photos. During the day over 1000 people will attend the families home and have a meal and receive a small gift from the
family. Mr Choi also took us for a couple of swift nightly "Milo's" (hot chocolate) in Kahang. Mr Tam also treated us to a a very nice Chinese in Kahang (unfortunate to Mr Tam's disgust, it was not his organic rice).
Over the 10 days it went really fast and one of the best things we have done to experience a country. We gained so much knowledge from the both Mr Choi and Mr Tam. Anyone who would want to go and work there would have a good experience, the website is http://organic-kahang.com/.
We then covered the last section of Malaysia down to Johar Bahru, before crossing the causeway to Singapore. We found a cheap hostel in Little India (preparing ourselves) and had a look around some of the biggest and fanciest shopping plazas I have ever seen, with Orchard Rd having something silly like 15 plazas. We also did the colonial tour of the old cricket club, city hall and of course Raffles Hotel. Put it this way we got a funny look of the doorman when we walked past the front door wheeling our bicycles with us.
We are now ready to
KL Landmarks
The Twin towers, Sky tower and Malay flag head to India, however I don't think anything will prepare me for what I am about to experience!!! Somebody help me please!!!!
See you in India!!!
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