Island, Highland and Kuala Lumpur (well you try and think of something else that rhymes!)

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Georgetown (Penang)

When we eventually arrived in Georgetown (situated on the East Side of the Malaysian Island Penang) it was getting late. So, having checked into a scummy little place (which was costing us much more than it should because of Chinese New Year) we headed off in search of food.

We’d been speaking to a Spanish bloke (who lived in Ko Lipe and spoke English with a Scottish accent) and he’d told us about a ‘great Indian place’ that we could go to get some dinner. The meal wasn’t particularly noteworthy, aside from how the place was run. Helen aptly described the experience as ‘like eating in the stock market’. Everyone and everything was in a rush. I can only assume our waiter either A) needed the toilet really badly or B) was trying to break a world record for number of customers served in an hour, as before we’d finished most sentences, he’d bark ‘next!!’ at us. The food wasn’t great but we both ate it at breakneck speed, being drawn into the commotion around us. To complete the stock market analogy, despite everything going cheap and it being busy, we left with a disappointed feeling and less money than we had started with.

We could only afford one full day in Georgetown as we were in a hurry to get to Kuala Lumpur for our (already booked) flight to Borneo. Not that this was really a problem. I’m afraid to say that Georgetown isn’t all that nice. The actual island of Penang is probably ok, but we found Georgetown to be another fairly grotty little place - the type of town that we were becoming accustomed to seeing in Asia. That morning we quickly packed our stuff, moved to another, cheaper, hostel (shared bathroom, no window, hot but only contained a fan, etc). Once done, we walked to Fort Cornwallis, an old English fort. A pleasant enough way to spend an hour. Afterwards, we decided to get a local bus to one of the main attractions in Penang, a funicular railway, which would take you up to the top of Penang Hill, 800m high.

Now if this was just a holiday then we’d have got a taxi for only a few pounds, but with money being an important factor in backpacking, we had to get a local bus. Unsurprisingly, this bus didn’t turn up for over an hour (though we did almost witness a fight while waiting). When it eventually did, we had an hour of travelling before we reached our destination. Still, reached it we did and off we went to get our tickets. Annoyingly, because of the Chinese New Year the next tickets to go up the railway were for 7:45pm, and the time was only 4pm…

After a bit of aimlessly walking around, we decided to go to the botanical gardens. They weren’t too far away and they were free, making them an ideal place to spend the time. It was a good decision! The gardens themselves were nice, but it was the pictures of the local wildlife (especially the monkeys) that really made it. As you can see at the top of the blog I think I got my best picture of the trip so far.

Having killed a few hours, we headed back to the railway station to ascend the hill. When the carriage reached the lower station, there was a surge of people and we were carried with them onto the small train. It was lucky that we had been pushed on, as half of the people waiting were left on the platform because it was too full. You’d probably assume that this meant they’d been overselling tickets, but you’d be wrong. Lots of people who boarded clearly knew that tickets weren’t checked and likely just didn’t want to wait for their allotted train much later. Having waited around for 3 hours it turned out that we probably could have just joined the crowds and got on the train at any time we wanted…

Though very cramped, the assent was nice enough (being crowed didn’t take the ‘fun’ out of the ‘fun’icular railway!! Sorry…) and the views from the top were really something. You could see for miles around and the fact it was getting late meant that all the buildings below were lit up nicely. My camera wouldn’t take any good photos though, so you’ll just have to trust me. Whist at the top we went to find some scones we’d been told you could have, but it was too late and we both had to put up with some expensive and not very nice lemon ice tea. On the plus side though, we spoke to a nice Chinese man on the way back down and he told us how he’d been a tailor for both Sting and Lionel Ritchie. Yeah, that’s right, we’ve met someone who once made clothes for Lionel Ritchie!!

The Cameron Highlands

That night we didn’t get much sleep as 1) we’d stayed up late trying to do the travel blog (Helen had been putting off doing it for over a week) and 2) the couple next to us played Michael Jackson loudly until the early morning. I did manage to get them to turn the music down slightly though by imitating the start of ‘black or white’ That morning we caught a bus to the Cameron Highlands, set in the hills in the middle of Malaysia and only a couple of hours from Kuala Lumpur. The Cameron Highlands themselves are lovely, as the bus went up we could see green mountains covered in mist and small waterfalls. Also, when we got off the bus we found the temperature to be pleasant, not the usual 30+ degrees we’d had most of the trip, but instead in the low 20s. Again, our base for exploring the highlands - a town called Tanah Rata - was a bit of a dump and contained some of the worst food we’d had all trip, but at least we had a nice hostel to stay in. Helen thinks it was one of the nicest places we’d had on the whole trip, but I’d disagree. To shower there you fill up a small pan from the tap and then use this repeatedly to fill up a big bucket. Once done, you had to move the big bucket into the shower (that didn’t work) and pour the freezing cold water onto you using the pan…

When we got off the bus, expecting to have to walk in the rain to the guesthouse or fork out for a taxi, we were surprised by a bloke asking if one of us was called Helen. We, slightly apprehensively (fearing it could be a scam), said yes and it soon turned out that our hostel had sent someone to the bus station to pick us up. Even more impressively, as they didn’t know what time we’d be arriving, he’d waited there all day for us (it was around 7pm that we arrived)!

On our first day there we did a half-day tour of all the tourist sites. We first visited an orchard, where we saw a naturally green rose and where we took literally hundreds of flower pictures (a couple of which are on the blog) and next a strawberry plantation, which was pretty dull but did sell some nice strawberry-related goods. Afterwards we went to a tea plantation and then to a butterfly farm. At the butterfly farm we got to see loads of interesting insects and butterflies and Helen held a live scorpion, which was good as no one else in the tour group would do it first. I was going to hold the scorpion as well, but what with it being a Tuesday, I couldn’t… To round off the trip we went to a bee farm (that seemed to lack any actual bees) and a Chinese temple.

As the Cameron Highlands are known for walking, on our second day that’s exactly what we did. The walk we chose started off badly, our first stop was to a waterfall that was not only small, but also filled with rubbish and afterwards we walked past a main road and what looked like an industrial estate. Thankfully it got better as it went on and we were soon deep within the forest. The only downside of the walk was that we had no idea if we were on the path we were suppose to be or if we were doing a much longer one. Fearing that it could get dark we rushed it a little bit too much and maybe didn’t take the scenery in enough. By the time we got back it turned out that we’d managed to do a walk that should have taken well over 4 hours in around 3. To cap off the nice walk, on the way back down we met a friendly English couple, who trumped our trip by telling us they were travelling for 3 years and hadn’t caught a plane since leaving the UK.

Kuala Lumpur

Our final stop on the Malay Peninsula (before going to Malaysian Borneo) was Kuala Lumpur. I’m sure that there are lots of people who will tell you that it’s a soulless city that is far too westernised. But I can only assume that they mean it’s clean, has an effective transport system and plenty to do. In short, this was my favourite big city that we’d been since the start of the trip.

The first day consisted of us going on the tourist bus to another butterfly farm first and then to an aviary. The butterfly farm was excellent and much better than the one we’d visited earlier in the Cameron Highlands. It also had a small show area where you could see specimens of many of the local insects (including some that were as big as your head). The experience was slightly tainted by Helen getting scared of a butterfly (I think she must have been surprised by it’s appearance, after all, who’d expect one at a butterfly farm?) and her throwing my camera on the floor. Luckily, aside from a catch breaking and a couple of scratches no harm was done.

After the butterfly farm we headed to ‘the largest open air aviary in the world’. It was also very impressive. It housed hundreds of birds ranging from small sparrow-sized ones to peacocks and storks. The best part was that these birds were free to roam around and do as they pleased. Which was good as it made it feel like more like a safari than a zoo and as it gave the birds the space they need to fly around (though a few of the rarer birds - including an albino crow - were still caged up). Undoubtedly the most fun thing to do there was to go to where there were small parrots, collect some food and hold out your arms. After this all the birds nearby would fly onto you and eat the food (or just sit quietly on your head).

That evening we met up with my Aunt, Uncle, two cousins, cousin’s partner and cousin’s son (phew!) who all live in KL. They took us out for a lovely meal and we gathered information on Malaysia and Borneo. Strangely, it was actually the first time I’d ever met my uncle and what a great bloke he was, constantly telling us to get more food and drink and even saying we should order extra food so we could take it home with us.

The Petronas Towers were our first stop on our last day in KL. We got up early, bought tickets, had some doughnuts for breakfast (authentic Asian cuisine as always) went up the towers and onto the sky bridge that connects them. Without being spectacular, the view at the top was very good and it was made better by the fact that they only let people up in small groups - meaning that you weren’t fighting to take pictures. As we were leaving the towers I noticed an advertisement for the science museum. This presented us with a dilemma; we were going to go to the national museum but we probably wouldn’t have time to do both. So, we could either head to the National Museum and learn about Malaysian history, art and culture or go to somewhere that was running an interactive dinosaur exhibition…

The dinosaur exhibition was great. Not only did it have massive moving dinosaurs, but it had loads of stuff to play with (I mean… learn from…) and, best of all, it was empty. Once we left there we again met up with my Aunt and Uncle to have lunch at a golf club. When I arrived I was discreetly told to go to the bathroom and tuck my shirt in and having done so we enjoyed another good meal and chat.

My Uncle then drove us to the Islamic Arts Museum (which Helen wanted to visit) and we said our goodbyes. The museum had some interesting exhibitions, though I can’t help but think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if my knowledge of Islam were better. We then quickly hurried back to the science museum, as though we’d visited the dinosaur exhibition we hadn’t seen the rest of it. Unfortunately, we arrived late and we had to rush it, which was a real shame as it was massive, had tons to do and, again, was totally empty.

Feeling that we hadn’t really seen enough of KL that evening, I persuaded Helen that we should go up the sky tower, the 4th tallest tower in the world. It wasn’t worth it, the tickets were literally twice the price that our guidebook had stated and, though good, the views weren’t much better than the Petronas Towers. But, within the ticket price we gained access to other nearby sites such as a ‘Winter Wonderland’ and an animal zone. That’d make it worth it, right? Well no. The animal farm had some interesting animals, but the conditions they were in were poor and I think I can say with some certainty that the ‘winter wonderland’ was one of the biggest piles of crap that I’ve ever been to.

So, that was Malaysia. We hadn’t been wowed by the towns or the people (aside from my family of course) but it had all been very enjoyable. Next was Borneo and I was sure that in a few days I’d be deep in a jungle full of orangutans …


P.S. Sorry for the huge number of photos. Make sure you look at them all though, there are some good ones!

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