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Published: December 11th 2008
My Hero! sorry we thought you were going to kill us ...
Running through no mans land to get to the other side of a border crossing before they close is never a good way to enter a country. But there we were, me and one of the Irish girls we'd met in Chumpon, running hell for leather with our backpacks for about 1 km from the Thai border; just to get to the Malaysian border before they closed for the night. Now I'm no runner but with all the other girls lagging behind, me and Irish girl No1 (please don't ask me for names!) obviously had the same vision of us all sat in no mans land for the night while it was starting to rain! We luckily managed to get across just in time but out on the other side realised we were in fact completely stranded because it was so late and no taxis thought it worth their while to stick around. So even though technically in Malaysia we were still in no mans land with the nearest big town 8 km away! After looking around a bit and seeing zero signs of life we ended up
pleading to the mercy of a poor young guy who still had his little hardware shop open. He couldn't take us to the town because the pickup we'd cunningly spied wasn't his, but he would take us to a hotel. Brilliant! We all hopped merrily into the back of his pickup after he had specially shut up his shop for us and away we went. We started to see life as we sped along the road (quickly realising if we'd just bothered to walk a little further there were places we could've eaten and probably slept!) but we sped right past it all. Still thinking everything was fine, we then turned down a dirt track; there weren't any lights and we were in the middle of nowhere. A jeep pulls up on the road behind us and one of the girls says 'has anyone seen wolf creek?'. Well now we're shitting ourselves, aren't we! I personally haven't seen it because I am travelling and quite frankly I'm not going to freak myself out on purpose but I got the general jist of what she meant. Basically we thought this guy was kosha coz he seemed really sweet and we thought
we had no reason to worry and then suddenly we find ourselves in the back of some random dudes pick up, in the middle of a new country and talking about how the six of us could take him down if needs be! FInally we saw light up ahead and a big sign for a hotel resort as the jeep turns off down another path. Our young Malay man was not a horrid psyco killer but a beautiful knight in shinning pick up truck, who wouldn't take a penny from us for the ride!
The next morning Sam and I got a taxi quick smart to the town and a bus to butterworth. We figured we'd taken enough time trying to get somewhere we actually wanted to be, that now we'd given up on the beautiful islands and decided on the Cameron Highlands, we were going to get there come hell or high water! There are loads of different ways to get there which was perhaps the problem for us we couldn't figure out the quickest way. Luckily the taxi driver knew to drop us off at the bus station and there was a bus leaving asap to Butterworth
and from there we could get other bus to the cameron highlands - we hoped! Don't go to Butterworth unless you are leaving on a bus straight away. Once we got there we had a few hours wait and couldn't even find an internet cafe, so we just waited and ate our nasi goreng (including full msg crystals)!The one good thing about Butterworth was that here we met a lovely brother duo who were also on their way to the cameron highlands. The Cameron Highlands are a beautiful part of Malaysia where up in the mountains it's cool and crisp and there are new things to eat! YAY! I had become slightly weiry of chicken and noodles or chicken and rice (obviously we ate much more interesting things than that but they were the staples!) so got overly excited about the presence of the Indian/Malay curries and gorged myself on naan and the delicious curries and all the accompaniments. Apart from eating (!) the main things to do here are hiking, the flower, butterfly, tea and strawberry day and of course a tea with scones, cream and fresh, local strawberry jam. (more eating obviously!)
After the eventful last few
Lady Shoes
Cameron Highlandsdays the rest of our time in Malaysia will seem a little quiet but it was actually lovely just to take things slow for a while! We booked ourselves on a tour for the next day and i got overexcited by the amazing flowers and butterflies so took far too many photos as usual! The flower nursery was beautiful with some stunning views across the tea plantations when you get to the top. They are famous for their roses, more especially the blue rose, which is apparently more browny and completely evaded me! We spent the day looking at flowers strawberries, butterflies and drinking tea at the Boh plantation. The strawberry smoothie at the strawberry farm was so worth going for, looking at the strawberries growing, very slowly, was not! We also stopped by a Chinese temple which was very strange for me since i have been out of the country for so long; it felt very weird to be back within that sort of architecture. Weird but good.
Flashpacking and those big phalic odes to manhood
Well KL beckoned and the 4 of us answered the call! We stayed in China town, obviously and tried desperately to
find some peking duck pancakes but with no luck, Booo! In KL we basically decided to have a very non backpackery day - it was kind of awesome!
1. We went to the mahoooosive shopping centre just down from Chinatown and were the first in line when the worlds biggest indoor rollarcoaster opened for the day. Yep! That's right people, not only have I jumped from the worlds highest bungy (well it has now been over taken by the stupid 16m higher one in Macau, but that's not the point) I have now also ridden the worlds biggest indoor rollarcoaster (5 times!)- I'm the coolest kid in town!
2.We then went for haircuts, while Sam got a facial (not my sam, boy sam - don't ask!) and Sam (sister sam now, luckily for this part!) and I bought her loads of bras coz they're all small and Asian sized so they fitted and had loads of padding - cue very happy sam!
3.Then we went to the cinema and watched the new batman movie (which was amazing, yes I'm a comic/superhero movie fan, get over it!) and ate loads of naughty food, Yum!
4. Think this was also the day
we went for Tea (yes Tea has a capital 'T', you know it does) and hot chocolate at a Starbucks. 😉
Sometimes it is completely necessary to have a day like this when traveling for long periods; at least we didn't have a Maccy D's. Although I believe we did indulge in a KFC when pissed the next evening!
We did also do some very informative, if not slightly boring things like the national museum and the Sky Tower (where we were kinda escorted out of a fancy hotel we were trying to walk through in an effort to find the bloody thing!) because it was raining so hard and there wasn't really anything else we could get up to that was relatively cheap......We did however find a lovely exhibition of traditional coconut graters!
We obviously had to visit the icons that are the Petronas Towers, we went at night coz it's way cooler then and got photos galore. However the most important event of the evening was when we decided to go for a few bevvies later on (check the beer tower by the petronas towers photo!) and low and behold who walks by but Lindsey! We
were so excited, I couldn't believe that last time I saw her we were running to get our taxi to the boat out of Koh Pha Nang and now randomly bumping into her in KL. We all had fun with the beer towers and got caught in another huge frickin rain storm, welcome to Malaysia in wet season! As with all the countries I have visited I really liked it and wished I had more time to explore it further and will defo get my time on the islands at some point! But for now we were heading down to Singapore for the final few days of Sam's trip and my final few days in Asia (for this trip at least 😉
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Sam
non-member comment
Thanks for telling the world about my lack of bust darling sister!!!!