I just left Malaysia

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Hello everybody! I just left Malaysia, so I'll let you know what I did while there. I didn’t really have anything planned out to do while in Malaysia, so a few of my friends and I decided to spend the first day in Penang, which was the main part of the city by the port, and then head over to a little island (Langkawi) that was close by. The first day I got off of the ship, which was actually quite the process because we weren’t able to dock due to lack of space, so we had to go through a process called “tendering”. This entailed getting onto one of the small ship lifeboats, that seat about 100 people, and then riding in that to the shore. This made it difficult because the boats only left once every hour, and you had to plan your day around getting on and off the tenders at specific times. After going through that process, a couple friends and I headed down to the main street (Chulia) and just kind of started checking out everything. A funny thing happened when we first got into the main part of town…we found ourselves in Little India! This was nothing like the real India, except for what the stores and restaurants were offering, but it was paved, and had sidewalks and street signs, which I definitely never saw in India. After a while of wandering we decided to eat lunch at a little Malay restaurant. We had a few noodle dishes that were all really good, and then went to go find a little hotel to stay in for the night (because the last tender to get back on the ship left at like 12 at night, and we were planning on celebrating my friend Harry’s birthday, so there was no way we would make it back by then). We ended up finding a place called the Blue Diamond, which was a hotel that had a Mexican restaurant with live music at night, and it was only 35 Ringits total, or about $3 per person to stay there for a night. The quality of the rooms was only worth about $3 though because all they had was 2 queen sized beds (that we had to bring sheets for) and a sketchy bathroom that was pretty dirty. We booked a couple rooms and then headed back to the ship to meet up with everybody that was going out with us. After meeting everybody we made our way back to the hotel and had a few drinks before eating dinner at the Mexican restaurant. It was actually pretty good because we got some burritos and just loaded them up with spices. After dinner we all went out to a couple of the bars near our hotel and had a grand old birthday party. It was a real fun night. The next day we got up at 7 am to go catch a ferry to Langkawi. The ferry was really rough because the waves were just tossing it all over the place. Luckily I was able to sleep through the waves, but a couple of the girls that we went to the island with got seasick and were sitting with their heads over the railing for the whole 2 hour trip. When we finally got to Langkawi we got a cab to the part of the island called Pantai Cenang. This was the cheaper part of the island so we decided to go there instead of Pantai Tenghah, which was the ritzy part of the island where most of the other Semester at Sea people were planning on hanging out. We just got dropped off on the main street (which was basically the only street and it ran along the beach), and we went and found another small cheap hotel. After dropping our bags off we went out and had a small brunch, and then went to check out the markets and duty free stores where we loaded up on snacks for the next couple of days. Next we went to the beach. There was an awesome view from the beach of a bunch of the small, uninhibited islands that surrounded the area, so we just kind of hung out there for a while and enjoyed the water before going back to the hotel. We went back to a restaurant near that same beach that night for dinner and then just called it a night. The next day we decided to rent a car (which was only 50 Ringit or about $15 for 24 hours), and head to Seven Ponds Waterfalls. This was pretty awesome because they were huge falls that were spectacular to begin with, but it also started raining while we were there, and by rain I mean it was like a monsoon! I’ve never seen rain so hard. All of us were completely soaked from head to toe, and we actually just decided to swim at the base of one of the waterfalls fully clothed because there was no way that we could get any wetter than what we already were. After that we all piled back in the little car and headed back to the hotel. We relaxed for a while and then went out dinner where I had some weird form of chicken that was rolled into little balls and then fried, and served on a veggie rice with some sweet and sour type sauce on top. It was pretty good, but kind of weird. After dinner we went to our hotel and decided to go to see the band that was playing downstairs. This band was hilarious! They were all very much so your stereotypical Asians, and didn’t speak a word of English except for the songs that they sang which were all popular American songs like Stand By Me and other similar ones. When we first arrived we were the only ones there, so we actually somewhat got to talk to the band and realize that pretty much the only words of English that they knew were the ones in the songs they sang. The next day we got up and ate the complimentary breakfast at the hotel and then got back on the ferry and headed back to Penang. After dinner that night we went to the “Night Market”which was about a mile of crazy little shops that were all lit up near the beach. It was fun seeing all of the crazy stuff that they sold including many local products as well as tons of bootlegged DVD’s and CD’s. The next morning we got up early and decided to climb Penang Hill. This was a really steep climb and it was really hot and humid so I lost about 4 pounds in sweat. We didn’t climb all the way to the top because there was a pretty good view from about half way up, and by that time most of the group was pretty tired and wanted to go see some other parts of Penang before we had to be back on the ship. We went to a place called Gurney Plaza real quick, but it was basically just a massive mall, so we decided to just go to the beach and enjoy the water and sun for our last couple of hours.
Malaysia was a good break after the craziness of India, and it was interesting because it was basically a mixture of the many different cultures of Asia.
I’m now on my way to Vietnam, but I’m about to watch the ships crew compete in a talent show, so goodbye for now and I’ll be putting up a blog on my Vietnam experience in about a week!

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