Malaysia 1

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Malaysia 1

Day 120

After disembarking the night ferry about 5am we had to sit in a cafe and wait until the minibus that would take us down south turned up at 6.30am. We then travelled down to one of the last towns before the border crossing, Satun. We got lucky here as one of the thai passengers wanted to be dropped off at the ferry port that we needed (but wouldn't have known how to ask for) so we jumped off here and saved ourselves the cost of a taxi. The next ferry to Langkawi was at 3pm and so it was about 5pm before we finally arrived at Cenang beach – nearly a full 24 hours of travelling later and we were both pretty exhausted.

Langkawi is one of Malaysia's most popular tourist destinations and after coming from the Thai Islands it felt rather built up and westernised to us. The ferry port opens up into an air conditioned shopping mall and both KFC and the golden arches of McDonalds are both within 5 mins drive away. The scenery though was beautiful, we decided to stay at Cenang beach which didn't strike us as too beautiful at first as the tide was out but in the morning it was actually really pretty.

Following the long day of travelling we didn't get up to too much at night. We had some delicious burgers in an Irish bar and spent a few hours chatting to Lucy & Sally-Anne, 2 English girls that we had met on the ferry before heading to our room for an early night.

Day 121

The accomodation on Langkawi was more expensive than we'd hoped at £11 a night for a pretty basic room, food, drink & day trips were also costing significantly more than in Thailand so we decided to take it easy and just spend the day on the beach reading our books.

In the evening we sat in a beachside cafe watching a spectacular sunset before heading out to dinner. There didn't seem to be an abundance of night life on Langkawi so we ended up having another early night, knowing that there was another night bus ahead of us.

Day 122

We checked out of our room and spent most of the day relaxing on the beach again before we had to start our journey to the Perhentian islands, 2 remote & untouched islands of the Eastern Malaysian coast. We arrived on the mainland at 7pm but the port town was tiny with nothing to do and the only restaurant that was open was KFC.

Our night bus turned up early for a change and told us that we would be arriving at our destination of Kuala Besut at 3.30am, not the slightly more reasonable 5am that the travel agent had told us. At least the bus was comfy & spacious so we could recline our chairs and try and make the most out of the time we had to sleep.

We reached our destination at about 3.45am but rather than being dropped at a bus staion we were dropped at the side of a highway at a petrol station from where we had to catch taxis to the ferry port. We arrived there about 4am and as no ferries leave till 7.30am there was nothing to do but sit around, read our books and look at the massive bugs & bats that seemed to be swarming over the little town.

Day 123

As soon as we borded the boat to the Perhentians we knew this was going to be a great experience. The speed boat that was transporting us could only hold about 10 people and as we sped over the sea we could see the newly risen sun sparkling on the water, while the fresh spary kept wetting our faces and on the horizon we could see the shapes of two small islands appearing in front of us. As we rounded the islands we could see shoals of flying fish jumping out of the water in front of us and when we slowed down we could see that the water was crystal clear.

We stayed on Perhentian Kecil, which is the smaller of the 2 islands and tends to be favoured by backpackers as it is the cheaper island. We had to jump from the taxi boat directly into the sea (the water was only at knee hight) and carry our backpacks to shore and we felt like we had arrived on our own treasure island, this is surely the most beautiful place we've been so far.

The interior of the island is almost pure jungle and there is just are just a handful of guesthouses lining the beach, most of which have been set back from the front so as not to spoil the view. Joe had the short straw of doing the 'accomodation run' this time and depsite a few early setbacks which can only be described as 'looks like a crack addicts slum' he managed to find us a nice room within budget. The only downside was that the electricity all came from a generator which only ran at relatively random hours through the day.

After a quick nap to catch up on another night of little sleep we spent the day sunning ourselves on the beach and playing in the water. It is like being in a Bounty advert:- the sand was so white & idyllic, lined by palm trees and lapped by emerald waves. We could not remove the grins from our faces.

In the evening we could tell the pace of life was very different here from that of Thailand. As Malaysia is a predominantly muslim nation the islands were supposed to be 'dry', beer was available but as it was so expensive (about £2 for a coke sized can) we were happy to live without it.

Day 124

On the next day we decided to hit the beach again and booked a snorkeling trip around a few of the spots around the islands. One of the main features of the trip was that you are guaranteed to see sea turtles on the trip.

We had some breakfast before setting off on the trip with another two people and the boat driver. Initially we went to see some black tip reef sharks, the others in the group saw 2 small ones but unfortunately we missed them. Then we moved on to a lovely little coral spot where our boat driver threw bread into the water so we were surrounded by lots of colourful fish. There were so many they just kept swimming into you. After that we moved on to turtle point, this was a straight of water between the two islands and the driver would search for turtles on the bottom of the ocean floor and point them out to us so we could jump out the boat and swim after them. We saw a huge turtle and a quite little one but it is amazing how fast they move. If we would lift our heads out of the water for a few minutes to talk to each other we would look down and realise the turtle had swum off so we would then have to search around to find it again.

In the evening we ate in our guesthouse as it seemed pretty popular and they also showed a film on the overhead projector. Then we had an early night before scuba diving in the morning.

Day 125

We had to get up early as we were meeting at the dive shop at 7.30am. It was a really good feeling to be going on our first dive as fully qualified advanced divers as we would be able to just concentrate on the sea life around us instead of learning and demonstrating new skills. The dive we chose to do was called 'Temple of the sea' and when we got there we could see why, we saw the biggest array of fish we have seen yet and this was by far our most satisfying dive. We saw a 3 legged turtle called Tripod, that lives on the dive site, a bamboo shark hiding under the rocks, murray eels, huge shoals of barracuda, a tiny clown fish and many many more. We ran out of space in our dive log books trying to capture all the fish that we saw. After diving we spent the afternoon on the beach and Joe also went to trek to a wind turbine on the other side of the island so that he could explore the creepy crawlies in the jungle on the way. He came across a big lizard and lots of insects but enjoyed the walk although it was not as far as he thought.

When Joe came back we spent some time on the beach and before going back to the hostel to get ready for dinner.

At dinner and the movie for the night was love actually and we had a burger and fish. We then went back to the room to have a little sleep before Joe woke up to watch the Manchester United game against Arsenal which was a good game as Utd won.

Day 126

As we woke in the morning we had to pack our stuff because we had to check out of the hostel. We put our bags in a book store at the hostel and looked for books to swap for a while before heading to the beach.

We spent the day on the beach and Joe talked to a few English guys who he met at the football the night before and Tracy sat on the beach enjoying the really hot sun.

Before we knew it, it was time to get the boat back to the mainland so we could catch a bus to Kuala Lumpur. The boat ride back to the mainland was beautiful with the sun and the sea and we watched the world go by for about 25min.

On the mainland we went to the bus station where our bus was leaving and we knew we had a little wait so we headed to a Chinese restaurant where we met a really nice couple called Liam and Kate from England that were staying in Kuala Lumpur and they were getting the same bus as we were. We chatted for a while and enjoyed some food and stocked up on provisions from the local shop for the journey.

Then we waited for the bus to leave and when the time came to get the bus, it wasn't there. There was a group of us who were waiting for the bus and we couldn't get any information from the bus organizer, he just said that the bus was coming in 15 min which it never did. We had been waiting for about 2 hours and Liam was a singer so he was singing some songs and playing the guitar to keep us entertained.

Finally the bus came and we were able to leave and have a well deserved sleep (well, as good a sleep as you can on a night bus). The next day we would be arriving in Kuala Lumpur.

Day 127

The upside to the delayed bus journey meant that at least we arrived in KL at a slightly later in the morning at around 5am. We didn't have any hostel booked we had just written down some addresses from a Lonely Planet guidebook that we borrowed and took a taxi there. Unfortunately these places all seemed to be full. So we found ourselves in a 24hr internet cafe researching other hostels in KL at 5.30 in the morning. We found a nice looking place called Back Home which was walking distance form where we were so decided to go there. Thankfully they did have some rooms available and after some persistent begging they let us use a couple of beds then for a quick power nap.

Once we got up we quickly went out to take a walk through some of KL's better known sights and thankfully everything is quite close together so we were able to walk between them pretty easily. We started at the twin Petronas towers which were tall and impressive, however the skybridge was not open to the public on this day so we couldn't go up for the view. Underneath the offices of the towers there is a huge shopping mall with so many UK shops like M&S and Topshop it almost felt like we were back in England. From there we walked through a park and up to the KL sky tower, which is a revolving restaurant on a huge needle towering over the city. It was uite expensive to go all the way up tot the viewing platform as we had already seen the city's major highlights we decided to give it a miss.

As we walked down the hill from the sky tower we decided to shun the free shuttle bus and instead walked down the hill through a dense bit of jungle that had a couple of walking trails mapped out. We could hear wild monkeys in the trees and were trying to take some photos of them at distance. We couldn't believe our look when we walked a bit further and realised that the monkeys were actually following us. We stopped still on the path and soon were surrounded by 6 different monkeys who cam really close to us. In fact there was one moment of panic when they had us completely surrounded and we thought they might try to attack us for food or something. They were so cute and playful and it was great to see them playing in the trees with no restrictions.

Once we were nearly back at the hostel Joe decided that it was time he got another haircut so we went off to find a barber shop. We found one no two far away and Joe explained quite simply & clearly what he wanted and sat back into the chair and relaxed. The malaysian lady eithere hadn't heard or hadn't understood a thing Joe had said as she immediately picked up a pair of clippers on the shortest setting and immediately shaved a line down the middle of his head. Needless to say Joe emerged from the hairdressers with a lot less hair than he had bargained for but now that we are used to it we both think it looks nice really short.

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