Malayisa, Curry, Curry and a Murtaback

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This is another long one; you might even want to grab some food for the read!

We got the bus down to Butterworth on the west coast of Malaysia, where we could get a ferry across to Penang to meet my friends Uncle. He had just been given the following description; “look out for a couple of backpackers, the girl with a bright purple vest on saying ‘I love Cambodia’”. We eventually found each other and we were on our way with Uncle Raj!

We were now in Georgetown, an old English colonial place of some significance. It was part of the Straights Settlements if that means anything to any of you. Uncle Raj kindly booked us into a hotel right in the heart of Little India and told us that he would be taking us to my friend’s favourite curry house later. The curry didn’t disappoint; a lamb biryani with garlic nann and mango lassie….just what the doctor ordered after a 12hr trip from Thailand!

The following day was spent taking in the pristine English style buildings in and around Georgetown together with sights and the vast aromas of Little India….oh and another curry this time eaten not from a plate but from a banana leaf that was promptly placed in front of us upon arrival (I suppose it saves on the washing up)!

Pangkor Island was next on the list and was a little further south towards Kuala Lumpur. We landed on a public holiday amid a crazy storm only to find that there was nowhere to stay…..AT ALL! There was one room but the dude was not letting it go for less than a small fortune. We managed to find a Hippy type backpacker place at the end of a side street, which was full and asked the manager if he would allow us camping to on his lawn. “Don’t worry man, Be happy, of course you can” was his reply so out came the tent in excitement for the first time of the trip. It was only earlier that morning I was saying to Nat that this tent was a waste of time and that we should send it home. Anyways, we had a good nights sleep and felt champion…..this tent was definitely a sound investment! We stayed in this particular area on Pangkor because Nat had heard that there were snorkelling trips and we had well and truly caught the underwater bug, so there we stayed. Once the rain had stopped we had nearly 4 days of good weather so out came the snorkels, we headed for Coral Island which was about 100m off our mainland beach and was accessible by a sand bar that was only a few feet deep in places, chest high in others. Once we got to the island we noticed nearly 40 Malaysians all in these life jackets that secured under the crotch and in no more than 3 feet of water. As we sat and waited for the crowds to disperse a boat load more would arrive about every ten minutes or so. All this commotion was making us excited about what we would discover…..beautiful pink reef, Nemo’s, reef sharks??? NOT AT ALL, when we finally decided to go in, we were surprised to find that there was actually nothing to see apart from murky water and a one or two fairly common fish! All day we had waited, never mind the locals seemed to be enjoying it though, and to top it off, the rain came. When the sun finally broke through, we had the beach all to ourselves for the remaining 2 days and it was baking hot….At last! We left Pangkor Island and headed for Kuala Lumpur on the bus to meet my friend’s mum, Malika who lives 40 minutes outside the city.

Both my friend and his Mum were born in Malaysia but their family is originally from India. Apparently my friend had told his mum that I loved a good curry and for the next 3 days Nat and I were treated to some amazing Indian culinary delights. Malika makes some amazing dishes, Lamb, Chicken, Fish, she made us everything. Once we were in KL on our first full day, instead of seeing the sights we were forced into the hard rock café due to more rain. A few hours later, after a curry lunch, we were out and about taking in the Petronas Twin Towers and the KL Tower, both still looking amazing even in the cloudy and wet afternoon conditions. Once we were inside the huge shopping malls of KL we finally realised that Christmas was just around the corner. There were huge towering trees and a giant Santa’s Grotto in one centre; it still didn’t feel real though. The following day we went back to KL in a hope for better weather, we were denied once again so we headed to the Malaysian National Museum for a few hours which had interesting displays from the English occupation and the periods of independence. We managed to make it back to KL centre before another down pour and we settled for a Murtaback for lunch. The Murtaback is essentially a layered dish of pancake and curry, and tastes amazing! We were about to order a medium size for me and a small one for Nat but we were told by the waitress that we really should share a small one. Ha. Imagine my response to Nat afterwards. I eventually gave in and we ordered the small one to share, costing about 8 ringgits ($2)…. It was huge and we struggled to finish it between us!

The last night Malika took us to the I City, a winter wonderland in the tropical climate of Malaysia. There is a forest of trees, plastic pine trees and fruit trees with lights for leaves and berries it was amazing and best of all it’s open year round and is not just for Christmas. There is even an indoor snow field, which seems to be a good idea as most people there will probably never see real snow. Malika offered to show us but we declined for obvious reasons. The people here love it and were still arriving at 23:00.

We went to catch the bus the next morning to Melaka and said a teary goodbye to Malika who had really looked after us for the 3 days we were there; I doubt we will ever taste a better curry!

Melaka, the capital of the Straights Settlements and was the gateway to Asian trade routes in the 1700’s. Independence was only granted in the 1960’s due to the importance of this once massive port town. Most of the buildings are of typically colonial design and were painted red instead of white to stop the muddy splashes of the monsoonal rains around the base of the buildings (another piece of useless information for you all!). Once again we really struggled to find accommodation as we got there on a Friday afternoon and so did the rest of Malaysia, it seems the weekend market on Jonker Street is ‘kinda a big deal’! We managed to find a place complete with its own bistro / bar on the ground floor. Little did we know that they had live music on weekends, even worse was the fact that the Asian woman who was the main singer sounded like two cats fighting in an ally. She batted on well past midnight, a gallant effort in the rain.

The rain stopped play the following day so we were confined to yet more shopping malls. We decided to get the Christmas gifts for each other, I managed to get Nat some Sudoku toilet roll, it was hard to say no when I found both of her favourite past times combined in such an ingenious way! By this time we could almost taste the Aussy beer, once we left Melaka we had only one night in Singapore before our flight to Melbourne.

Nat had decided to splash out on the accommodation in Singapore, well anything half decent would have felt like splashing out after 3 months in Asia. Getting off the bus early in the afternoon we soon worked out that we had about 2km to walk to the hotel, oh it was also raining, HARD! Due to the rain again we found ourselves spending the day in the spectacular Malls of Singapore, with the prices let say a bit MORE expensive than Asia! Later, we got settled in to the room which was very nice by any standards and then it came…man flu on our only night! I had about 2 hours to go until we were going to the Casino at Marina Bay and Nat had started to get ready. I took that as a sign that I had better get my act together, 3 cups of tea and a stinking hot shower later I was ready but still with jeans and thick socks on. The rain had stopped which was probably my reward for getting out of bed and when we finally arrived at the Marina Bay Complex sometime after 22:00, I had forgotten how crap I was feeling as we were taking in the magnificent night time cityscape. Once we were in the casino we made our way to the roulette tables and 90 minutes later we had built up a decent profit so we decided to go to the nightclub atop the Hotel on the 54^th floor. Before we had even got a drink we headed to the roof terrace and looked out over Singapore bay and we could make out what remained of the F1 circuit. The nightline views were amazing, all bright coloured lights, the best City lights we’ve seen in our lives. The music was pretty poor so we took some snaps and decided to leave and the drinks were $28 each, casino win or not the drinks would remain in the bottle!

We went for a walk around the city the following morning and went for dinner at the Long Bar, which is apparently the home of the Singapore Sling cocktail. The bar was another colonial affair but the floor and tables were covered in peanut shells. Littering the place with shells seemed to be the thing to do and before long we were covered in the things. We went to the airport 5 hours early as there is a cinema, shopping mall and loads of stuff to do. After some shopping in the airport duty free in preparation for the parties in Melbourne, we boarded our flight at 20:30. ADIOS ASIA!!

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