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Published: December 23rd 2015
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Our first impression of Malaysia was not great. We jumped on a bus out of Singapore, excited to get to a new country, then spent over two hours stood at the most utterly farcical passport control I've ever seen (yes, even worse than at Heathrow). There were no proper queues, just wide aisles with huge scrums of people pushing to get to the desks. The worst by far were the busloads of elderly Chinese tourists, who used any means necessary - many bordering on violent, it's amazing what you can do with a walking stick - to get through before you. All the while one poor old guy was in charge of crowd control, running around the various aisles, shouting himself hoarse, threatening not to let vast swathes of people out of Singapore, and getting only abuse back in Mandarin. We got our elbows out and got stuck in, and finally we were through. We later found out that this is standard for a land crossing out of Singapore, and on a bad day it can take four hours or more. Never mind, we were there - Malaysia!
Our first stop was Melaka, a former trading port for the Chinese
and for the colonial Portuguese, Dutch and British, and now a UNESCO World Heritage City. As far as we could tell the UNESCO rating was mainly due to the different colonial era buildings, but as most of the old buildings have only the bottom few feet of the walls remaining, it doesn't look hugely exciting - a metre high corner section with one side saying 'Portuguese Wall' and the other saying 'Dutch Wall' was about as riveting as it got. Maybe interesting to a serious colonial history architecture buff, but that's definitely not us I'm afraid! But Melaka has a nice chilled out vibe to it even if the historical sites aren't much to look at - the streets of Chinatown are full of traditional houses, and there's nice street art all over the place; an attractive blend of old and new.
One blend of the old and the new in Melaka is a little less attractive though - the trishaws. The trishaws in Melaka are quite something to see; take a traditional old-style trishaw, then lavishly decorate it with bright colours, cuddly toys and other paraphernalia, preferably in the style of a Disney film. Then, string lights over
the whole thing and connect a speaker system at deafening volume, blasting out songs from said Disney film. Finally, just cycle around town and wait for the children to wear down their parents resistance to have a ride. It seems to work, they were always doing a cracking business with the Malaysian families. It's somewhat surreal to walk around a pretty old town, street food vendors out front and beautiful Nyonya houses above, while hearing 'Let It Go' played at ear-splitting levels wheeling past in a blur of garish lights and delighted kids.
The other highlight of Melaka was the food - particularly the traditional Baba Nyonya cuisine. The best bits for us were Nyonya laksa (a spicy coconut broth filled with seafood and noodles, eaten for breakfast), poh piah (big soft spring rolls filled with crispy veg and palm sugar), satay celup (like a fondue except you cook your meat in a bubbling vat of satay sauce) and cendol (a shaved ice dessert with a load of palm sugar, strings of jelly and kidney beans). All delicious! We snacked our way around Melaka every day we were there. The food I was most keen to get on board
with in Malaysia though was durian - famously disgusting smelling (you sometimes genuinely question whether you're smelling sewage or durian on the street) but hugely adored by Malaysians, I was determined to acquire a taste for it. Sad to report though, we tried it in pastries, we tried it in desserts, we tried the plain fruit flesh, and every time it was uniformly nasty to our tastes. We got to the point where we could just about stand it, but I think you must have to grow up eating it to love it!
After Melaka we were up to Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia and home to the iconic Petronas Towers. There's loads to see in KL, but the Petronas Towers are definitely the most inspiring; amazing the first time we went, during the day, and even more gorgeous the second time we went, at night. For six years from 1998 to 2004 they were the tallest buildings in the world at 452 metres, so the scale is pretty jaw-dropping, but more than that they're just beautifully designed, and very beautifully lit at night - a great sight. We also went to the Batu Caves while in KL, which
are impressive - a nice set of Hindu temples in a vertigo-inducing cave with a 43 metre tall golden statue standing guard outside - but the main thing we took from Batu Caves was how like India in microcosm it was, especially in comparison to clean, organised Malaysia; the amazing religious site in counterpoint to the dirtiness, the chaos, and the numerous semi-wild creatures (mainly monkeys) leaping about. It's hard to explain if you haven't been to India, but somehow the very authentically Indian filth and pandemonium really made us miss it...
While in KL we managed to catch up with Andy, one of our friends from World Nuclear University who works nearby. We had an awesome night reminiscing about our time in Oxford, and he took us around a few great local eateries that we wouldn't have had any idea about otherwise. The best was definitely a Mamak (Indian Muslim-descent Malaysian) place he took us for roti tisu - we'd never even heard of this, but it's apparently a KL favourite. It's both delicious and dramatic - we were sat there when a cone of bread over a metre tall was delivered with aplomb to our table. It's
a roti spread ultra thin over a massive hot plate then glazed with sugar and condensed milk and wrapped into a huge cone - yum! After this it was off to town centre for drinks - Andy took us to what must be one of the best views in Malaysia, the SkyBar in the Traders Hotel. A swanky bar (which we were extremely under-dressed for) on the top floor, you sit by a softly lit swimming pool sipping a cold beer looking out over the illuminated Petronas Towers. Pretty amazing! Sadly in our backpacker world we can only live the high life very occasionally, and always feel a little like imposters when we do...
Too much to eat in southern Malaysia - now off to the Cameron Highlands to hike some of it off.
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