A week in Malaysia....

So, we join our group and travel from Singapore to Malaysia, first stop Malaka. This was a nice little city with plenty of charm and character. Rich and I were right impressed with our hotel, yes that's hotel, we're in the land of the cheap now so no more smeggy hostels. We had nice hotel with TV, Fridge, air con, en-suite, was luxury!! Spent 2 nights in Malaka, generally walking around the city, taking in the sites, chinatown, little India and the many temples. We all got chatting to this man selling little paintings by a church, he was very funny and ended up giving us all one of his pictures for free....cheers Francis!! Malaysia is much cheaper than Singapore so going out for dinner was great, although as I'm a funny f@@ker when it comes to anything with a face I'm not going to be eating meat and there is a lack of veggie food, but I'm getting by, Rich'll eat anything, and has been! One of the irish girls on our tour, Bronagh is a funny f@@ker like me, but with everything not just meat so I don't feel so bad about it! Rich and I had the best meal from a little hawker stall in Malaka, it was a plate of noodles (mine with no meat) and they were the best noodles ever, and they cost 6 ringit for 2 (1 pound) Brilliant!!



After Malaka we took a bus To Kuala Lumpur and had a couple of nights there. I have to say I wasn't very impressed. It was a big city and it was dirty and smelly and didn't have half the charm of Malaka. We had a good look around there too. We visited a place called Batu Caves which was really interesting, the caves are world famous for hosting hindu festivals and there are shrines all over the place and an enormous statue. There are 272 steps to climb up to get to the caves and there are little macque monkeys all over the place.....we like monkeys :-)

Our guide Kit was constantly getting us all to try local food and the like and we all did most of the time. One night he took us into chinatown and to a little tea place where we had jelly tea, with honey, was very odd...but nice.

Rich and I wanted to have dinner at the revolving restaurant at the top of KL tower, but when we got there it was fully booked....bugger should've phoned ahead. So instead we went of for dinner in a nice part of town. After we'd been in the restuarant (which was also a bar) a while though, Rich noticed that it was full of prostitutes!! Nice!. We had a look at the petronas towers but didn't bother going up as we'd been up KL tower and already had a good luck at KL from above.



So, KL.....tick, next stop was the Cameron Highlands. We arrived there early evening and the first thing we noticed was that it wasn't hot....hooray!! As we were up in the mountains it was significantly cooler which was a welcome relief.

Had 2 nights here as well, again, in a hotel. We went on a full day tour of the area which consisted of a bit of a jungle trek, a visit to a tea plantation and sampling of said tea which was very nice, a butterfly farm (which pleased Kate as she'd been going on about butterfly farms since Malaka!!), a buddhist temple, a swim in a waterfall and a visit to a village of indiginous malaysians.......Now, it was a great day up until this point. The indiginous people had been living in the jungle in a traditional way up until 10 years ago when the government turfed them out and gave them a village on the edge of the jungle, all well and good you may think but seemed a little wrong to us. Well, what was more wrong was that the local people did 'tours' to these villages, they handed us sweets to give to the children when we arrived and when we got out of the bus we were swarmed by kids all with their hands out for sweets, it was like being in the zoo and was just so wrong. It would appear that the local tour guides have agreements with the village people so they can bring tourists in but, we felt like we'd invaded their home just to gawp at them like animals, rather than being invited in to see how they live. Sorry, a bit of a rant there, I'll stop waffling now!



After the fresh air and peacefulness of the cameron highlands it was back to hectic cities, Penang to be exact....So, a bus, a ferry and a taxi ride we finally arrive in Penang and have lunch at a 'british' pub....oh how Bronagh was happy when she saw the menu!! Normally everytime she looked at a menu she had a look of horror!! After that Rich and I went with Kit on a cable car ride up Penang hill. That was nice although it took bloody ages!! Rich was in a bit of a panic as the England game was starting at 11pm and we didn't get back to our hotel till 10 pm!!!

We watched the England game and Rich was not happy, I think that was a bit of an understatement....he was almost suicidal....I tried to reassure him and tell him it was just a game and it was the taking part that counted but that didn't seem to help.....although beer did!

We had a walk round the botanical gardens and saw more monkey....yay, we like monkeys :-) We also learnt a new word....doowar...not sure if it's chinese or malaysian but it means raise your arms and lower them again!!! So everytime someone said it we all did it.....you had to be there really !

On our last night in Malaysia we made the most of it....by going to the cinema! We saw Superman returns and what a great film it was. Cinema Malaysian style was odd though....people were constantly talking, phones ringing, phone conversations being had, burping loudly and all manner of noises, you just wouldn't get that at Warner cinemas

So that was our week in Malaysia. We did really enjoy it and wish we'd had more time, and seen some beaches and the like, but hey-ho we only had 8 or 9 days, and we did get a feel for the place.