World Travels: Third Leg

With our four week adventure in Thailand over we boarded a plane from Phuket and flew direct to Kualua Lumpur. We'd had enough of buses and trains and wanted to get to Malaysia quickly, so we did!

Malaysia

Email Date: Sunday, April 03, 2005 6:09 AM
Subject: From Malaysia to Australasia!

Well, we've hit the shores of Australia with a serious bang! We flew from Singapore with my newly purchased electrical merchandise and arrived 00.30a.m Melbourne time 31/03/05. Admittedly going through customs and not declaring my laptop was the most incriminating experience of my life, but once we were through and meeting a local called "Dave", originally from Wolverhampton, drove us down for a special price to our new home - All Nationals Inn in downtown Melbourne, greeeeeeeeat maaaaaaaate!

....but first lets go back to our adventure in Malaysia. It finally felt we were true backpackers. Staying in budget accommodation where basins in your room were a treat and hot water a god send! Arriving in Kuala Lumpur (KL) we were well and truly ready for city life after the beaches of Thailand. Obviously flying down to KL was not a backpackers budget option but at 35GBP each with air Asia (easyjet equivalent) it was just the ticket!

Arriving in KL we'd delved into the not so digestible rough guide to Malaysia. Admittedly the rough guide deemed too detailed for a quick guide but once through the initial pain of seeing all those words the book became the Da Vinci code equivalent - a necessity to read. Our experience in Bangkok prepared ourselves well for what KL offered. Both cities are very similar but KL was half the humidity but more importantly half the smell! Our KL experience lasted three nights but it was the first night that could have changed our outlook. We met a Malay lad called "Jerry" from Penang on the connecting coach from KL airport. We got chatting as he'd flown over from Liverpool and had been working in a restaurant for over a year. Anyway, within half an hour he'd befriended us (like we were almost family) and asking where we were staying. Mistakenly we told him we had an idea and asked if he could join us. Within an hour of talking he was persuading us to travel up to Penang to meet and stay with his family. Although this offer was genuine and obviously meant a lot to "Jerry", his high pitched voice was decidedly grating on us and his insistent ways of showing us Malaysia were getting unbearable. Within three hours he'd checked us into the local Backpackers Inn, which he said he'd found (even though we told him it was recommended in our rough guide) and told he'd be joining us for dinner. Admittedly panic was now setting in. Basically how the f*ck were we going to politely shake this over friendly high pitched Cities of gold lookalike off our backpacks! We thought we'd do the dinner and somehow explain to "Jerry" that we're traveling in Malaysia for our personal experiences and would like to do things in KL at our own pace but What may have seemed an easy job to do to a stranger, was proving pretty stressfull!

Jerry wanted to take us to a local Hawker stall, where you sit outside on the pavements but we insisted on going to an old China Cafe, as recommended by the rough guide...what did surprise us was that he insisted he'd pay for our meal, unbelievable scenes...this shed a whole new light on our problematic friend...ha ha!! Once he paid for the meal (obviously) I broke the news we wanted to look around KL tonight on our own and wasn't sure what we were doing the following day. From that point we got a quick photo done (attached) swapped emails and off we went our separate ways that night...well kind of...bumped into him the following two mornings whilst tip-toeing past his room to get to the communal showers - fee fi fo fum, Jerry knew the smell of an Englishman!!....

KL did have the highest tower in the world called Petronas towers designed by the Argentinian who designed Canary Wharf. You can go over halfway up but you had to get up very early to do this, so we went up the telecom tower instead which is higher anyway but only because it's a got a head start being built on an 80ft hill. The views were stunning. Malaysia has been steeped in poverty but slowly making a recovery and can been seen all around KL. The Petronas towers were built for the sake of the Malays to look up to, admire and to attain high goals in life. Costing over 500million GBP, I'm sure the homeless, jobless Malays thought it was money well spent. Our three nights in KL was just right, the shopping malls were fantastic and we got drawn into some genuine purchases, justifying a steady replacement of our very tired English bought clothes. We also visited the largest outdoor bird sanctuary and err it was full of birds, surprisingly! Our last night was fantastic though. We had tickets for the "the force of nature" concert in aid of the Tsunami. Costing 55GBP each it was expensive but at least for a good cause. It started at 8pm with Lauren Hill and finishing with Black Eyed Peas at 2a.m. We enjoyed every minute! The line up was "old skool" but the best by far was Wyclef Jean teaming up with Lauren Hill singing a few old Fugees songs, although I must admit Boyz 2 men act were a close second, superb!!

Moving on though we wanted to experience jungle life so we followed the rough guide's recommendation of Cameron Highlands (CH), situated in central Malaysia. After experiencing our first backpackers style accommodation, sharing cold showers and communal areas for congregating at night, talking about your days events we weren't shy of hitting another! Taking 5 hours by bus we were shuttled over to Daniel's lodge where we remained for three drunken nights! Daniel's lodge was superb! It was fairly empty because F1 had hit the shores of Malaysia so backpackers and alike were now in KL. We met a great crowd at Daniel's lodge. At night there was a bar with sky TV, pool and an open camp fire so night entertainment was plentiful in the quiet village of CH.

The first afternoon we hired mountain bikes. We were warned the hills were steep and err they were!! Must admit it would have helped if I could change gears for the hills and have brakes that worked for the downhill kamikaze runs but it was great to be out and about speeding past the locals! I managed to pop into the local public golf course to enquire, seeing as I didn't play in Thailand it was time for a top up! Along our biking travels we thought we'd view a waterfall land mark which was on our way home...this proved to be an experience. As we biked down so an India Malay came running up to us shouting asking if we could swim. Initially we were a bit confused but he said that a local Malay kid had been playing in the shallow waterfall pool but had been sucked into the plunge area. We dumped our bikes and ran down. The waterfall was small but on top of the fall were the kids friends' who were distressed. One guy was in the water who'd been looking for the boy. The boy unfortunately drowned well over 15 minutes ago so really it was too late it was just a matter of finding the body. I stripped down and swam in. The water was cold but too dirty to see so without goggles it was difficult. We swept our arms underneath but the waterfall whirlpool was quite strong and over 10meters deep. It was quite a numbing experience, if only the boy could swim or even if I or someone was there earlier could have swam out to save him....

The ambulance and fire brigade turned up, so it was time to leave. We decided to treat ourselves thereafter with a locally made cup of tea, scones topped with freshly made strawberry jam and clotted cream, winner!

The following day we had a jungle adventure booked for the day with an ex gorilla army officer called Ballan. What was quite funny was that he introduced himself to everyone shaking hands but he couldn't remember meeting us the night before at Daniels' lodges bar. We'd spent most of the night drinking round the camp fire and playing pool, he was battered and still reeked of booze, good lad! Had a fantastic day though, traveling in the back of a second world war land rover tearing round blind corners with 1000ft drops close to the side. The jungle trek wasn't quite how we imagined but it was tough terrain and pretty cold! We didn't get to see any roaming tigers, elephants or rhinos but Ballan did give us jungle surviving tips, pointing out edible plants and showing us how to make traps out of thorn cane. We hit another another waterfall and I was the first to strip down to my undies and dive in, it was freezing but I needed a good clean! We got back quite early from the trip and I'm sure Ballan missed a few things out but I think it's because he had such a bad hangover and also wanted to get back on the booze early doors, another jungle survival tip he was adamant on telling us about!

The next day was golf day though. We were going to leave CH in the afternoon but we were enjoying the place and the company so much we decided to stay for another night. There was a couple we met, so I spent a day playing golf with James and lady V drank and played scrabble with Leanne. At 15GBP a round, including clubs, balls and tees it was an absolute bargain. There were also Indian boy caddies you could hire for 5GBP but thought that was pushing the boat out! The course was superb, built within a valley and very challenging but unfortunately James had only ever played three times so he was errr embarrassingly rubbish!...I couldn't believe how bad he was. We took 4 HOURS to play 9 holes, it was so bad. We even had to let two four balls through because we were, well James, was so slow!! I had to leave him after 9 holes and play the last 9 alone...which only took me 2hr 30 minutes. It would have been quicker if a Japanese fourball had let me through. On the last hole I let them know I was annoyed and fizzed one over their heads, which they obviously didn't take to kindly but hey it was worth doing for the reactions on their faces. Luckily they couldn't speak English so they didn't make too much sense when I walked down the fairway past them!!

Anyway after three great nights eating Chinese cuisine, Malay steamboats, wiener schnitzel and meeting four Aussie girls, one German (naturlich) and three English we hopped on a bus back to KL to catch a linking bus onto Malacca. In KL we had one hour for me to accomplish a task. Basically an internet Cafe had copied images onto a CD for me which, well basically hadn't been copied, so I thought as a long shot they may still have the pictures on their laptop. Cut a long story short I had to take the Internet Cafe owner's laptop to a repair shop in a taxi to get lady V's camera memory stick which had got stuck when trying to copy new photos onto a CD....two hours later we caught the bus to no avail recovering our now lost photos.(Luckily only a few though)....

Within two hours we were in Malacca, is an old port town steeped in history. We stayed in another backpacker's inn and really enjoying the cheapness of the rooms and the opportunity to meet fellow time travelers. Malacca was originally conquered by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, us Brits, the Japanese and now finally by Malaysia. The town was small but more importantly the pace of life was perfectly laid back. We tried Nonya, which is kind of the local dish in Malacca. It's a combination of Malay and Chinese - I think by far the best food we've tasted and at 2GBP a dish it was rude not to go for lots!! We were pestered by one old bicycle tuk-tuk driver who wanted to take us to China town (funny that I thought China town was always closed, well it was in Bangkok!). He followed us round during the day and even after a boat trip along the river he saw us get off the boat and followed us to a restaurant!...in the end I gave him 10RM (1.50GBP) just for all his efforts, after all he was at least 70 years old, good man!

Our final trip in Malaysia was to the Tiamon Islands. A 5 hour coach trip to Mersing and a ferry ride to Pulau Tiamon the largest of the Tiamon islands. We had one slight glitch though. The ferry managed to get stuck in the sea bed. The tide was low but apparently in all the years of the ferry service this had never happened. It was comical. Apparently the driver had taken the wrong route and driven straight into a danger zone. We were stuck for over an hour and only one mile from our leaving point! Anyway the main reason we were stuck was because there were too many passengers and luggage. Lady V and I had to sit on the back of the small ferry as there were no seats left and I adamantly told the helpers the ferry was too full....anyway after two small ferry's arriving either side, off loaded a few passengers enabling the ferry to dislodge itself. Superb. There was a French family who were kicking up a fuss. I was quite willing to kick the French off the boat first before the rescue boats arrived!!

Anyway once we arrived at port Selang the last stop of five jetties on the Island it was worth the wait. The sea was so clear, the sand so fine and the bungalows all lined up along the front. The stretch of beach had a few restaurants and a couple of bars but within the first night we bumped into the German girl from Cameron Highlands. We joined her for dinner along with a married couple. Hans (German) and Katherine (Canadian but now had been Germinated as Hans called it, well actually I did!!). We were there for three nights and we spent every night with them, they were a great laugh. In fact on the last night we bumped into another guy from Cameron Highlands and another from Malacca so the world is certainly small, well Malaysia is anyway! Our first day was the best. we hired a two seater Kayak and Kayaked round the bay or bays to monkey bay (although there were no monkeys), golden bay and finally Penuba bay. There we snorkeled around the coral and saw amazing fish. You didn't have to venture out so far to see the fish. It certainly put our experiences in Koh Samui and Phuket to shame!! Apparently snorkelers had seen turtles, stingrays and reef shark but we were happy just to see a few parrot fish and other small harmless ones!!

...and so the Malaysian adventure ended there after three stunning nights in Pulau Tiamon we hopped onto a larger ferry (watched Jet Li marshal artist, the boat helper dude was loving him and insisted we watched him)...from Mersing we did our 3 hour coach trip down to Singapore!!

Right I think this email has drastically got out of control, ha ha...our time in Malaysia has been so good, we finally feel like true backpackers but obviously still doing it in style, although not having a hot shower for over 6 days not even the Dougal boy smells are hard to contain!....taking this on board though we treated ourselves to a four star hotel in Singapore!! Definitely a good move. Singapore was a little more expensive but it's a small stepping stone to European price status in Australia!

We had three nights in Singapore visiting the zoo, little India, China town (just for a change), Merlion (half lion, half fish) and err an electrical shop where I purchased a laptop, digital camera and i-pod, nice touch.

Anyway we're now in Melbourne where our Australia adventure has begun. We've had two full days and already done so much...and spent quite a bit. A little more expensive than Asia! Already we've seen two comedy acts (comedy festival this month), told a comedian how to promote himself, drunk too much VB, watched an Aussie rules footie game at the MCG, been on a vine yard/wine tasting trip, befriended two comedians and set up one of them with a drunk Aussie!

I'll be in touch more now I've got a laptop, although not sure how that works works without an Internet connection!

We're off to Sydney tonight via bus which takes 11 hours where we'll stay for a few days and then head up to Brisbane so Mr.Firth get that engine warmed up maaaate!

Bye for now,

Dougal going down under maaaate.
p.s Photo of me with our new comedian mates, Dan Willis, Nick Coppin and Arron someone (Aussie) along with photo of Jungle Ballan, me and err me and snorkel V!