Hello again! I've been really lazy about writing in this ever since we started traveling. I had great plans at the start to give a detailed account of every single place we visited and to let everyone know about the good, the better and the best. How much like hard work does that sound?
I'm not a writer so I didn't want to spend the whole trip blogging. I wanted to spend it living, man. And experiencing stuff, dude.
Anyway, I've now decided to just do a few entries on each country instead of each place. This is less work for all of us - far less typing for me, even less reading for you. Hopefully this has an inverse relationship with fun, excitement and delight cos I know how much people get funned excited and delighted by these blogs!
The last place I wrote about was Singapore. It actually seems like a lifetime ago since we were walking around that crazy, clean, cool city. Having experience three countries since then, I now realize how amazing Singapore actually is. I'd highly recommend a visit. Not really like the rest of South East Asia but still a deadly city to visit.
After Singapore we went into Malaysia. Thatwas a really easy and comfortable journey. We got a bus from Singapore bus station (which is housed in this mental kind of shopping center, filled with loads of old men getting completely pissed) and arrived in Kuala Lumpur (KL) around 6 hours later.
We made a bit of a mistake by getting an overnight bus here. We thought it would be a great idea because it would save us a night's accommodation but in reality the bus left at 11 at night and arrived right on time at 4 in the morning. What do you do in a city you don't know at 4 a.m.? Find a place to go to sleep. And you can bet hotels give great deals to tired foreigners desperate for a bed in the middle of the night.
We were lucky in KL overall though because I have a cousin living there who kindly offered to put us up for the duration of our stay but there was no way I was giving her a call in the middle of the night to collect us! So we met up the next day and spent a great few days in KL enjoying a few home comforts with her family. It was great to get a taste of home before starting out on our travels proper.
We managed to two days of touristy things in KL before we left. We spent a day in the city looking at some temples, shopping in Chinatown and just generally looking around. The next day we went to the KL Bird Park (the largest free flight aviary in the world!) and then did the whole hop on/hop off bus tour. We finished the day with dinner in Little India and some drinks with friends in Chinatown.
KL is a very nice city with a great history but I think it lacks a little bit of direction. Lots of the older colonial buildings have been unceremoniously torn down to be replaced by faceless 'modern' buildings which don't really have a coherent design or even vague similarities. It's just kind of a mish mash of grey and somewhat dirty, off-grey office blocks. Even the Petronas Towers, which are kind of the centerpiece of the city, don't look like the they're looked after properly.
The government buildings around Independence Square have been maintained though and they add a nice link to the past. Overall, it wasn't as impressive as Singapore but that would be hard for anywhere.
We still had a brilliant time with Christine and her family. It was such a bonus to have lovely accommodation for a few days before we hit the islands and started living in beach huts with cold showers and no air-con.
After KL we headed out to Pulau Tioman. This is an island off the east coast of Malaysia. Apparently it's been attracting tourists for over 50 years but you couldn't actually tell. There was a fair few tourists but it wasn't packed. Same goes for restaurants and guesthouse. In fact, it seemed almost tourism free compared to the islands in Thailand - there's only one ATM on the whole bloody island!
The journey to Tioman was about 12 hours overall, including train, bus and ferry trips. Totally worth it though. It's been one of our highlights so far. The only problem was organizing our bus tickets. We actually had to go out of KL to the bus terminal to book the tickets, which took about 3 hours overall one day.
The island itself has swinging palm trees, lovely beaches and turquoise waters. Pretty much what you'd expect from a tropical island. The main activities are hammocking, diving and drinking; the perfect combination.
For us, the highlight was doing our Open Water Diving course here because we actually met a lot of cool people through it. Our instructor, A.J., was a Malaysian guy who'd been living on the island for 12 years so we got to know some of the locals as well. When we were qualified we had a big party and had to do the 'snorkel test', which I will be bringing back to Ireland! There's pictures of us doing it on Facebook, it was pretty horrible.
The diving itself was so much fun. I would highly recommend it to anyone. Being underwater for 40 minutes is just a mad feeling. And there's soooo much to see down there! Way more nature than you see up here.
We stayed on Salang Beach on the north part of the island and there was a good few backpackers there so it had a good chilled out vibe to it. There was enough restaurants to keep it varied and the booze was duty free so mad cheap. We were drinking beers for something like 50 cent at one stage.
We also stayed on a beach further down the island called ABC. This place was much quieter but nice enough. The accommodation was a bit cheaper but the food and drink a little more expensive. We only stayed a few days and basically hung out on the beach the whole time.
Pulau Tioman was a brilliant week in our trip and I would definitely recommend it to people who visit Malaysia. The diving is great, the accommodation is good value, the food is delicious, the locals are really friendly and, best of all, the booze is dirt cheap. The island's a total winner for me.
Our final destination in Malaysia was Penang. I was really looking forward to visiting this island. Even though it's an island, Penang is home to Malaysia's second largest city called Georgetown. I'd heard so much about it's history and it's really famous for food especially so it seemed like a great destination. It was even made a UNESCO World Heritage City in 2009. It seemed to tick all the boxes.
Similar to Gibraltar, it used to be a really important trading and defence post for the British because of it's geographic location. Unfortunately for me, the similarities to Gibraltar don't stop there. I was in Gibraltar when I was a kid and I hated it. It was like a seaside British town caught in a time warp. That's pretty much what I thought of Penang.
It seemed like it used to be an exotic place to go but it's kind of lost it's charm. It has all the elements for an interesting place but just doesn't pull it off for some reason. It also completely forces the UNESCO thing down your throat at every turn. It made me feel like being a World Heritage site was a complete gimmick to draw tourists in and didn't actually mean anything.
Georgetown didn't do it for me and it's hard to put my finger on why completely but I just didn't like it. Maybe I'm not cultured enough for Penang but I could think of way more interesting towns across the world to spend time in. (Also, I don't want to sound ageist but it was full of old people. We barely saw someone younger than 50. I think that tells it's own story.)
And the food wasn't too exciting either. It's one of the top five places for food in SE Asia according to the Lonely Planet but I saw no evidence to support that. The food wasn't a patch on Singapore.
The best thing we did was a day trip out to the national park on the other side of the island. You can just go in, pick a trail and go on a hike in a protected area for free. It was really beautiful. The hike through the forest was brilliant and we came out at the sea to go for a swim on the other side! It rained a bit but was still a brilliant walk and I'm not exactly 'active'. Unfortunately, our camera went mental and deleted all the pictures so you'll just have to take my word for how good it was!
Overall though, I really enjoyed my time in Malaysia. I found it to be a diverse and interesting country. It has absolutely loads to offer tourists and the infrastructure is there to see it all. Public transport is cheap, easy to understand and relatively efficient.
Actually, one thing I haven't mentioned is how nice Malaysians in general were. I actually can't think of one rude encounter we had with a local. Well, except for some taxi drivers but they're basically professional dickheads in every country so you're not allowed complain about them being rude - it's their job! You come into contact with a lot of Malaysians in three weeks there so it's a pretty big thing to be able to say they were all extremely friendly, polite and helpful. It makes such a difference when the locals are nice and don't just treat you like a walking pay cheque.
I think this will be one of the main reasons I'll look back on Malaysia with very fond memories.
