Last stop before Thailand

We've had a pretty relaxing three nights on Langkawi. It's been really hot and humid, and the guest house we stayed at didn't have air-conditioning which was kind of a bummer. But, we were lucky to actually find a room along the beach strip. The days leading up to Chinese New Year (Feb 14) are a huge travel time for people in the region, and although Langkawi has a lot of foreign tourists, there are also quite a few local tourists too.

The ferry from Penang was pretty straight-forward, about a three hour ride. It was on a Victoria Clipper type fast ferry that was completely full. We got a kick out of the fact that they screened the movie A Perfect Storm during the trip, especially since the ride was a little rocky.

One of the days here we did an "Island Hopping Tour" where we got to visit the Island of the Pregnant Lady and swim in a fresh-water lake on the island, which supposedly helps with fertility...

From Langkawi

Also in the lake are hundreds of catfish that will rub against your feet if you stick them in the water. This is a popular spa treatment around Malaysia; we've seen "fish soaks" advertised all over the place here.

After the lake, we went to an "eagle feeding" where the boats dump food into the water and lots of eagles come out to grab the food out of the water.

From Langkawi

And lastly we went to a third island where there was a beautiful beach for swimming and beer drinking!

From Langkawi

Other than the tour, it's been pretty low-key here. And today was a recovery day (unrelated to the beer drinking). Last night I went to bed with a pretty high fever and didn't sleep all that well. I also had to take Imodium...which thankfully worked quite well. I'm feeling a lot better, the fever has subsided and I'm hoping that's the worst of it. It may have been caused by something I ate or drank, but Jaimee didn't get sick and we pretty much ate/drank the same stuff. Anyway, there are few people who come to SE Asia and don't get sick, so I guess it was only a matter of time.

Tomorrow we take the ferry on to Thailand, where we hope to catch an overnight train to Bangkok. We've arranged couchsurfing in Bangkok for the weekend. We'll see how that works out...

Here are all the photos from Langkawi (including monkey pictures!)

Pearl of the Orient

According to our travel brochures, the island of Penang on the Northwest of Malaysia, is the "Pearl of the Orient". The brochures promised "lovely beaches, colourful history and rich potpourri of cultures." We found it to be your typical Malaysian town: loud unruly traffic, loads of excellent food choices and shopping malls. We did find a beach but it wasn't as lovely as the beaches we found in the Perhentian Islands.

After taking the ferry off the islands we waited for a bus back to the main town. And we waited some more. And we had to shoo away taxi drivers who asked us every 20 minutes or so where we were going. Eventually we broke down and took a bus that wasn't going to the town we wanted but was at least getting us away from the taxi stand in Kuala Besut!

Where the bus took us was the town of Kota Bharu in Northeastern Malaysia, right on the Thailand border. When we got off the bus we couldn't go 10 feet without teenagers harassing us. One group followed us to the ATM and then the Pharmacy and we had no idea what they wanted. Turned out they wanted to practice their English. They went to a private English school and had an assignment to find English speakers. We chatted with a couple groups of them. I thought it might be a scam, but we left without being pick pocketed or anything else happening and in fact we got some presents from them in return.

From Penang

We caught an over-night bus to Penang, but the bus got in two hours early so we were dropped off at 4:30AM. We shared a taxi into town with a woman from New Zealand and then got to sample some of the left-over nightlife of Penang. There was a drunk Irish guy who said we could stay at his hostel - he ended up taking a taxi three blocks when we finally got him to leave us alone. And there was a really nice bar owner who let us rest in the back of her bar while we waited for any of the hostels/guest houses to open up.

Luckily a guest house nearby opened up fairly early and let us check-in around 8:30, where we took a nap before hitting the town. The main town of Georgetown on Penang is Malaysia's second-largest city it seems to be quite popular with both tourists and locals for vacationing. We took the bus out to a huge temple complex, Malaysia's largest Buddhist temple, Kek Lok Si Temple. It was quite beautiful all lit up at night:

From Penang

Although we loved the street food in Georgetown, the city wasn't all that exciting so we heading along the coast of the island out to a smaller town of Batu Ferringhi, where there are some beaches. There are some foreigners here, but it seems very popular with Malaysian vacationers. The beach reminds us a lot of our trip to Mexico a year ago; there are people selling things along the beach and offers to do all sorts of water activities.

Tomorrow we take the ferry out to Langkawi.

Heading West

We're leaving the Perhentian Islands today. We're catching a Noon boat back to the mainland and then heading across the peninsula to the West Coast of Malaysia. We hope to visit Penang and possibly the island of Langkawi. From there we hope to cross over into Thailand.

We enjoyed our stay here in the Perhentians. Yesterday we went snorkeling and saw sharks, turtles and a million fish. The sharks were small, but it's still pretty scary to be within 15 feet of a shark! If only we had an underwater camera!

We uploaded a couple more pictures since our last post. Have a look at the full set:

Perhentian Islands

Island Time

After more than a week in Southeast Asia we've finally hit the beach! Following our blitz tour of Kuala Lumpur we took an overnight bus to the Northeastern coast of Malaysia. The bus ride itself was fine as it was air-conditioned (a little too well in fact) but we noticed a definite difference on the east coast. For one, it's much poorer and rural. KL was super built-up, and although chaotic, relatively modern. And Melaka was also quite modern.

Second, the muslim influence is much more pronounced on this side. The scenery is mostly disheveled houses surrounded by beautiful Mosques. Here's a fancy Mosque we snapped a picture of from our bus window:

From Perhentian Islands

After the overnight bus we boarded another bus to take us a few hours north, and then a local bus to the small port town of Kuala Besut and finally a boat out to the Perhentian Islands. Overall it was a journey of over 13 hours. The Prehentian Islands are two islands, called Perhentian Kecil and Perehentian Besar (Small and Large). Since it's sort of off-season we decided to stay at the more built up of the two islands since we didn't know how much was open yet. During the monsoon season (roughly November to February) the islands pretty much shut down. However, because it's the off-season we scored an awesome bungalow with our own bathroom and air-conditioning for 50 ringgits a night (less than $15 US). We love SE Asia!

From Perhentian Islands

And our first two days were beautiful weather, today being the only day with a little rain. It's super humid and hot, but we can escape to our room if we need to cool down or we've been swimming in the ocean. There's one main beach on the island, called Long Beach (a short walk through the jungle) where we spent a good chunk of yesterday, lying out and swimming. We even built a little sun shelter with Jaimee's sarong she got in New Zealand:

From Perhentian Islands

It's very relaxing here. We plan on taking a snorkeling trip tomorrow and then maybe leaving the day after that. There isn't a ton to do here, other than drink fruit juices, eat yummy food and swim in the ocean. In other words, it's pretty awesome!

Kuala Lumpur

We planned to take a day-time bus from Melaka to the east coast of Malaysia but apparently there isn't a day-time bus anymore (picture a man at a ticket counter waving and yelling "all finished"). So, we decided to take the two-hour bus ride to Kuala Lumpur (KL) and take the night bus from there.

Getting to the bus station in Melaka was somewhat of an ordeal. The public bus that ran near our guest house wouldn't stop for us even though we tried waving it down, but a taxi did (hmmm...coincidence?). The taxi driver drove like a mad-man, honking and passing everyone on both the right and the left. We didn't say that we were in a hurry but he sure drove like we were. (I guess more preparation for the Amazing Race...)

The bus ride to KL was uneventful and our first impressions of the city were that it is super busy and congested and a bit smelly. Similar to Singapore there are malls and markets everywhere, as well as plentiful food stalls. We stowed our bags at the bus station after buying our tickets (and paying a tip to some guy who helped us with our tickets) and did a walking tour of the downtown area.

KL has two main landmarks, the Petronas Towers and the Menara Tower (or KL Tower) so we decided to check out both of them. Here we are in front of the Petronas towers:

From Kuala Lumpur

The towers, completed in 1998 were the tallest buildings in the world until 2004, although they are still the tallest twin buildings in the world at over 1,400 feet tall. They're an impressive sight. Interestingly, although not at all surprising, the five lowest levels of the towers are a mega-mall of three connected malls. I mean wouldn't it be great to get your Prada purse and Tiffany accessories at the towers?

Shopping is huge here. We thought Singapore had a lot of malls, but I think KL has it beat. There was even an IT Mall of all electronic stores, including one store devoted entirely to Windows Smart Phones.

Now we're off to catch our night bus to the east coast. Our guide book says Internet is sparse and costly there, but I find that hard to believe, as so far Malaysia seems to have more wifi than New Zealand or Australia ever did (hence this extra post today :-)

Here's the full set of pictures that we took cruising around the city today:

Kuala Lumpur

Melaka, Malaysia

Originally we had a flight from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur that would have given us five days in Singapore, but after three days, as delightful as they were, we traveled on into Malaysia. We took a bus to the Malaysian border town of Johor Bahru and then caught another bus to the town of Melaka (sometimes spelled Malacca). The border crossing was a breeze; the bus waits for everyone to disembark and go through both Singapore and Malaysian customs before going to the bus station in the center of town. Of course we didn't know the bus would wait so we almost missed it. We were wandering around when the driver yelled at us to get back on.

We had to fight a slew of hagglers trying to sell us stuff when we got off at the bus station, but eventually we found an ATM, got some Malaysian cash (ringgits) and bought a bus ticket to Melaka. We could have booked a bus from Singapore all the way to Melaka, but it would have cost us $22 Singapore dollars ($15 US) each. Instead, the bus to the border was $2 Singapore ($1.50 US) and the Malaysian bus was only 19 ringgits ($5.50 US) each. That works out to be less than half price! Every dollar counts when you're on a budget.

There were only three of us on the bus to Melaka, which would probably under normal conditions take two hours, but instead took four because we stopped every 45 minutes so the driver could have a smoke (lots of smoking here). We also stopped once for food, where we got to try our first Malaysian food. Malaysian food is essentially noodles in various forms; they eat noodles at all meals here. With eggs, with meat, with vegetables, sometimes all three, sometimes as soup, sometimes like pasta. So far we haven't been disappointed. The sauces are spicy, but very tasty. We also saw our first squat toilets (hole in ground with no toilet paper, just water to clean yourself up with) and ubiquitous prayer rooms. Malaysia is an Islamic country (70% of women wear head scarves, but no burquas) and there are public prayer rooms everywhere.

Melaka is a cute town with a long history. Europeans (Portuguese, Dutch and English) used the port as a trading center and the Chinese also ruled here for a time. This church, for example dates from the 1500s:

From Melaka

Melaka is also a very multicultural city. There is a sizeable Chinese population with a large Chinatown. It's also quite modern. There are a couple new malls, including two movie theaters. One of the days while here we saw Sherlock Holmes for only 7 ringgits ($2 USD)! The movie had two sets of subtitles: Chinese and Malay. The movie was a great way to escape from the heat. It's super hot and humid here and we're sweating constantly. Luckily, it's safe to drink the water (and ice) here and there are fruit juice vendors everywhere. At least once a day we stop for cold juice (lime is our favorite), which cost between 1.5 and 2 ringgits (40 or 50 cents). For lunch one day we had lime juices and they cost 3.5 ringgits and I was mad that they overcharged us, but then realized I was mad about roughly 50 cents. A rip-off is still a rip-off, however.

Apart from the movie, we've been mainly walking around, seeing the various sights, and eating. The food, as mentioned, is quite good, and very cheap. Our most expensive meal was at a really awesome satay place where you cook your satays at your table in a personal vat of peanut sauce oil. We stuffed ourselves, including coconut drinks and appetizers and the total bill was 29 ringgits ($8.50 US). Other stuff is cheap as well. Our hostel, with a private room is costing us 25 ringgits ($7.50 US) per night, including free breakfast, coffee or tea and wifi. It's a great deal.

From Melaka

From here we were supposed to go to Kuala Lumpur and couchsurf with some people there. In fact our plans were to leave this morning, but last night we got an e-mail from our couchsurfer saying something came up and she couldn't host us. So instead we stayed another night at this hostel and will tomorrow head over to the East Coast of Malaysia, to the town of Kuala Terrangganu where we hope to then go to the Perhentian Islands. They're supposed to be incredibly beautiful. It's about a nine hour bus ride, and then an hour and half ferry, although we won't be able to take the ferry until the next day. Internet is also supposedly sparse on the islands so check our Spot page for updates of our location if you don't see any newer posts.

Here are the rest of the pictures from Melaka:

Melaka