Kuala Lumpur was a disappointment. We expected it to be similar to Hong Kong, modern and clean but expectations are dangerous when travelling and so we found ourselves in the capital of Malaysia with not much to do. The city is clearly made for cars and as a pedestrian it's often hard to find a safe place to walk, patience is needed to cross the streets and even when the green man shows it's safe to walk, it normally isn't. We heard that Chinatown is a must, especially because it was the start of the Chinese New Year. But even if everything there seemed to be made up for tourists, they were easily outnumbered by the aggressive touts. When we visited the Petronas towers we found the city deserted. Most people left for the 7-10 days holiday of the New Year and at least walking was a bit easier now. The rest of the day we just read books in the park beneath the twin towers because we could not think of anything else to do.
We now had to be careful where to go as most good places were booked out except for the high end hotels. So we skipped our island hopping plan for now and left for the famous Cameron highlands in northern Malaysia. Also there we just got the last beds in a dorm with a nice Indonesian lady who spent most of the time chatting with her friends on the phone in the middle of the night in our dorm. Probably because of bad connection she had to yell the whole time but you can't expect someone to leave the room for calls at 2am, can you? The next morning we found a double room for the same price from a hostel next door.
The highlands are very beautiful, green mountains everywhere you look but unfortunately the weather wasn't great, it was chilly and rainy so we did only one tour and were the only ones in our "group"! The driver was Malaysian with Indian roots, a massive guy with a shaved skull who normally works as a computer technician. First we drove through a tea plantation owned by a scottish family and got an introduction into the harvesting of tea leaves, pretty hard work! Then we stopped at the factory and got to see the processing of the leaves. We also tried their tea but it was pretty tasteless to be honest. The way back was war. The road is very narrow and in the widest places two cars can barely pass. About halfway up we got stuck in a traffic jam with our car being the 3rd in the front. A english tourist (who ate next to us the day before in a restaurant) with a rented car refused to drive backwards to let the bus in front of us pass. He just sat in his car, smiled and said he won't do anything at all. All negotiations of the drivers in front of us didn't seem to work out and our driver was already pretty pissed off so he ran to this guy and told him to back up, he just smiled. We waited in our car, a pretty big old land rover defender, for this guy to move but he didn't. Now our driver got absolutely mad, left the car and stormed up the road to the rental car and we thought now it's gonna get bloody. He didn't hit the guy but almost, screamed into his face and threatened him, but he was still smiling. We overtook the cars in front of us and with full speed we drove towards the guy, stopping only centimetres away from his car, our driver yelling out the window that he will now pass and that he didn't care if his car will be wrecked but the other guy just smiled stupidly and said "yes, yes, thank you".
We didn't wreck his car and got pass and by now the traffic jam reached both ends of the road with hundreds of cars stuck just because of this one guy... All the way up the hill we had to stop because of some small people in big SUV's without control of their cars and our driver was yelling, swearing, getting out of the car to tell people to piss off, getting in again just to drive another 50m to the next stop. All the Indian tour guides in our convoy were somewhere on the road telling people where to drive, it was just crazy. The butterfly farm brought us all down again and the day was over for us (not for the driver who had another tour after ours to the same place and with the traffic jam now reaching several kilometres. We don't know if he survived the afternoon.)
After 3 nights we boarded a bus to Ipoh. There we had to change the terminal to a smaller bus and we arrived in the afternoon in Kuala Kangsar.
Kuala Kangsar was recommended to us by a Greek couple we met in Tanah Rata and its location made it an okay overnight stop. We couldn't really figure out what to do there. We visited a mosque and an hour or two walking along the river, but other than that we were just happy to get some rest. After two nights we were ready to keep going.
We didn't really know what to think of Malaysia. We weren't really sure if we liked it or not. The food wasn't really special unlike we had expected and the cities seemed busy and a little unfriendly. The best thing to do in this sort of situation, we thought, is head towards the islands. You can't really go that wrong with islands, can you?
We thought of Pulau Langkawi first. We soon figured out that it is too far to make it in one day, so we decided just to head north and sleep somewhere on the way. We ended up on other island, Pulau Penang, famous for its curries. Penang looked already much better. Something we had not expected. A little sad that we had already bought bus tickets for the morning, we left Penang after having a good meal, a shower, a good night's sleep and a quick look around. If we had known how nice the old town of Georgetown looked like, we would have stayed another night. In the morning we got up early, and another ferry-bus-ferry combo later we arrived in Langkawi, and soon forgot about Penang.
Pulau Langkawi is one of the most famous tourist attractions in whole Malaysia. It is a tax free zone where locals and tourists come to enjoy cheap booze, cigarettes and other shopping (Malaysia being a muslim country, mostly the last two). We, too, did some shopping before settling down on a beach further away from the center. After a fifteen minute taxi ride we were at our chosen location and checked into a hostel.
We hadn't really had much expectations for Malaysia, but what we had imagined, Langkawi was pretty much a match. Langkawi proved to be okay but a bit boring but we were happy not to dislike it. It was nowhere near a paradise island though, it is too developed and too city-like for that. Our luck was to be there before the peak season, when it is not bursting with tourists yet. We ended up staying for a week, mostly swimming, sunbathing, reading and occasionally renting a scooter. We went up the Langkawi cable car to check out the surroundings and visited the Underwater world. After a week we thought we'd had enough and took off to the next island.
Pulau Perhentian was more our kind of place. We arrived on the other coast of Malaysia, on the small Pulau Perhentian Kecil and we knew we had found what we were looking for. It was tiny, not many upscale resorts, nice jungle around the beaches and blue water! Exactly how we like it! We checked in a 30-ringgit-a-night bungalow very close to the beach! What a bargain! Or so we thought, until we found the holes in the walls, windows and bathroom floor, no mosquito net, moldy pillows and most of the jungle's wildlife sharing our bungalow. Leeches, frog, 10 or more snails, butterflies, countless mosquitoes and a squirrel family were happily living with us. After two nights of jungle camp we checked into Aur Bay bungalows, where we got a bungalow with a mosquito net and a lot less wildlife for the same price. But the location was better too! Our bungalow was facing the ocean and we got an amazing view from our porch.
And then we stayed. And stayed. We met some nice people, slept, sunbathed, read so many more books that Ben got a good customer discount from the only bookshop on the island. We also did one snorkeling trip, which was great! Sharks, turtles and some decent coral. And Chinese people in lifejackets, always good entertainment... And that's about it. We had planned to spend about a week on Perhentian so we could visit Pulau Tioman on the way to Singapore, where we had to be soon because we had booked a flight from there. Good plan, except that it never happened. We lost the track of time, doing nothing for about two weeks and never noticing how long we spent there. We accidentally ended up staying until we had to leave for Singapore with a bit of a hurry. I guess that means that we liked Perhentian islands, then.
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