Days 84-99: Peninsular Malaysia
Upon arriving in a new country, our first order of business after clearing immigration is to find an ATM and get some cash. So after entering the terminal in Kuala Lumpur we headed straight for the first ATM we saw. We stood in line behind a couple of gents who seemed to be a bit flummoxed by the ATM. We knew we had to abandon our plan when they started shoving coins into the various slots in the ATM…
Not to worry – there are always more ATMs. We found another ATM in the baggage claim zone. But it was “out of order” – coins perhaps? Still not a problem. We breezed though customs and out into the public zone (or perhaps better refered to as the Tout Gaunlet) and found another ATM. But that ATM was actively being repaired. We bet coins were the culprit. Yes, we eventually did find a functioning ATM. We beat the coin dudes to it!
Speaking of clearing customs, the most trouble we’ve had so far was in Australia, they really didn’t like our huge stash of Pepto but let us in anyway. This is a bit surprising because the past couple countries have had dire warnings that “Drug posession carries the death penalty.” And let’s be honest, one look at us and they should be breaking out the rubber gloves. 🙂
We have to say right out that we’re terribly impressed with Kuala Lumpur (KL) and Malaysia in general. The things we noticed off the bat were the well-maintained and efficient roadways. KL feels very much like a city in the states. The Chinatown is terrific and has some of the best fake meat chinese (FMC!) food. The streets are full of Malays, Indians, and Chinese and surprisingly few tourists. The place is big enough to give us a feeling of anonymity that’s a bit relaxing. And we got something we haven’t had in a long time: hot water showers.
KL’s Chinatown – more bootleg DVDs than you can shake a rambutan at. And some seriously good eatin’.
Our first full day in KL was the King’s birthday and they were throwing a big shindig for him at his palace. So we decided to drop by. The only problem was a huge freeway between us and the palace that we simply could not cross. We were stading across the freeway from the palace and could tell that some serious pomp and circumstance was going on, but we had a clover leaf in one direction and an overpass in the other, and nary a taxi to be found. So we tried to cross the overpass, but got turned away by the armed security guards. Eventually the party ended without us, but Happy Birthday anyway!
Amungst the sights in KL is a butterfly park that is filled with some of the neatest butterflies we’ve seen. And some of them were even kind enough to sit still for photos (see the Peninsular Malaysia Critters entry). We went to the Petronas towers, which were the tallest buildings in the world until the Taipei 101 opened a couple years ago. They only let you go to the sky bridge on the 41st floor, but it’s free if you get there early in the morning and stand in a pretty long line. The towers also have a huge mall in the base where we finally got to see Star Wars Episode III, complete with Chinese and Malay subtitles. (In Malay, R2 is ‘Artoo’) The tickets were about $2.50 and we even got assigned seats. No fatty buttered and salted movie corn though – only sweet carmel corn for watching Anakin go over to the dark side.
Standing tall.
The buses in Malaysia are fantastic. Fast and efficient, spacious, punctual, air-conditioned, with perfectly timed rest stops. We took one to the Cameron Highlands which is a tea growing regoin. We sampled the local brew at the Boh tea estate and saw how much processing goes into that cup of tea. There’s a surprising amount of grinding, “fermenting”, drying, and sorting between leaf and tea bag. And it all happens within a couple hours.
Kel amungst the neat rows of tea plants.
While we were in the highlands, a couple groups of hikers went missing for multiple days and we were relieved to see that they were all found alive on the cover of a newspaper on our way out of town. It definitely made us keep a close eye on the trail when we went hiking. On our longest hike we came across a carnivorous pitcher plant.
“FEED ME Seymour!”
We took a minivan and a boat to Pulau Perhentian Kecil off the very NE coast of the country. The boat was advertised as the “fast boat” and Marcus kind of chuckled when he saw it, and laughed even harder when they insisted on lifejackets. But he wasn’t laughing when we were airborne and his butt hurt from the frequent landing impacts. There are actually two PP islands: kecil means small, and besar means big. We took a snorkelling trip around them both and it was notable for the large number of black-tip reef sharks around the area. We saw six of them in sizes from 1 to 2m in length. The last was preceded by a frantic snorkelling Malay boy that was swimming for his life towards us for “protection.” That was also the largest shark we saw, and those who know Marcus will be surprised that he followed it to get a better look.
We took the Jungle Railway train down to Taman Negara National Park. There were no express trains during the day (and we wanted to see the scenery), so we took the local train. There were a total of 55 stops between when we got on and got off. 6am to 4pm, but the scenery was pretty and who can beat a $3 train ride through the jungle?
The park is famous for it’s diverse wildlife. There are rumors of big jungle cats, bears, and tapirs, but we didn’t see squat. Fortunately, we saw quite a few bugs and some made it into the TN Critters blog entry. According to our guide book, one of our hotel choices was currently being restored from damage caused by a rampaging elephant. We opted to stay on the other side of the river from the national park. This side also had all the cheap restaurants which lined the riverbank on floating barges.
Kel worried she might get motion sick while eating on the river. 😉
A “highlight” of the park is a very long canopy walk that is a series of rope suspension bridges hung 25m above the jungle floor. Marcus had a death grip on the rope the whole way and was more than a bit relieved to be back on solid ground. On the plus side, Kelly had fun.
Back on terra firma. (Note: this is as low as the walkway ever got.)
After our long hikes in the steamy jungle, we achieved new levels of odoriferousness. Thank goodness for cheap laundry and hot showers.
We took a trip to visit an aboriginal (orang asli) village in the park. There they showed us the trees used to make poison for their blowgun darts as well as how to make and shoot them.
-spit- “Poison still fresh. Three days.”
They also showed us how to make fire using some ratan and another piece of softwood with some bamboo shavings. The Survivor folks are in no danger of us showing them up. At least one of the tourists was able to do it, but burned his palms when nursing his ember into flame. Ouch!
No, that sweat isn’t from the heat of a fire.
Tags: Malaysia
Kelly & Marcus
June 19th, 2005 at 7:46 am
Wishing you safe travels today as you head back to Indonesia…
BTW,how many journals have you gone through so far – just curious?
Hugs xoxox
June 20th, 2005 at 1:04 am
We’re safe and sound in Malaysian Borneo; we go back to Indonesia in a couple weeks.
So far still the one journal, but Kel is running out of pages fast!