Filed under: Malaysia
Singapore:
After a poor at best 5 hour delay from crap Oz budget airline Jetstar we arrived in Singapore about 11 pm. We booked straight into a hotel in the Red light district (Gaylang) and as our taxi got closer the streets were packed with ladies of the night.
Luckily however the hotel was not the knocking shop we thought, all was good and cheap as chips, so we set about exploring Singapore…
First we buggered about exploring the bustling capital and city, taking in the old colonial district down by the river and feeling all British Empire and all, then we went to the pretty damn cool Asian Civilization Museum – this gave as the once over an all things anthropogenic and basically told about how the Malay peninsular was messed about by invading Japanese, Dutch British and a few others, it was a well stocked place with plenty of traditional dress, hands on demos and all.
Another day we spent wandering the river side and Fort canning hill, the very green park where the britts built a large fort bunker thing.
Then we went shopping, obviously when i say that i mean Claire more than I and she only did it as much as the budget would allow (so none really) but it was a relief to dip in and out of the air con bohemouth malls in the humid air.
Finally we took the advise of Jenny and Jay from Oz and went to Sentosa island. This is a man made place advertised as a resort with fake beaches swimming pubs and all. It was surprisingly good, full of cool Singaporean teens, but i went swimming with container ships as a backdrop. The journey there was fun enough on the monorail and all…. but i’d expect nothing less in fast paced Singapore.
Malaysia:
Bussed it from Singapore to Melaka(aka Malacca) the former Malay capital, nestled on the Malay straits (west coast of peninsular Malaysia). First impressions of Malaysia as it flew by the bus window are bloody hundreds of rubber trees all over the place.
Melacca was a great place, basically a colonial chess piece in years past, the dutch had a bit then the britts and before that the Japanese I think. It was pivotal in its location on the shipping route, so the dutch wanted it for spice trade. There were lots of battles for control, cool dutch looking buildings remain, a host of random museums, a bustling china town with great street food, great local artist called Charles Cham (play safe use Malaysian rubber). We wandered around the local fort come church come highest point in town the site of the governors residence and I wandered about the museums. The whole city just had a great relaxed vibe oh and i just remembered it was all about the veg curry joint with a 2 USD lunch buffet all eaten with hnds and served on a Banana leaf -fantastic.
KL – Well what can I say? … i didn’t love this 4 years ago and it is same old now but claire and I managed to have a descent enough time. we camped in China town (just a term of speech – we slept in a guest house run by a nice butch lady boy, with more fish tanks than beds….). Shopped in the mad covered china town market, went to the Petronas Towers (tallest building in the world until 2004 when another Asian country built something and errected a spire on top to pip this beast : )). Wandered ……………… Ate free curried chicken and noodles on the roof of our hotel whilst watching a shitty copy of Kung Fu Panda. Ah and we also went to the Batu Caves the bloody large limestone caves about 6 km from KL center the site of many monkies and a huge Hindu shrine, pretty damn cool and this time not raining.
Cameron Highlands:
A lovely pleasant place, the weather was a little rainy but in the highlands it is always this way. We coincided our visit with Deepvaliso there were about 5 million KL residents taking a break here but still it didn’t loose it’s appeal. We went top the huge Boh tea plantation set up by a Scott a load of years ago, the view of the mountainous tea plantation was fabulous, lush uncleared tea as far as you can see. We also went to a honey farm, strawberry farm and a variety of other farms grown using hydroponics. The highlands has really seen a take off in agriculture since i was last here and the fact that water is running short in the area underlines how much they need to keep an eye on this. They grow watercress, straws, turnips, corn, all the fruit you can think off and loads more.
Another day we went trekking along one of the famous jungle trails. We had a great time, the path was a little washed out in places as it being the arse end of the rainy season meant bank erosion had occurred, but we saw huge trees, lush vegetation, heard the deafening cacophony of Cicada’s and birds and sweated our way along.
Pulau Pangkor:
This was lovely little island off Malaysia’s west coast, we had a bit of rain here as our visit was during the transition from the west to the east Malay monsoon, but it was nice to relax on a beach and do very little.
We ate great seafood here too, lovely prawns and squid. When the sun finally did come out we jumped on the white sandy beach and relaxed in the water.
Bukit Merah:
We visited this little Malay tourist spot on the advice of Jay and Jenny our English mates in oz on the tip off that you can get up close to some Orangutans. It was an effort to get to this lakeside tourist spot but after much taxi and bus combination we found ourselves on a boat shooting over to Orangutan Island. Once there we came face to face with about 30 Orangutan’s from little baby ones oddly being cared for in cots (?) to ruddy huge ones after a feed and some attention. It was pretty cool, the idea of the island is that you are the ones int he cage as you explore the place inside huge mesh tunnels and the Orangutan’s move about it. claire feel in love with the 4 month and 6 month old babies being hand reared they were i must admit very cute indeed. I was more amused by a juvenile male that came frtom the island interior into the shalls of the lake climbed up on a frat and had a piss then drank it! Ah the joys of captivity!
After the primate experience we caught a bus to Hat Yai in Southern Thailand…
