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Malaysia Truly Asia, it’s the place to be….
Pulau Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia |
Pulau Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia
After a lovely couple of weeks at home it was time to head back across to the other side of the globe. We had flights to Kuala Lumpur as we were due to be heading back to Pom Pom with TRACC to be Turtle Interns for 6 months. This had been the plan for a long time and we didn’t have a Plan B. Which was a shame as Plan A was about to go down the pan.
Pom Pom is in eastern Borneo, very close to the borders of the Philippines and sadly it has become an area frequented by the Abu Sayyaf and another group from the Phillipines called KFR (Kidnap For Ransom) who take hostages and sell them to the Abu Sayaff, who then hold them on an island in the Philippines called Jolo.
We never in a million years ever thought that we were unsafe on our little island of Pom Pom but it seems that we were mistaken. On the 15 November 2013 militants raided the Big Pom Pom Resort (one of only two on the island excluding our TRACC camp) and killed a Taiwanese man and kidnapped his wife. She was returned after undisclosed negotiations on the 21 December.
After this incident security in the area was heightened and we were still planning to go to Pom Pom as this seemed like a one off planned attack on a rich business man. However sadly on the 2 April militants again raided an island resort near by Pom Pom and kidnapped a Chinese tourist and a Filipino worker.
For us this was too much of a coincidence and reading Malaysian articles which were suggesting that the Abu Sayaff and KFR were planting sleepers in the town of Semporna and in the island resorts so that they could report when the security patrols were away from their posts so that they could swoop in and strike. The Britsh Embassy now listed Pom Pom, Semporna and the surrounding islands on their ‘Do not travel unless absolutely essential’ list, which meant even our insurance would be void if anything happened not that the cover came anywhere near close enough to the million dollar ransom that was being sought for the other hostages.
Given that we would be sleeping in tents with nowhere to run and our roles required us to be walking the beach in the middle of the night in search of nesting turtles we had to make the very sad and heart wrenching decision not to return to Pom Pom.
It turned out that we definitely made the right decision as there were two more attacks in May and June on fish farms in the area and subsequently TRACC had to make the call to pull out of Pom Pom and to move to the Tip of Borneo.
So we found ourselves back in KL with no idea what to do with ourselves. We quickly made the decision that we could spend a month travelling around Malaysia as we had seen a lot of Borneo last year but not much of Malaysia, then we would head to Thailand where we could get a cheap hotel in Samui, relax, update the blog and plan our next few months.
It turned out that our first week back in Malaysia was absolute hell, we both had the worst jet lag that we have ever experienced. We tried everything from sleeping in the day, getting up early, going to sleep early, taking sleeping tablets, drinking booze, drinking coffee, swimming to wear ourselves out. Nothing, but nothing worked.
We spent about 5 days in Kuala Lumpur in a daze wondering around the shopping malls just desperately trying to get a sleep pattern.
KL was definitely in monsoon season, every night we were treated to torrential downpours which completely hid the view of the city from our window.
We had one job to do in KL which was to get to the Thai Embassy to get a visa so we could stay at least 8 weeks in Samui. This turned out much harder than we anticipated. We went to the hotel business suite and got the lady to photocopy our passports and the docs we needed, then we got a taxi and headed to the Embassy. As we pulled up outside the taxi driver suddenly remember that it was a national holiday and everything was closed so we turned around and got dropped back at our hotel.
Plan B, now we needed to go to Penang as hotels in KL were too expensive to sit around and wait out the weekend.
Still in a haze of jetlag we headed to Penang. Having been before there was not a lot for us to see and aside from managing a trip to the embassy and experiencing the best taxi driver in the world we didn’t do much at all.
Seriously this taxi driver was the most kind and honest driver we have ever encountered. We had been that morning and dropped our passports at the embassy and were told to return to collect them between 3 and 4. We had negotiated a round trip fair with the taxi and he agreed to wait for us for about £4 in total. 3 hours later we emerged from the embassy panicked and stressed wondering how much the fare was going to go up to. We were apologising non-stop to the driver who just told us it was no problem at all and never to apologise. He dropped us at our hotel and didn’t ask for a penny more. Obviously we gave him a good tip, but it was just so nice to experience a good honest person not looking to make money out of foreigners. Well done Mr Taxi Man, you have done Malaysia proud.
With our sleep pattern slowly but surely returning to normal we were ready to see somewhere new and decided that Ipoh would be a nice place to stop off. We only had a day to see Ipoh and unfortunately the first evening the same monsoon rains that were attacking KL had followed us to Ipoh. We had a wonder around the town, had a quick dinner and called it a night. Thankfully the following day we had some sun and got to explore the city. I am not sure what it was, but there was something about the view from our hotel window that just made me want to check my Facebook, odd!
We found a great new activity in Ipoh, escape rooms. Basically you pay to be handcuffed, blindfolded and locked in a room and you have one hour to break the various codes to escape. We had the most amount of fun. We sped through the first room and then ground to a holt in the second room and ended up locked in with 2 more puzzles to solve. Such a fab idea, we will definitely be seeking out more of these.
From Ipoh we caught the bus to the Cameron Highlands. We soon discovered that much like the rest of Asia, bus companies in Malaysia lie. Every journey we went on took exactly double the amount of time we were told when we booked. This would be ok if we were on the beautiful luxury buses that were in the leaflets. However our bus to the Cameron Highlands sounded like the wheels were going to fall off every time the bus went around a corner. Bearing in mind that the Cameron Highlands are a hill station lying at between 1,070 to 2,030 meters we spent a considerable amount of the journey clinging to the mountain edge with the wheels clunking and screaming on every turn. Relaxing it was not. To add insult to injury when we got to the bus station which was actually a tiny tourist information shop with no cover the heavens opened and soaked us and our luggage through.
Luckily the Cameron highlands were worth the terrible journey and the damp clothes. With the temperatures lower than the baking heat we had had so far it was a welcome relief and with just one day to see the area we booked a tour to visit a get to a couple of viewpoints, the cloud forest and tea plantation. Tanah Rata, the main town in the Highlands is awesome, full of cheap guesthouses and even cheaper restaurants.
In 1925 the highlands began to get developed into an Agricultural Experimental station and over the years tea, fruit and vegetable plantations have extended through the hill station. Sadly it is looking like the plantations have taken over the area and places that were once beautiful are now scarred and ugly and covered in rubbish. The highlands do still have their beauty when you are looking out over the tea plantations. It is a bit like telly tubby land where the green hues just don’t look real.
Our guide was great and showed us the best views over the valley, took us on a hike through the cloud forest showing us the various flora and
fauna along the way and we ended the tour with a tea and cake break at the BOH tea plantation. Founded in 1929, this is the largest tea plantation in Malaysia and is also the largest black tea manufacturer in Malaysia. More importantly it has a rather posh and beautiful tea room hanging over the tea plantations where you can sit back and enjoy a cuppa and piece of cake. Obviously it would have been rude not to partake!
That afternoon before the usual downpour we set off and did our chores of laundry, hair cutting, bus booking and I even found a cage of kittens in the street to rub.
Our next destination was the Perhentian Islands. We desperately wanted to visit here last year but time and money stopped us and again money was trying to prevent us going as the accommodation on the islands was extortionate. We decided to bite the bullet and booked ahead at one of the nicer resorts with the promise of air con which is not in strong supply given that the island is powered by generators.
As expected the bus journey took a good 2 hours longer than it was supposed to and boy were they a long 2 hours extra. There were only 5 of us in the mini bus. A know it all 23 year old German girl who had been travelling for 5 minutes, was wearing the obligatory Same Same t-shirt and fisherman’s pants that every wannabe traveller buys the second they land in Thailand. The other couple were a strange Dutch man and woman who seemed to hate each other and ate consistently and moaned incessantly the whole trip. We later discovered that they were mother and son and seemingly were not having a whole lot of fun travelling together.
When our bus finally got us to the pier there were 4 other annoyed looking tourists scowling at us through the windows. We were 2 hours late (because that’s how long the bus took, with a short stop at the police station for the driver to report that a moped had crashed into him the previous day – the bus actually had a dent in the shape of the moped and persons head!!) and they were refusing to run the boat over to the islands until we arrived so they had been sat for a good 3 hours waiting for us, oops sorry, but trust me I would have much rather been there than on the bus full of misfits.
Thankfully our advance planning paid off and we were the first dropped off and after a bit of a trek we were checked into our hotel. I lovely wooded room with aircon, tv and its own special beach.
We knew that our friend Jerry from Lang Tangah last year was working on the Perhentian’s but we didn’t know which island or which dive shop, so it was something of a shock that the first time we walk along the beach the first person we see is Jerry. His jaw hit the floor and I am pretty sure he thought he was hallucinating, but it was good to see him again. Typically he was headed over to KL the following day but was coming back so we decided to extend our stay to dive with him. It all worked out pretty well as the next day I developed the worst sore throat and cough and would not have fancied diving so we had a few days snorkelling and relaxing awaiting his return.
Our little beach turned out to be one of the best snorkelling spots ever. Our first swim we found a gorgeous hawksbill turtle and then the next few times with our eyes in the game we noticed that there were about 6 baby black tip reef sharks circling us (not in a bad way, these little pups were barely big enough to nibble your fingers).
Our lush hotel was great until one day the power stopped. We were all too used to power cuts but usually hotels have back up generators. However this hotel had just one generator and it was broken. We tried to sleep through it, but in 35 degrees of pure humidity this is easier said than done. The resort is set up in the jungle so opening the windows was not an option as that would just be asking for a dose of malaria or dengue fever. So we sweated it out and probably managed to get about an hour of sleep. We went to breakfast and found the poor reception staff getting battered from every angle by angry tourists who had not had enough sleep. We just had a laugh with them (as they had had no power and no sleep either) and asked if they would be offering any compensation and they confirmed that they would refund us the night. Perfect, now why is everyone getting angry? The question was how long until they get it fixed?! Thankfully by 6pm that evening they were back up and running and we had some free money in the bank, awesome.
The Perhentians were the perfect spot to get back underwater and diving again. We went to temple of the Sea, Sugar Wreck which is an old sugar cargo ship which sank and now houses an impressive selection of bamboo sharks. We saw turtles, puffa fish, nurse sharks, moreys and even a little cuttlefish and thanks to Jerry’s expertise we managed to dive most sites with no other divers anywhere to be seen. The highlight of our dive was the final site which is 3 police boats which have been sunk to form a natural reef. They are not very old so are not yet teeming with coral and fish but they are pretty awesome to swim through and once again we had the entire site to ourselves. We swam through the third wreck and as we came out the visibility had dropped to about 2 meters so after a few shocked looks of ‘how did that happen’ we headed to the buoy line and made our way up. Sadly we were not blessed with a whale shark this time, but the diving on the Perhentians definitely didn’t disappoint.
We moved over to the big island Kecil, this is a bit more aimed at couples and families than the small island and the prices were just as high on both, but we had to come here as I had heard amazing reviews about the wildlife over on Kecil. It turns out the reviews of Coral View resort were all correct, it was absolutely full of wildlife. In the sea we had a few monitor lizards which would swim from the shore to the rocks for some crab snacks and on the land we had squirrels, huge bats, flying lemurs and dusky leaf eater monkeys. The flying lemurs are the cutest things I have ever seen, they are basically flying furry squares. It did seem a little unusual that there were squirrels and bats and flying lemurs as if I were to describe a flying lemur I would say it is a cross between a squirrel and a bat…. Make what you will of that!! Sadly I didn’t have my camera at the ready but one day when we were walking back from the beach there were two flying lemurs chasing each other flying from tree to tree. I am pretty sure it was a frisky male chasing a lady, but nevertheless it was such an amazing sight to see them swooping through the air looking so elegant and agile as when they are clinging into the trees looking confused they look anything but elegant and agile.
After a few days of watching the monkeys and lemurs and snorkelling with turtles, sharks and every other fish and slug we could possibly find it was time to move on from our little island paradise.
Our final destination was Malacca. Malacca is a town with a rich history having been occupied by the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and the Japanese before gaining its independence in 1957.
There is one thing about Malacca that we adored, its trishaws. These little rickshaw like bikes are the highlight of the town. There seems to be some unspoken competition going on as to who can have the most Hello Kitty themed bike and at night they get even better with fairy lights draped over every square inch of bike.
We took a tour around the city on a fabulous Hello Kitty bike, we stopped at all the major sights but in all fairness we didn’t care much for the sights and just enjoyed cruising the streets with bad tunes blaring from our on-board sound system.
Rather usefully our trishaw dropped us at the Malacca Tower, a 100 meter tower which has a viewing platform that goes 80 meters up and then rotates to provide 360 degree views over Malacca. With the sun beaming we had a perfect view over the city.
In order
to escape the mid-afternoon sun we found ourselves at another Escape Room. This time we tried a different theme and when the girl at the counter told us that the puzzles in this room required some basic maths, she lied.
Within minutes of getting locked in our room we were looking at each other in a state of panic that the first puzzle was going to keep us occupied for the full hour. This room definitely required more maths than my brain that hasn’t done real maths since my GCSE in 1996 had to offer. Needless to say once again we got locked in, but this time with more than 5 puzzles still to solve and when the girl walked us through them we realised that it would probably have taken is about 5 hours to get out, if we were lucky!! Mathematicians we are not.
Our evening in Malacca was spent wondering the street checking out the now illuminated trishaws which were just fabulous and we even went back up the tower for a night view of the city. Sadly the tower was playing up and kept slamming to a hold mid rotation, making it something of a 7 minute white knuckle ride which we were very pleased to get off of.
We were staying in a gorgeous little B&B in Malacca, which was so cheap at just £10 a night and had fantastic reviews on Trip advisor. It was lovely, clean, comfy, modern and in a great location. However our room had some unwelcome guests…. Bedbugs!
I have been a bit obsessed with bedbugs since we started travelling and after checking every mattress around the world, I was panic stricken when I actually found my first bugs. On closer inspection the perfect white sheets had blood stains at the corners and the brand new bed base had a whole host of black stripes and a few bugs happily snuggled awaiting the witching hour to come and chew on us. Having been out exploring all day we only found the nasties at about 11pm so the B&B just had a night guard who didn’t really understand what we wanted but thankfully agreed to give us the key to the next door room which was clear of bugs. Phew, disaster averted. Tim & Charlotte 1 – Bedbugs 0.
Our final night in Malaysia we managed to see our friend guy for a rather drunken night at Healy Macs. There were beers, there were spilt beers, there were cocktails, there were some more cocktails, there were some light up glasses and then there were some more cocktails.
Time to say goodbye to Malaysia and Sawadee Ka to Thailand.
Beans Around The World 