Jaws!

Time waits for no man, and our holiday rolls on. We boarded the packed fast “ferry” early in the morning, and wondered what the driver was thinking as he loaded more and more passengers on before turning for the main land. The boat had a definite list to one side, which normally wouldn’t have bothered me apart from the fact my bag was perched at the back, ripe for dropping into the blue abyss. Half an hour of thoughts about life with out the contents of that bag followed (it’d actually be not so bad travelling light!) before we docked at Kuala Besut, and literally had no firm plans beyond the next minute. The rough plan was to get to another island, and an hour in a share taxi with the surliest taxi driver ever got us to the next big town so that we could book our passage to Redang Island. By that afternoon we were back at the beach, very similar to the Perentian Islands, just a tad more developed (but that does mean nicer rooms…) We got back to snorkelling around again, except this time through the misty water came the definite outline of a shark! Good job it was only about 18 inches long…

It’s a hard life…

Today was all about chilling out on the beach. Long beach may not actually be that long and it may not be the most deserted beach but it is still a pretty perfect place to spend the day. So we found ourselves a spot under an umbrella, lathered on the sun-cream and just soaked up the sun, read, soaked up the sun some more and soaked ourselves in the sea every now and then to cool off. Occasionally we moved ourselves to go and satiate our tummies somewhere (found a new favourite drink; fruit shakes, basically just ice blended with fruit but so yum, especially in this heat).
And of course we indulged in a bit of our new favourite beach hobby; snorkelling. The water here is a perfect clear turquouise and there are two excellent snorkelling spots on this beach, one at each end. There is such a huge variety of pretty, muti-coloured fish to see as well as the interesting coral that you can easily spend ages just swimming around and marvelling at it all (unfortunately, the resulting snorkel face is not such a good look!).
Si helped me to find a Nemo so I was happy and of course he’s got his new favourite hobby; underwater photography so he’s happy. All in all, everyone’s happy and it was a pretty perfect day (just in case you are not jealous enough; we enjoyed beer / cocktails on the beach after sun-down…. Mmm 🙂

Nemo, found.

The snorkelling gear purchased, and pretty much unused since the east coast of Australia is finally coming into it’s own off the beaches of the Perentian Islands. Combine that with the underwater casing for my camera means you’re going to have to put up with a few days of snorkelling photos.
The day started exploring Long Beach where our hostel is, we contemplated walking through to the next bay, but seeing as we couldn’t actually find the path, we hired a water taxi (for £3!) to take us. D’Lagoon has only one small beach and a small hostel nestled on it, and the occupants stared at us as we arrived, as though we’d interrupted their private beach. Our stay didn’t last long though, as we arrived a storm brewed up, the wind making snorkelling difficult. I did have enough time to find Nemo though, hiding away in the anemone. Fortunately as the storm settled down, a boat passed and gave us a lift back to Long Beach, just before the rain settled in for the rest of the day, there is a reason we’ve been carrying heavy reading books around after all!

Perentian Islands

It’s been a non-stop day of moving; at the crack of dawn we were in a bus out of the jungle (turns out that 2 hour boat ride wasn’t completely necessary), then into mini buses weaving in and out of traffic to the ferry terminal. At times like these it’s easy to miss the freedom of a campervan or car, but looking at the way the Malaysians drive, I think I’ll pass.
After the mini buses came the high speed “ferry” to the islands, which was really a oversized dingy, and we bounced/jolted over the waves to the tropical paradise island that is Perentian. The whole setup was very similar to Fiji, including the boat transfer to the beach and me worrying about bags going overboard. Leaving Caroline to bagsit, I wandered looking for a nice little chalet, skipped on the Guantanamo Bay-esque one (it was less than a tenner though…) and settled for the one with aircon, balcony and 70’s pink sheets. Sitting on the beach eating our dinner and having a beer, you realise all those hours on the move are worth it!

Getting wet, very wet

Our full day in the jungle started with a trip back in one of those little narrow shanty boats up river to a canopy walkway, one of the longest in the world. The short walk up the hill to the start had us rather warm, even with regular stops. The canopy walk, or more accurately the rope bridge strapped to nearby trees didn’t look particularily safe, although there was some reassurance by the fact some of it was closed for it’s regular replacement. So off we set, swinging from side to side on Caroline’s favourite type of bridge, looking down from heights of up to 40 metres. After that was the 40 minute hike up to the top of the hill, for views over some other hills. Suffice it to say we were warm, and I haven’t sweated that much, ever.
The boat trip up the rapids had told us to prepare for getting wet, but for some reason it didn’t quite twig that I shouldn’t wear shorts and a t-shirt. At least I had my camera in it’s fancy new underwater housing to get this shot. Three rapids, and several complete soakings later, and just as the little man at the back with the bucket for bailing the water out got tired, we made it to the natives village. To be fair they seemed to look like they lived in the straw huts, but the guy demonstrating fire starting and blowing darts was wearing a Quiksilver baseball cap and t-shirt… That soaking had washed off our mozzie repellant, so after a few minutes in that village we were literally itching to get back in the boat and down those rapids.

Into the Jungle

A 4 hour bus ride from Kuala Lumpur dropped us off at Kuala Tembeling, a couple of shops and a jetty from where we caught a boat up the river to Taman Negara, Malaysia’s National Park and the oldest rainforrest in the world. The wooden boats that took us up tje river were long and narrow, just enough to fit two people across, and with a whole load of luggage weighing down the front. The river itself was a murky chocolate milkshake colour, and flowed quite rapidly, which made the boat trip that little bit more hair-raising. We didn’t see much for the two and a half hour journey, a few kingfisher type birds and some water buffalo wallowing in the river as we passed. Rounding the final corner, the floating restaurants of Kuala Tahan came into view, and after a walk through the village on a mud track, we made it to the aircon comfort of our “chalet”. It sounds fancy, and it wasn’t too bad, but the big gaps around the doors had me a bit concerned about how easily the mozzies could get in. The village isn’t actually as remote as the boat journey suggests, there is a shop, main road, electricity, and even phone reception!
That night after dinner, we ventured into the jungle where our guide Zani pointed out the creatures, such as hunting spiders, black scorpions, moths, sloe monkeys, stick insects and deer at a watering hole. The jungle is one place I’m not sure about being in when it’s pitch black, so much noise and wildlife, they have tigers in there too!

Rain…

Considering that it’s meant to be the wet season around these parts, we’ve been doing quite well, although most people you talk to seem to say it’s the dry season. Either way, today was meant to be a visit to the Blue Mosque, one of the largest in Asia, and from the photos it looks a little like the Taj Mahal. However, as we stepped off the train, the heavens opened. We tried walking in the rain but gave up, mosques are much nicer from the outside, so we headed back to KL to wander around some more markets. Unusual food for the day was courtesy of a chinese restaurant that cooks your meal before your eyes, now that is fresh! Seeing as it’s our last day in KL, here’s a photo of the Petronas Towers we didn’t manage to get up…

The Batu Caves

We have seen so many caves on this trip already that we almost gave the Batu caves, on the outskirts of town, a miss. Good job we didn’t though, nevermind stalagtites and stalagmites, these caves have something completely different to offer. They have become a Hindu shrine and as we drew close in the taxi we could see the huge gold Hindu statue reaching up into the sky.
To get to the main Cathedral cave you have to climb 272 steps which in this heat is quite a climb but it’s ok as there are several well-fed monkeys hanging around the steps to entertain you on the way. At the top and in the cave it is hard to notice any cave like features among the Hindu shrines and statues but once again it is the monkeys that steal the show.
Unfortunately I don’t know enough about the Hindu religion (I know I should being a teacher!) but the myriad of colourful and interesting statues of the many gods certainly do inspire me to want to learn more. Like the huge green monkey/tiger/human god statue. Not surprisingly Si was very interested in the statue of the half cow, half topless woman god.
The next cave was a Hindu art gallery and the best word to describe that would be unnatural! There was not much regard shown here for the ancient cave formations since they were painted in bright rainbow colours which complemented the colourful Hindu art work beautifully! Through the back of the cave we were surprised to find an almost impromptu reptile zoo with snakes, turtles and mini crocodiles. We weren’t really sure about the environmental / conservation policies here, especially since outside there were a couple of monkeys being kept in a cage whilst being taunted by one of the free monkeys leaping about on top of the cage!

Hopping around KL

Once again our day began with a visit to the Petronas Towers in an attempt to get up to the skybridge. But despite us being much earlier today (well it was before ten am!) we were still too late to get a ticket (turns out there are only one thousand given out each day and people start queueing at eight am! Not sure we are THAT keen!)
We may have mentioned that it is hot here but just to paint a picture, it is so hot that merely walking down the street and around the corner from one sight to the next leaves you hot, sweaty and exhausted. The only solution was to do the lazy touristy thing and jump on the KL Hop on Hop off bus. It probably took a lot longer than walking by the time the bus navigated the congested traffic of KL but the air conditioned comfort made it so worth it.
We hopped off at many sights from Freedom square (with KL’s answer to Big Ben), parliament house, the National Palace (reminiscent of Buckingham Palace where you peer in the gate but the most interesting thing to look at are the armed guards on horse back!) a colourful Hindu temple, the National Mosque (impressively simple inside but with the capacity to accomodate 15,000 praying muslims at any one sitting. Wow.) And lastly Central market where we practised our bartering and bought some more things we shouldn’t have.

Kuala Lumpur

Another day, another city to explore. Since the Petronas Towers is probably the most famous building in Kuala Lumpur we decided to make it our first port of call. Unfortunately our late night last night and our buffet breakfast with its many tempting offerings (we passed on the curry – not for breakfast!) meant that we were too late to get one of the free tickets up to the skybridge. So for today we had to make do with amusing ourselves in the tat, I mean tourist shop (selling every conceivable souvenir emblazoned with the towers or in the shape of the towers) and in the huge shopping mall at the base of the towers. I know it sounds like we spent a lot of our time at the moment in shopping malls but don’t worry we are not enjoying ourselves and spending lots of money on fine clothes, mainly we are just enjoying the air conditioned comfort!
We were in the mood for going up a high building today so we headed towards the KL Skytower, which is the fourth tallest communications tower in the world. We didn’t think 100 extra metres (compared to the Auckland tower) would make much difference but when we got up there it really did. It was high and everything down below looked like little dots. Even Si wasn’t tempted to do anything crazy like jump off from this height. Which was just as well since the ‘adrenalin’ entertainment in the form of a flying fox (only from the base of the tower which is at the top of a small hill) looked pretty tame. We weren’t quite sure what all the screaming was about, we could only conclude that these people obviously haven’t been to New Zealand.
As we left the tower we saw a couple of monkeys hanging around the sign that read ‘Don’t feed the monkeys’ (ah, if only they could read!). The sight of Malaysia’s answer to the kangeroo tempted us into the city rainforest walk to see if we could see anymore. Sadly the monkeys remained elusive, however we did encounter some wildlife, in the form of our arch enemies the mosquitos (is there no escape?)
On our way home we called into the Malaysia Tourist Centre and ended up trying lots of exotic Malaysian fruits, some nice, like the hairy mangosteen, some not so nice, like the rotten feet smelling durians, that are also banned from many public places, including our hotel!