Matt and Kylie

On to Penang!

After returning from the Perhentians and back to Kota Bharu for a couple of days, we boarded an 8 hour luxury bus (this thing had lazy boys as seats!) to take us to Penang.  On the way we found ourselves a Ramly Burger…!

Perhentian Islands

Pulau Perhentian Kecil and Pulau Perhentian Besar are the two islands that make up the Perhentian Islands.  We had our trusty guesthouse sort us out a bargain NZ$20 taxi to take us South to Kuala Besut, the port town that leads to the Islands.  Here we boarded a speed boat for the mad 40 minute trip to Palau Kecil, where we arrived at Long Beach, a large stretch of golden silt sand and crystal clear water dotted with bars, restaurants, boats and umbrellas, not unlike Sihanoukville in Cambodia.

After transferring from the speed boat to a smaller taxi boat, we waded our way up to the beach in intense searing heat in search of a guest house.  We found ourselves a fan bungalow with a deck and a view of the beach and settled in.  We spent four nights on the Island and found the heat almost unbearable to sleep in.  Like most accommodation on the Island, we only had power late afternoon – mid morning, and the water in our cold water shower was so hot in the afternoon that we had to let it run for five minutes before we could stand under it.  Soon enough we discovered a resident in our bungalow walls – a rather large lizard had found itself a home, entertaining for us when it we would hear it scrambling and sliding down the walls when it slipped!  There really isn’t a lot to do on the island apart from the beach and snorkeling, so between the two of us we are slowly reading our way through the James Patterson and Jodi Picoult series’.

We booked ourselves in on a day long snorkeling trip, where we were ‘guaranteed to see sea turtles and sharks’ and headed out to the open sea.  I asked about the possibility of being nibbled on by the sharks but was assured by the guide that they (I kid you not) were ‘vegetarian.’  This did absolutely nothing to make me feel at ease.  The Wikipedia article on black and white tipped reef sharks however, did.

First stop was the middle of the sea where our boat driver searched us out some sea turtles, and we snorkeled with them.  They were huge, with shells about 1m diameter, they were scrounging algae off the barren sea floor (the water was about 10m deep).  They were amazing to see in the wild.  Matt swam down quite deep to touch one of their shells which were quite slimy, and they had a couple of fish swimming with them that feed of the algae on their shells.  It turns out that Sea Turtles are one of the only creatures in the world immune to jelly fish stings, and use this wee gem to their full advantage; they are number one predator of jelly fish.  A few jelly fish incurred blisters later, we decided that maybe we had had enough, but it was definitely worth it!

Next up was a stop at Coral Garden then onto Shark Point, where we were surrounded by about 100 other tourists out on snorkeling trips.  Our guide took us on a 20 minute swim around the reef where depths varied between 1-20m deep.  We swam with sharks up to about 1.2m – pretty neat experience.  They weren’t nearly as curious as what I though they would be, instead they were kind of skittish.  We managed to see lion fish (eek!) as well which was neat, although we had to be pretty careful with what we did with our feet!

Next up was a coral reef where we saw parrot fish, clown fish, swordfish and loads and loads of tropical fish.  I’m still convinced that this is where they filmed Finding Nemo – we saw the whole cast!

Then it was onto a beach where we saw a turtle-egg-laying conservation project.  It was a fantastic day and an absolute steal at NZD$20 each(!)

Now, back to relaxing at the beach…

Kota Bharu

After a first class(!) overnight train (we had our own air con, fan and TV in our own wee cabin – Ooo!) we reached Kota Bharu, ‘The Islamic City,’ in on the East Coast of Malaysia, very close to the Thailand border.  Kota Bharu is a ‘hub’ city, and travelers mainly come here to transfer to the Perhentian Islands.

We found ourselves a friendly guest house with a Pak n’ Save bag stuck on the foyer wall proclaiming ‘Everything we do, we do to save your money’ which was a nice touch, and had a look round town for a few days.  Matt managed to reach a new level of amazing-ness when he managed to knock out his faux front tooth ( http://mattandkylie.com/2008/10/21/yaaaarrrggghhh/ ) licking an icecream. Yep.  A quick ring to insurance to have a dentist recommended and he was back to his toothy self!

Asian Dentistry and Medical services:11  Matt: 0.

Putra Jaya

With only three of us left Matt, Sam and I) decided to head out to Putra Jaya for the day, to have a look at Malaysia’s administation capital.  Puta Jaya (20km south of KL) covers 4932 hectares of former ruber and palm-oil plantation, and was designed as a city capable of supporting 500,000 people, and aimed at getting the adminstration out of Kuala Lumpur.  We took the monorail out to the town which was a laugh – their were people squished up against the windows like cartoons – there faces smearing on the glass.

Putra Jaya was a strange place, soul less and empty, and as everything was purpose built, it all looked a little too perfect and a little eerie – it is kind of how we envisioned Dubai to be.  It is famous for its buildings – no two of the government ministries are built in the same fashion and there are nine bridges, all in different styles mimicking foreign bridges.

While we were there we saw a fish spa, similar to what we had a go at in China.  I jumped at the chance to have my feet gnawed at by the local fish, but strangely Matt passed up the chance to get his crusty toes nibbled at… something about being to ticklish… perhaps a good thing, the fish were still all alive when we left!

Kuala Lumpur

It took seven hours on a bus to get from Mersing to Kuala Lumpur, where we saw glimpses of the Petronas Towers as we arrived to a raging thunder and lightning storm.  We had booked ourselves into a guesthouse in the Golden Triangle for the first three nights, which turned out to be a tiny, windowless, expensive pit of a place.  The room was literally the size of a queen bed (the ‘bed’ was a mattress on a wooden platform) with space to open the door.  We figured that we would make do for the three nights and then move on.  Later we became bed bug slayers when we discovered that the room was  infested.  We won.  Still, it at least we didn’t have the ‘shared air conditioning’ system that Aux and Lissa had – the wall segregating their room from the next had a hole cut out of it to allow for the air con unit to be shared by both rooms.  Interesting.

At the first chance, we changed guest houses and found ourselves a nice wee pad down the road with friendly owners and set out to explore the city.  We found that whoever designed the footpaths in KL detested pedestrians, but the malls were something else.  One mall, Times Square, featured a 50 lane bowling alley (we managed to squeeze in a couple of games), huge 10×10m monopoly and snakes and ladders boards, an IMAX movie theatre, normal movie theatre and an indoor amusement park complete with roller coaster, as you do.

We headed towards the (very anticipated) 451.9m, 88 story Petronas Towers where we lined up for 40 minutes to get tickets to the skybridge on the 41st floor.  The bridge stands 170m above the ground and they give away 1400 free tickets every day, first come first served.  All the information pointed to us being there as early as possible, so we along with a thousand odd others were there bright and early at 8am to do the tourist thing.  By the time we made it to the front of the queue, we had the choice of any time after 2pm – we picked 6pm (hoping to see a bit of dusk light action) and went to check out the Petronas educational centre and the Mall at the bottom of the towers where there was a leggo exhibition on, modeling leggo versions of the Petronas Towers, Rome’s Colosseum and India’s Taj Mahal.  We mozied past the ticket queue at 10am… turns out there was no need to be up at 6.30am in search of tickets…!

Once we had seen the promotional video, and had been segregated into groups, we made it to the skybridge via the super-speedy power lift, our ears popping all the way up.  Amazingly, even with 1400 visitors a day, they don’t clean the windows, but we managed to click off a few photos none the less(!)

After a couple of days, we met back up with Sam, Mok, Aux, Lissa and Ross, saw a couple of movies (depending on how new the movie is, at NZ$3-$5, it’s a bargain!), lost Matt in the mall (maybe someone needs to ask for directions when he decided he knows the way and tottles off on his own, becoming stranded on the 13th floor on their own while his 6 friends are looking at him from the 8th?) and hung out on the roof of their back packers.

As for food, we made ourselves quite at home at a local Indian place, Lebanese restaurant, Japanese restaurant and the food carts.  We discovered Rambly Burger, a precision outfit where they cooked to order.  The dude here had class – he would take a fresh meat pattie (chicken or beef), grill it on his clean grill, chop it in half length ways, grill the insides, add salt, pepper and soy sauce, crack open an egg and splay it out to fry it, whack a piece of cheese in the centre of the paddy and fold the whole paddy-cheese concoction up with egg (and more salt, pepper and soy sauce).  After toasting a couple of bread rolls, he carefully laid out cucumber, tomato, lettuce (more salt, pepper and soy sauce), and dolloped the egg/pattie/cheese lump with ketchup and mayonnaise.  All in front of you, made to order for NZ$2.  The good thing about the street stalls is that you can see the food being made in front of you – sometimes it is more hygienic than restaurant food, or at least so they say!

It was down to Sam, Matt and I once again for a day or two after the others had flown to Cambodia before Sam headed back to New Zealand.  So we made tracks to the National Museum (all about Malaysia’s history, economy, arts and crafts), out to Pura Jaya and up the 421m high Menara KL (a tower Auckland Sky Tower style).  We headed up at 7.30 pm for sunset, an amazing view at 276m and said goodbye to Sam who was returning home the next day.

We decided it was high time we did what we do best.  We picked up and high tailed it to Sunway Lagoon, an amusement park segregated into different parks – a standard roller coaster adventure park, a water park, an action park (think paint ball and crazy flying foxes) and a wildlife park.  We bought tickets to the Adventure and Water parks and headed in.  Our tickets were like watches that we strapped on, that you could pre-load money onto for food and drinks – quite cleaver.  The rides looked a little bit average but actually turned out to be really good fun – lots of water slides (not for the faint hearted!), a couple of roller coasters and a couple of others.  One of the roller coasters I managed to get Matt on three times (record!) it had us literally out of our seats (possibly not a good thing?).  On our final ride, Matt decided to take his camera with him – the ride gave the best view of the park, right before plunging into oblivion the photos came out quite well!

The water park featured a huge wave pool, a real sand beach and a massive bucket contraption that slowly filled up with water till it overflowed to all of us sitting underneath it – uber shower!  The funny thing that we found, was that the water was too warm to be refreshing… the swimming pools were like warm baths(!)  Still, really good fun!  On our way out we spotted the teaser to the animal park – the biggest anaconda snake ever – this thing looked like it could eat a person whole!  We left the park and headed through the Sunway Mall, complete with ice rink, and headed back to the hotel.

Our last few days in KL we spent meandering around the town, made our way to the Hard Rock (a swift 12 minute walk there, an hour roll home.  NB the Hard Rock ‘appetizer’ chicken breast = full size meal, and desert should be shared), meandered through China town, did the Merdeka Square walking tour, battled the fierce heat, saw the National Library and visited the Golden Bull – a monument to the Year of the Ox.

On our final night, we headed out to Krispie Kreme doughnuts as a goodbye toast to KL, where they happened to be giving out freebies to people in the queue(!)  We fare welled our our friendly guest house hosts, said goodbye to the friendly people at the Indian restaurant and made our way to the monorail system – we were in KL so long, it felt like we were saying goodbye to a wee community!

When we booked our train tickets from KL to Kota Bharu, due to the school holidays we could only get first class tickets  even ten days in advance (Oh the horror!)  So we bordered the first class train into our very own bunk-bed cabin with a basin and a TV… oh the high life!  We could get used to travelling first class… wonder if we could convince Qantas to upgrade us..?