Matt and Kylie

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..?

Mersing Photo’s

Returning from Tioman Island, all seven of us managed to squeeze into two hotel rooms for the night.  Upon realising that our only real travel option was to cross back over to the West Coast to Kuala Lumpur (a mere two hours North of Malacca), Aux, Lissa, Sam, Ross and Mok left in the early morning after one night, planning onward travel immediately from KL.  Matt and I however, decided to stay an extra night and head to KL a day later as we were in no hurry to get there, and planned on staying for a while to have a look around.

Palau Tioman

It took six hours on a bus to get from Melacca (on the West Coast) to Mersing (on the East Coast), a wee Port Town that people only really go to to get to Tioman Island.  Due to the bus driver’s (wannabe rally driver?) erm, unique take on swerving round other traffic and corners, I wasn’t the only one feeling queasy by the end.  Anyway, we had time for a quick bite to eat at a gorgeous bistro run by a Swiss Chef and his wife with a divine menu before boarding the ferry.

The seven of us decided to stay at ABC (Air Batang) beach, caught an eighty minute ferry and arrived on the jetty of the primitive, but picturesque Island.  As it turns out, finding accommodation with enough room to house seven people in such a small place is rather unrealistic, so  Matt and I took a small fan bungalow with a private bathroom, veranda and giant mosquito net guarding the bed (and in turn blocking the fan wind) at one place, while Aux, Lissa and Sam shared another bungalow next to Mok and Ross at another guesthouse next door.  At 50 MYR (About NZD $25) we were pretty happy.

We spent three nights out on the intensely hot Island; it was duty free (meaning cheap beer – happy hour = 3 beers for about NZD$5) which kept everyone pretty happy.  Being a Muslim country, alcohol is generally not served in Muslim restaurants, and when it is served in for example Chinese Restaurants, it is pretty expensive.  Matt’s first night on the cheap booze ended in pure Matt style… I headed for bed at about midnight and was awoken by him bashing on the cabin door, looking mournful and helpless claiming he had stubbed his toe (quite badly) clambering over rocks on the beach in the dark.  We sorted that out fine, then the next night when he was in charge of dressing it, he appeared after dinner with it wrapped in silver duct tape.  Apparently a good way to keep sand out and the plaster on.  Note to self:  Do not leave Matt in charge of First Aid.

Our evenings were spent hanging out at a bar (shack on the beach surrounded by plastic chairs and hammocks).  We ate at restaurants over looking the sea and cantilevering over the sea.  One evening I was watching a couple of guys shimmying up a coconut tree to retrieve the goods for a minute, then turned around to take some photographs of the sunset over the sea.  The guy up the tree grabbed an English-speaking guy on a nearby building site and bought him over to me.  He told me that the coconut guy had got me a coconut.  With that coconut guy grinned, held out the coconut to me then scampered back off to get on with the job.  He had cut me a coconut off the tree, cut off the bottom (so I could put it down on a table) and cut off the top so I could drink it.  Made my day!  And was delicious!  I proudly marched it back to the bar where the bar staff gave me a straw and enjoyed it for the rest of the night.

We had been told to watch out for Monitor Lizard, apparently they are quite impressive.  Dear god.  They seriously, looked one generation away from being crocodiles.  Mok went out wondering one day and saw one that he swore was bigger than him, and at least 2m long(!)  We nicknamed him Jurassic, and went back to the little dam a couple of times to try and see him; we think we heard him thumping around in the scrub, but he turned out to be a bit of a shy fella. The funny thing was though, they seemed scared of people; if they were on the path and saw you coming, they would scamper off into the bushes.

The lizards I could quite happily deal with, it was the snakes that gave me the heebie jeebies.  We were having breakfast one day when Ross talked to the owner and produced a photo of a python and a cobra having a scrap on the beach.  Turns out the cobra was trying to bite the python who was immune to the venom.  After a while, tired of being bitten, they python wraps itself around the bigger cobra and starts to squeeze it. 

Cobra: 0.  Python: 1.  Kylie: early stages of hyperventilation. 

They tried to reassure me that this was ‘python country now,’ and the locals told me that pythons would, for the most part, leave you alone.  They then followed that up with ‘but be careful if you do see a cobra, they are very aggressive.’  Neat.  We found a couple of pythons in some trees above where Jurassic lived.  It became a ritual to go and see everyday if they had moved and where to.  You know, just to keep tabs and make sure they weren’t headed towards our bungalow.  Turns out I have a snake phobia. 

When the time to leave came, we were told by the locals that the boat would leave at 12 so we arrived a wee bit early just in case.  Nobody said these things were prompt, and it finally arrived at 2.30. In the meantime, Matt and Aux had time for a quick dip in the sea, jumping off the jetty and into the water for a quick snorkel.  The salt water did Matt’s stubbed toe the world of good and it healed up in the next few days.  We had a brilliant time with friends in a wee piece of paradise.

And thanks to Aux for the brilliant spider photo and the first two lizard photo’s below!

Malacca…

We took a four hour train from Singapore up to Malacca, a historical port city on the West Coast.  We are still a little uncertain about our passport status… we were never stamped into Malaysia, however our arrival cards (that we still retain) are stamped, we’ll see how that pans out with immigration when we try to leave.  We’re pretty sure that we are allowed to stay in Malaysia for three months anyway.

We arrived in Tampin, the closest train station (38km North) to Malacca and hopped in an awaiting taxi.  The train guards had arranged for an English speaking taxi driver to pick us up, who kept us entertained the whole journey, pointing out rubber trees, local car brands, housing prices and fruit trees with great enthusiasm and sweeping hand gestures.  Arriving in the evening, we searched rather fruitlessly for a clean, cheap-ish guesthouse to settle in, instead settling for an expensive-ish clean guesthouse for the first night, hoping to move to something cheaper in the morning.  The owner was good though, pointing us in the right direction for dinner and breakfast.

The following day, we met up with some friends from Wellington; Lissa, Aux, Ross and Mok who spent the previous couple of months touring through Thailand and Malaysia.  Now our group is mob-sized, we are entertainment for the locals!  We moved into their guesthouse, a cheaper place with a nifty roof garden and set off exploring the town. 

One of the first things to notice were the strange manner of which the buildings are painted.  As it turns out, the heritage protected buildings are all painted the same colour – a reddish brown tint, making them all seem rather uniformed.  At night the place lit up, reminding us a wee bit of Hoi An, Vietnam.  We wandered around and took in the sites – historic Churches dating back to the 1500’s, malls, and cyclo’s to boot.  The Cyclo’s were impressive at both during the day; elaborately decorated with Mercedes symbols, wind wands and adorned with flowers, and at night, when there fairy lights would turn on and they would glitter and sparkle their way through the streets.  The blaring music from their ‘built in’ sound system however, blared both day and night, at decibels that even impressed Matt(!)

While in Malacca we sampled the glorious satay sticks (cooked on a BBQ hawker stand while you wait), scuttled through the markets, visited a 17th century Dutch graveyard, explored a (genuine!) Fort, visited a Kite Museum (and noted the NZ shout out), gawped at the Museum of disfiguring in the name of beauty, patted (and Matt held) a rather large, reasonably friendly-looking lizard (i.e. it wasn’t hissing and biting), sweated it out (literally melted?) in the searing 30 degrees plus heat and played many a-card game on the roof.  Glorious!

On one of our last days, as a group (along with Darren, an Irish backpacker we picked up from our hostel), we decided to hire bicycles and go and see the outskirts.  A sound plan.  So we tottled off, found some bikes and set off to the beyond.  We arrived back at the guest house sweaty little heaps where the guesthouse owner/bike renter took great delight in informing us that ‘It was 38 degrees outside.  Very hot.  Not like New Zealand hey?’  The ride was good though, we went out to a Mosque, over a large bridge and out to a sandy path next to the beach.  For future reference, sand is hideous to cycle on, and one should always put sun block on the backs of one’s hands to avoid them getting seriously burnt(!)

After a few days in Malacca it was time to move on:  We decided we were in need of some Island relaxation… next stop, Tioman Island.