Singapore and Malaysia served as a good introduction so far for Asia. Singapore is a huge spectacularly clean and modern city with lavish air conditioned malls all over the place. Even on the shuttle from the airport to my hostel it made an impact after coming from a rather autumnal Australia. Firstly the humidity, even arriving at 11pm it was almost suffocating in the humidity, especially in the jeans I was wearing! Then you have the sky scrappers, so many and so many more being built all the time, and many are rather oddly shapped, including one which has a building that looked like a boat spanning the top of 3 skyscrapers!
After the initial fascination of viewing the place at night and getting settled into my hostel, I in truth started to find Singapore a little bit boring. Mainly because I didn’t really meet anyone in the hostel and I was wandering around myself. On my first full day I checked out the Singapore Museum, which didn’t really have anything at all in it, and I paid $10 to go into some exhibit it had with odd pieces from various people. It wasn’t that interesting in truth with most of it a little too abstract for me. I braved the humidity and wandered around some of the grand prix track which runs through the streets of Singapore every September. The start straight and pit building is all that remains permanently aside from the odd curb on the side of the pavement here and there. On my second day I checked out Sentosa Island, which it’s slogan proclaims is Asia’s favourite playground. It wasn’t all that much cop in my opinion, but then I didn’t go into the Universal Studios. I went on the luge they had there which had many Asian people pottering down rather slowly who I had to dodge as I went down at breakneck speed! However it was only 600m long and was done in a minute or so, and even with 3 turns on the pass it wasn’t all that much of a thrill. The aquarium area was my next stop which was mobbed out with school kids looking at all these fish in typically small enclosures as you get. They had a dolphin show here too which was a little more impressive, with the dolphins playing with footballs, balancing basketballs and waving at the crowd amongst their array of tricks.
Despite being in the middle of a busy and quite polluted city I’d managed to pick up a bunch of bug bites and on my final full day took a couple of tablets to stop the itching. They knocked me out dead and I spent most of the day in bed, only getting up for an hour or so here and there! An afternoon siesta had become a bit of a habit already in this heat, but this was a little more extreme than that! I eventually woke up a little and headed out to go and find the venue for a Gruff Rhys (lead singer from Super Furry Animals) gig which was on Orchard Road. This road is lined with huge malls and designer branded shops from all over the world as well as huge electronic screens and billboards. However at one junction they had only underpasses and you weren’t meant to cross the road. The underpasses lead into a mall and subway station and I lost my orientation completely. I wasn’t sure if I’d come out on the correct corner of the street or not or if I was heading the right way to try and find the venue for the gig… but well I did eventually! After being boring and getting Fish and Chips for dinner from an Irish pub that was around the corner I headed to the venue. I was in shorts and a shirt, and I felt horrendously under dressed when I arrived! This was a mega posh venue, with little tables and no standing area. An odd place for a gig as far as I’m concerned, but not hugely surprised that’s how they are in Singapore! The gig was pretty ace though, whilst lacking atmosphere slightly with only maybe a hundred people there rather spread out. There was quite a lot of British people, and in particular clearly a few Welsh who were quite vocal in their support! Gruff made full use of various gadgets and devices to make as much noise as possible, with drum tracks added via vinyl at times, and beats by a little ticking pendulum stuck infront of a microphone! Then he got out a bunch of feedback devices to loop back the music over and over itself and then played the air drums too, which added an electric drum! It was all rather cool with some Welsh humour and good use of huge word cards thrown in too. Must admit I haven’t been to 3 more different gigs in 3 weeks in the past as I’ve managed with Frank Turner, Bob Dylan and Gruff Rhys. Although I should be able to top that when I head off to a festival this summer.
I was pretty poor with food whilst I was in Singapore, having way too much fast food and western food. I must admit I’m pretty bad at trying new things out when left to my own devices, but once I met a few people in Malaysia I managed to make up for this and try a bunch of different things. I’m not really too sure what to make of Singapore. I didn’t really like it all that much in truth. It’s this city which exists in little air-conditioned blocks for most of the time. There’s all these shopping malls and it’s all extra modern. But it seemed to lack character. At least the places I went too and admittedly I didn’t really go out and explore that much, with the heat taking such a toll on myself.
I was looking forward to heading upto Malaysia anyway, and I took a bus upto Melacca the morning after the Gruff Rhys gig. I wasn’t too sure what to expect from the bus, but it turned out to be pretty nice. We managed to get through customs quick and easily enough despite having to queue for a while. Once on the Malaysian side the bus made a bunch of rest stops along the way, but never stopped anywhere with an ATM. I was pretty hungry but never able to buy anything to eat! There was only one other western chap on the bus (Moritz) and once we arrived in Melacca he asked if I had any idea where I was going. I had a hostel booked but no idea how to get there. He was happy enough to split a taxi with me to get there. The taxi was pretty useless and just dropped us in Chinatown rather than taking us direct to the hostel. Fortunately Moritz had a lonely planet map which allowed us to figure out how to get to the hostel a little easier! The hostel I’d chosen for Melacca was Ringo’s Foyer. After reading reviews on hostelworld they all mentioned how the guy who runs the place, Howard, is a bit of a character and brings the entire hostel together for meals in the evening. That evening was BBQ night on the roof top of the hostel. It was a pretty good evening and brought maybe 12 or so people together. As is usual beer + roof top hostel means a broad range of interesting discussions and in a few hours I’d got to know a load of people more than I ever managed in Singapore.
I was pretty lousy at doing things the next day. After wandering around Melacca on my own at about 11am looking for something to have for breakfast and failing to find anything I liked other than an ice cream I headed back to the hostel and chilled for a while. I bumped into James who I’d spoken to a bunch the previous night and we went for a Pizza Hut for lunch! It was maybe half the price of the UK costing me £7 for a large pizza and a coke. Then after spending more time chilling out at the hostel I headed over to the otherside of town to find a bar that would show the Football that evening (Arsenal v Man Utd), I went with Moritz, James and a British couple Daniel and Julia and just spent all of late afternoon and evening in the bar. They were doing some odd deals like buy one beer get two free! That said they weren’t so cheap at about $40RM or £8 for 1 beer. They did have (dark) Erdinger and Hoegaarden which was rather pleasant though! Anyway the football turned out to be not so much to write home about! As for Melacca itself, it was an interesting town for a couple of nights, but not hugely amazing. The street markets along Chinatown were quite interesting and there was some historical old buildings and fort remains you could walk around, but suffering from travelling fatigue I didn’t bother checking them out which I feel a bit bad about. Also I was amazed to see Tescos (next to Ikea…) in Melacca! Apparently it’s quite common in Malaysia. Moritz seemed to have a similar itinerary to me throughout Malaysia, so we decided to travel together making things a little easier. He’d just done Vietnam before Singapore with his girlfriend for a month or so before she had to go home. We’ve done the entire of Malaysia together in the end, heading our own separate ways as I headed into Thailand.
Next stop was Kuala Lumpur. We had a bit of difficulty finding the hostel as I hadn’t downloaded all the information I needed to my phone to find the place! It’s taking a bit of getting used to not being able to just go on the internet on my phone and find out where things are which I’ve very much got used to over the past few months. We eventually found the hostel and then headed out to McDonalds for lunch. Since I’ve been in Asia we have to eat every meal out as the hostels don’t have kitchen facilities and not being the biggest fan of having Asian cuisine on a daily basis at least I’ve found myself having far too much fast food. Moritz kinda agreed that he’d had too much as well, so after that we decided no more fast food until we left KL, well aware that the next few places we went after wouldn’t have any either. The humidity was a bit of a killer in KL and before we could really head out anywhere the heavens opened, which meant we just chilled in the hostel for a while. I got talking to a couple of other people as well, and later we all made plans to go out. Peter who was on a brief holiday from Dubai and Jess who was just embarking on the start of yearlong travels in Asia, along with Mario who we’d managed to accidently follow from Melacca and then later followed onto Cameron Highlands without even trying too! Then there was Jay who took a fond liking to Peter who inturn found that a little uncomfortable! Once the rain abided we headed out to a restaurant that the receptionist at the hostel recommended. It was still drizzling with rain and we got pretty wet on our way there, we arrived at this quite posh place wondering if they’d let us in. It turned out to be really nice, we split 4 dishes between us and then all had desert too. It all came to less than £8 each! That said Peter insisted on paying more than his share of the bill making it even cheaper. We finished the night of at a bar nearby after for a drink with each having a different cocktail, I had a Caipirinha bringing back memories of Brazil!
Once again I found myself struggling with rather itchy bites and that night and took a couple of tablets to help. This meant I slept for absolutely ages and then felt really groggy the entire of the next day. We checked out Little India and Chinatown areas of KL. Each with loads of stands selling various goods. The ones in India were generally Indian goods, the ones in Chinatown were imitations of big brands on the whole… or the B-Grades from the factories that make the originals. I took a closer look at the wallets they had the next day with a view to replacing mine which is currently falling apart, but found defects in pretty much all of them and at £9 they’re not particularly cheaper than a non-branded wallet you can buy back home so didn’t see much point. Maybe when I’m in Thailand and about to go home I’ll get one anyway. After wandering the various areas I headed back to the hostel feeling very tired and managed to sleep on and off for most of the afternoon.
That evening we took another recommendation from the hostel for dinner. This time it took us through the Mall area of KL. Here there are many different super malls as big as the Trafford Centre but built up rather than out within a few hundred meters of each other. Just why there are so many so close I’m not sure, especially as each place seemed to have the same shops as the next on the whole! The restaurant we were recommended was alright, but in truth I didn’t really like much of the meals we ordered. They were all once again things I’d never tried though, so it’s good to try new things, but I think I’d have been happy with just the Chicken Curry to myself rather than trying so many things. Attempts to go to the Cinema after that were aborted by our inability to find a movie that looked interesting. The Cinemas here seem to have a mixture of Asian and Hollywood current action movies and they’re all in a variety of languages/subtitles too. Instead we checked out another mall on the way back which actually had a theme park inside including a rollercoaster!
By the next morning most of the other people we knew were leaving. Jess headed upto the Cameron Highlands which was our next stop, we’d catch up there and Peter was heading on home that day. The Batu Caves was our main destination for our final day in KL. These pretty big caves are rather touristy though, even though there is no entry fee. There’s a huge statue next to them, then quite a lot of steps up to the caves which you walk through and then into a sinkhole. There was also lots of monkeys around scavenging off the scraps of food people left lying around or didn’t hold onto tight enough! We head lunch in the mall beneath the Petronas Towers and took a few pictures of the skyscraper afterwards. That evening we headed to the ‘City Tower’, which is a telecoms tower which you can go up for views of the city. This is cheaper and easier to get tickets for than the Petronas Towers. It included tickets to go on an F1 Simulator. Which turned out to be F1 Championship 2002 for the PC setup on the easiest possible setting with the brakes not even really required. Which meant it kept up the record of every Racing Simulator at a venue I’ve tried not being setup correctly at all! We went up the tower and waited for the sun to go down and for it to go dark. This is generally the best time to go up these places as you get day pics and night pics as well as a sunset. Although I’ve yet to see the sunset in Malaysia due to rain clouds and pollution you never see it go down. We managed to find a steakhouse for dinner which was very good, made half so by a really nice garlic butter. I did a little last minute shopping before heading back. The destination for tomorrow was the Cameron Highlands and the next few stops after that were out in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to buy some hiking trousers with zip of parts to make them into the shorts. With the amount of bugs around you actually want to wear pants and a long sleeved shirt in the Jungle despite the crazy heat and humidity! That said I couldn’t find any and had to settle for some khaki pants I found in, erm Debenhams!
The bus we took to the Cameron Highlands followed the highway for a while before taking a tight twisty road up the mountains which often looking far too narrow for this big bus. However we managed to make it there in one piece. The small town we were staying at is at an elevation of around 1400m, and the climate was very noticeably cooler. I liked that a lot! We stayed at Fathers Guesthouse which was a nice little place.
We took a day trip around the Cameron Highlands which was pretty cool if a little bit long and tiring. There was maybe 15 or so people on the trip and we were split into 4x4s that could carry about 8 people. The headspace was really limited in the back and I managed to take the front seat for most of the trip. We drove through a tea plantation which was rather picturesquely situated along the rolling hills on the way to the top of the mountain peak we were heading up. The views weren’t all that great from the top, despite there being a tower we could go up to get a better vantage point. The amount of haze and pollution was once again rather noticeable in the distance. We had a short walk through some of the jungle nearby and the guide explained a bunch of the plants around the area which can be used for medicinal purposes and allow the natives of Malaysia to live off the land. There’s only around a few thousand of them left. The tea factory for the plantation we saw previously was our next stop. After feeling rather sleepy on the bus drive down the rather strong smell of tea in the factory really woke me up! I enjoyed a really good cup of tea as well as a rather good scone with jam and cream after the tour in the café. The tour motored onto a Butterfly Sanctuary next. They had more than just Butterflies here though with various bugs, reptiles, snakes and more on display in different areas. These made for some pretty cool pictures!
After a lunch stop we were taken to pretty much every type of possible thing to see here including a local market, a rose garden, a museum, a temple and finally a Strawberry Farm. The farm had a café where you could buy pretty much any food combination you could possibly want with Strawberries! I had a waffle with ice cream and strawberries which was really good, even if a little much more than I really needed to eat! I really enjoyed the Cameron Highlands, the weather was much more manageable than everywhere else I’ve been to in Asia so far, and a very well put on tour if just a little bit too much crammed in to the time. The hostel was nice and chilled out which really tied it all in very well.
Taman Negara is a 160 million year old jungle/rainforest in the heart of the Malaysian peninsular. I spent a couple of nights here in the stifling humidity and heat. It turned out that the climate was just too much for myself and Moritz to take and whilst there are many treks around here a couple of kilometres to the canopy walk was enough for the two of us. We did also take a night safari on our first evening also with Jess who arrived a night before us who we’d meet up with again at the Pehrentian Islands. We managed to see a bunch of rather unimpressive birds, a python at quite a distance and a few what are best described as Leopard Cats, i.e. cats that have Leopard spots. We tried to arrange to leave earlier looking at taking the night train and other options, but they just didn’t pan out, and in the end I was happy to watch the Grand Prix and the Football at bars around the place.
I finished up my time in Malaysia in the Perhentian Islands. I had initially intended to goto Penang on my way upto Thailand, but after arriving at the Perhentian Islands I knew I wanted to stay for a while. Moving every couple of days gets tiring and this seemed a decent place to chill. The islands weren’t quite upto the standard and as clean as those in Fiji. There was quite a bit of litter when you looked around behind buildings etc and generally not quite as well maintained as it could be, but it was still very nice. However it was very easy to waste time here, lazy sleep ins during the morning, chilling out in the water or beaches. I’m struggling to remember what exactly we did. There was some kayaking and checking out the larger island which didn’t actually seem as interesting as the one we were staying on. On ours there were more cafes and little shops, so you didn’t have to eat at the same place all the time. Rob who I’d met at Fraser Island and Brisbane also met up with here for the last two nights. He was heading up the same way as me and caught up after being a few days behind. We decided to travel together through Thailand. On Friday morning Moritz and Jess went their separate ways from us and we headed upto Thailand not really sure where we’d end up that night. But that’s for the next entry.
