Malaysia

First impressions of KL = what a complicated city! I actually got lost before I even got through immigration. When you get out of the plane, you come into the gate into the terminal and there's one sign post pointing in the direction of arrivals, so you follow this down the corridoor and into the departures area, with all the duty-free shops, restaurants, lounges - everything except any sort of direction to tell you where the arrivals are meant to go. So I wondered around here for a bit before finally making it past baggage reclaim, immigration and finally even customs.

Now I had to find my way to the city centre - which is actually MILES AND MILES away. After going up and down in the elevator 5 times, I managed to find the floor which had the most expensive way to the city centre, however I wasn't up for another 20 elevator rides to find out where the bus was, so I got this "KLIA Express" which took me to KL Sentral Station.

I thought this would be easy enough, as the monorail to the area I was staying in "Bukit Bintang" also stopped at KL Sentral station. After walking round this station for about half an hour and asking more people directions than I can remember, one McDonalds and three maps later, I was almost ready to give up and die, when I saw the worlds smallest sign labelled "KL Monorail" pointing outside the building towards some scaffolding. I followed it. On reaching the scaffolding and finding nothing, I decided to walk around it. On the other side of the scaffolding I found a sort of make-shift scaffolding path. I followed this. Then, I saw what looked like a Monorail track above me! So I followed this for about 10 minutes and then found KL Sentral Monorail Station, apparently a different place from KL Sentral Station.

Dear god.

However, KL is not as bad as everyone makes out. I'd been fed lots of horror stories about this city, and expected some horrible grimy place where I would feel really uncomfortable and where I everyone would be really rude. I expected a massive culture shock with fanatical Islamic terrorists roaming the streets. I expected people to try and pull me in an alley way and rape me on every corner. Well actually, I thought KL was quite nice. Everyone was really friendly, things were chilled out, not masses to do, but it's a nice enough place! Maybe it was because I had such low expectations, but I thought KL was quite alright!

That night I went to Chinatown with a girl in my dorm. It felt just like being back in Hong Kong, which I felt kind of strange! We then found a reggae bar. It was a great place, with items on the menu such as "Reggae Rasta Vegetarian Soup", Bob Marley's greatest hits on repeat, and backpackers lying around smoking shisha. I liked it.

The next day, the girl from my dorm - Laura - and I, attempted to go sight seeing. This was just as complicated as my trip from the airport to my hostel. First of all we wanted to go to the Lake Gardens, which according to the map, contained a bird park, butterfly park, deer park, boating area, and many other things to do. So we got the monorail to what appeared to be the nearest stop and tried to follow the map to what looked like just down the street. All the streets had about 5 lanes either side, no crossings, no subways, no overpasses. It took long enough to find out how to cross a street (though we didn't always manage to do this), and after wondering around in the heat for 45 minutes we gave up and got a taxi. We asked the taxi to take us to the Lake Gardens. He took us to the bird park. Contrary to the map and the taxi drivers ideas, this was actually a different place, apparently half an hours walk away. We started to try and walk back to the Lake Gardens but the taxi driver found us and offered to take us there for free, as he was going back that way anyways. He dropped us off a pointed us in the direction to go, so we walked in the entrance he said and found ourself in someones house. Exiting quickly we walked back up the way to where we had seen a sign post. We didn't find that, but we did find the Butterfly Park, so we gave up and went here. While Laura walked around here, I carefully studied the map they had on the wall and planned our route to the Lake Gardens.

Finally we got there! It was some grass, with a building site in the middle and a murky stream running through it. Great.

It took a big lunch and some chocolate milkshake before we felt ready to attempt another destination. This time we studied the map extra, extra carefully and felt we could definitely find the next place. Back in KL Sentral Station again, I'm not even going to begin to describe our attempt to find the train to go to our next destination, except a brief part of it where some men, who quite obviously had no idea what we were trying to find tried to ask what we were looking for so that they could take a photo of themselves talking to us. As they attempted this without our permission and with us already in a very bad mood, they did not get an amicable response.

Eventually we made it to Merdeka Square, which in my opinion is the only real sight seeing attraction in the city of KL itself. There were some very beautiful Islamic looking buildings surrounding in, and also some rather oddly placed Tudor style buildings! It was conveniently close to Central Market, which was inconveniently overpriced.

Our next days activities were much more successful. The only difficulty in getting there was waiting at the wrong bus stop for about 10 minutes, but compared to the past two days this was fine. We ventured out the city to the Batu Caves - a Hindu temple, up lots and lots and lots of stairs, and in a cave. As you approach the temple there are loads of vegetarian restaurants and people trying to sell the obvious foreigners water. Then guarding the temple, is a massive gold statue of one of the gods, behind which y0u have the millions of stairs. A few attempts later, we made it to the top and into the massive, dark, dripping cave. Inside were lots of statues depicting scenes from Hindu legend. It was all very beautiful and entrancing, but i wished that we had a guide or someone who could tell us what it all meant.

At the back of the temple were monkeys, chickens and cats! Just roaming around, probably there not because the place was holy, but because they knew they could get fed by the tourists. There was a boy with a pigeon under his arm. I couldn't tell whether or not he was being cruel, but I found it best to give him a dubious look and then leave.

That evening I discovered Yo Sushi! My new favourite restaurant. Japanese food is undoubtedly the best food in the world. I went here 4 times in my stay in KL!

The next day Laura left for Melaka, where I was due to meet her the following day. I decided to spend my day alone here visiting the Malaysian National History Museum. So I planned on my map exactly how to get there, got off the train, walked to exactly where it should be, but it wasn't there! I walked around the area trying to find it, but it was no where to be seen. Eventually I stumbled across a tourist information office, it was closed, but on the side was the same map as mine....exactly the same except for the museum was missing. It seemed to have completely disappeared from existance. Very odd.

Next I was off to Melaka! A pleasant enough, 2 hour bus ride from KL. Here I went out to dinner with the owner of my hostel, to a very yummy and very cheap Buddhist restaurant. No idea what I was eating, but for just 3 Ringit (about 70p) I got to pile my plate high with delicious food from a vegetarian buffet. I then met up with Laura at her hostel for drinks. Here I played my first game of pool since the age of about seven, and actually it wasn't that hard! Not that I was any good, but it was my first time pretty much! I normally refuse to play on the grounds that I can't. We then went upstairs to play drinking games with the people in her dorm, and that's how I met Pete and Craig. It was a messy night. It took 2 hours for Pete and I to make the 10 minute walk back to my hostel (he kindly agreed to walk me home to make sure I was safe). But it was a pretty interesting walk! We saw a massive golden statue of Mr Universe from Melaka, complete with bulging muscles and holding weights. Even more amusing was the fire station, with the word "BOMB" written in 5 metre letters across the doors.

The next day none of us felt so good, but I introduced everyone to strawberry Fanta, and then everything was okay again. We went back to the bar in their hostel and played drinking games a second night in a row. This night the band from the bar joined us, and they were the most hilarious people ever. They told me that I had to take Craig back to Hong Kong, because he was very romantic, and HK was closer than London!

The following night was the night market, complete with kareoke competition. This took place on a massive stage, in front of an audience of about 100. The contestants were all middle-aged to old locals, warbling away love songs. There was one old man dancing away in front of the stage, on his own, but having the absolute time of his life. They all took it very seriously, and it was hilarious to watch.

I didn't feel like I saw much in Melaka, but then I'm not sure if there was much to see. We were staying right on the river, by all the pretty stuff and in Chinatown so we were in the heart of it really. And I had a good time, so that's what matters. Soon I was off back to KL - but this time with Pete and Craig in tow. I forced Yo Sushi! on them before heading up to Penang, where they were to meet me the following day.

I almost didn't get to Penang. Am starting to realise that yes I am infact completely incompetent when it comes to flying. I almost missed my flight because I am a total idiot and went to the wrong airport. I'm not even going to bother with the details of me running around trying to actually make my flight, but I made it. 45 minutes before departure. And yes, I'm the most useless person in existence. I will try harder.

Again I didn't see too much in Penang, but that's not because I didn't try. I went for a walk on my first day, and there were lots of temples and mosques and churches, but frankly I'm quite sick of this sort of thing at the moment. Once you've seen so many temples.... However a schoolboy did ask for my number, so I was quite impressed with the place. Another day Pete and I tried to find the beach, which was supposed to be really nice, but we failed and ended up in McDonalds. We did however make it Tescos one day - which was incredibly exciting and enabled us to cook some very, very satisfying pasta and potato dishes on Pete and Craig's portable cooker. It was so good to have home cooked Western food! We also made it to the Snake Temple, which was one room, with a few gold statues and a couple of snakes. Not the crazy snake pit filled, Indiana Jones adventure we were expecting.... and certainly not worth the 2 hour return trip, but oh well.

I didn't really feel like I saw much of Malaysia, but it was a nice relaxing break, and I had a good time, met some great people, so it's all good.

Next stop Thailand!!