Heading North

STATS: Day count=5; Illness count=0.1 (small blister on right foot); theft count=0; rip-off count=0.5 (very expensive piece of cheese in an egg sandwich); tourist screw-up count=0.5 (bad call on a park visit – see below); photo count=90 (just to get you all dreading the slide show when we get back!)

(Written Saturday night / Sunday morning) Sleep patterns are still not quite sorted – not sure I can continue to blame the jet lag as we’ve been here nearly a week. After a week away it still feels very ‘holiday-like’ – difficult to imagine we have 6 months+ ahead of us but really nice to be able to do things at whatever pace we feel like and not to have to rush everything. And to be able to plan / change plans as we go along.

Shame I’m missing all the snow back home :-( However, we’ve been busy in Kuala Lumpur, but about to head north now. For those interested in what we’ve been up to, here’s a summary…

Stayed the first couple of nights in Chinatown, in a relatively nice hotel, private room, en-suite etc, etc – thanks Laura for that present – definitely helped us acclimatise a bit! The hotel was right in the main market street in Chinatown – you’d think it would be easy to find, but we arrived in the evening when the market stalls were 4-deep and the alleyways between the stalls just about wide enough for a person with rucksack. Not really wide enough for 2-way people traffic, which is why it took a while to negotiate! Plus you couldn’t easily see the names of the hotels/shops on the street, so that added to the fun. Got there in the end and spent a nice couple of days exploring Chinatown – nice food, nice people and market traders who were pushy enough to make it interesting, but not pushy enough to make it annoying. I managed to get a pair of ‘genuine’ Oakley sunglasses for less than £2. Must be genuine as when I asked the price of the same sunglasses on another stall, the starting price was £35. I think he realised he didn’t have a sale when I burst out laughing at that! He had come down to £4 by the time I walked away.

After the first couple of nights we moved on to a hostel, just outside Chinatown. We checked out a couple and chose the one which had a room least like a prison cell, even though that was a little more expensive (£11 a night with a little negotiation). To be fair, having spent a few nights here, the place is very clean (no bedbugs, cockroaches or rats observed to date) and the staff are very friendly and very helpful – gave us a lot of info about places to move on to after KL and even walked us to a night market when we had no idea how to get there.

We’ve walked or taken public transport everywhere, which, while a bit tiring and exhausting in the heat, is a great way to find your way around the main city areas, and to get a feel for the place - and it’s obviously cheap! The area we are in isn’t too touristy – we have eaten in a couple of great veggie restaurants (1 Indian, 1 Chinese) where people have just come over to us and chatted with us – they seem to appreciate tourists visiting their area and eating with them. The waiter in the Chinese seemed genuinely surprised when we asked for chopsticks rather than the spoon and fork originally offered! I’ve given up trying to blend in and not look like a tourist – it’s not possible for us in Asia, so I’m going completely the other way and almost flaunting my guidebook and camera and not worrying about looking lost all the time. We have noticed that locals seem to smile back at you whereas tourists don’t. So I plan to look miserable from now on. Should come naturally ;-) Emma will still doggedly smile at everyone…at least until she gets fed up with that!

Took a trip to Batu caves yesterday – large caves in the side of a cliff just outside KL which Hindus have adopted for many years as a place of worship. Very interesting place to visit. Bit of a building site, but only because they are putting new roads / pavements in place. Unfortunately we are going to miss the big festival around there which takes place at the end of Jan – pilgrimage from KL to the caves, precession, people with hooks in their flesh – usual kind of thing.

The monkeys at the caves seemed to take great delight in scaring the tourists by trying to grab any plastic bags that were showing – fun to watch people trying to shoo away monkeys (who didn’t seem to take any notice), whilst trying not to fall down the numerous narrow steps you have to climb to get to the caves!

 

In the evening we wandered to the glitzy area of town – quite a contrast. expensive hotels, lots of tourists, ‘standard’ western shops / coffee shops / fast food joints, nightclubs etc, and high prices! After spending a week in the non-touristy parts it all came across as a little fake. But then I guess it is no different from, for example,  Tower Hamlets vs Oxford Street in London. We walked to the famous twin towers in KL – the Petronas Towers (88 storeys) which looked very impressive at night from below. You can see them from all over the city – used to be the highest building in the world, but that seems to change every year (Dubai have just claimed the crown this month, I believe?). We didn’t manage to get up early enough any day to queue for tickets for the viewing platform in these towers, but we weren’t all that fussed – maybe next time. Oh – and to explain the next photo, I liked the name of “Kickapoo Joy Juice” so I tried it. Tastes like Lilt. I prefer the Joy Juice name!

Today we walked to a park for the second time (it seemed closed the first time) which is apparently where everyone goes at the weekend to relax. It was half closed and empty. Then we (I am doing the honourable thing by taking joint responsibility for this ;-) ) discovered we had mis-read the guide book and it was a different park that people actually visited! Still, it’s not as if we’d walked for an hour in the midday sun (mad dogs and Englishmen definitely spring to mind) to get there. Twice. However, it did mean we could visit the National Mosque nearby – massive place and some very friendly guides on hand who chatted away (mainly to Emma) about Islam and the Mosque.

This evening we went to a Malay night market – hammered down with rain while we were there but otherwise was really good. Packed with Malay people, lots of different foods on offer (and other stuff). Being vegetarian was both a curse and a blessing. Curse because most things were chicken/beef/fish based and I could otherwise have tried all the foods available, but blessing because I *would* otherwise have tried *all* the foods available!

Tomorrow (well, today, as I cant sleep – it’s 3am at the moment) we move on from KL to the Cameron Highlands (by bus – 4.5hrs). Good place to visit tea plantations and strawberry farms apparently. So that’s what we will be doing, I guess! We have vague plans (see the map – in red) to then go on to Georgetown in Penang (still in Malaysia) for a few days and then maybe head into Thailand – not sure if we’ll go straight to Bangkok or stay somewhere on route. We’ll probably get the train for that part, rather than the bus.