Exploring Malaysia

Coming back from Bali, I planned to stay in Malaysia for a few weeks to check it out. Also, I was supposed to meet the Aussie posse (Becs & Nat) for the third and final time there. We met in Kuala Lumpur and (after checking out the view from the KL Tower, 335m without antenna!) went pretty much straight to the Cameron Highlands. I enjoyed it a lot there, because it was so different: Being the highest spot in Malaysia at 1500m above sea level, temperatures and climate were completely different then what I was used to. It was still very humid, but cold enough to want a blanket at night. It was quite refreshing for a change to wear the same T-shirt for 3 or even 4 days before having to wash it! ;-) Also, it rained a lot there, but Daniel's Lodge, the place where I stayed, provided a small "movie theater", free WiFi and comfy areas to sit around and chat to pass the time. I had a go in Photoshop to fix a new profile picture for Natalie, some random idea Becs and me had when uploading her pictures to Facebook. Check it out, it turned out really nice (and Nat was overjoyed! ;-):


You can go hiking in the mountains there and go on trips that take you to various sights. They're awfully proud of their strawberry fields, the Cameron Highlands being the only place where they grow (as so many other things like f.ex. Tea), but obviously all the Europeans weren't quite so impressed! ;-) The Insect/butterfly farm was probably the most impressive thing, they have all kinds of weird insects and reptiles there.



Daniel's Lodge was really awesome (and no, i didn't get a discount! ;-). I met loads and loads of awesome people there every single day (most of which were always set to leave the next day - grr!), and at night they have a comfy bar with a campfire right next to it. Spent some quality nights with people from England, Scotland, Australia, Switzerland, Holland and Germany, happy times!



Next up after about 12 days was the Perhentian Islands, Long Beach on the big island to be exact (which is the most popular place). It's fairly underdeveloped compared to the Thai party islands, but it's still good, only Diesel Generators but fairly fast Internet via satellite. Lots of huge (about 1.5m) Komodo dragons walking around there, quite scary! They seem to like to hatch their eggs or take a shit in Bungalows, so watch out!



I re-met Kirsten from England there, who I had first met in the Cameron Highlands (left). She was with Stasa from Slovenia (right), not exactly a common nation to meet while travelling. She also worked in PR for Microsoft Slovenia, but that didn't spoil the fun we had in any way! ;-)



I also met Andi from Germany, a really great guy that I unfortunately only have one really bad picture of... One of the few people that would still keep regular email contact after splitting up, very cool! ;-)

There's really long snorkelling trips available for small money, and this was really the best snorkelling I've ever had. We saw beautiful corals, huge shoals of fish, blacktip reef sharks, eels, clownfish and TURTLES! Yes, they had turtles, and if you wanted, you could go watch them lay their eggs at night.



After that it was back to Thailand, Kho Phi Phi to be exact. Combined journeys aren't quite as readily available in Malaysia as they are in Thailand, so the trip was quite an experience and involved a fair bit of figuring stuff out for yourself, e.g. how to get where exactly for the next connection ride.

Summing up: While not very different geographically, Malaysias population is pretty different than Thailand. First of all, most of them speak really good English, since they were part of the Commonwealth until just 50 years ago. Then there's very many Chinese and Indian people around, which adds to cultural variety (and food-choice! ;-). They also like to chat to you for merely having a nice chat, something that barely ever happens in Thailand (people there will only talk to you when they want something from you). This took a bit of getting used to, since the suspicion was rooted pretty deeply by now! ;-). In general, they're very nice and friendly people, and only in Malaysia you could meet a girl like Ruby, who at the age of 6 spoke 3 languages fluently (Chinese, Malay and English).



It's a predominantly muslim country, but it's quite mellow (probably also due to the ethnic variety of Chinese and Indians!), not like you'd expect muslim countries to be. You could buy booze everywhere and see women with scant clothes walking around in Kuala Lumpur, and that included local women, too! However, you occasionally see BMOs (Black Moving Objects, women covered completely in a burka), usually with their husbands who were dressed quite western with baseball caps and printed shorts. Oh, the good old irony of "do as i say, don't do as I do"...

One quite surreal experience happened in a gas station. Some malay guy asked me where I was from, and when I said "Germany" he threw a Hitler salute and asked if I liked Adolf Hitler. When I said no, he replied "Why not?", which really had me dumbfolded for the mere surrealness of the question, I didn't know what to say! I also saw a guy with a swastika (not the Hindu sun-wheel variety!) on his motorcycle helmet, and a malay guy showed me his passport which said "valid for all countries except Israel", which is in every malay passport. Considering that Intel, a jewish/israeli company, has a fab in Malaysia it does make you wonder how the people working there visit their headquarters in Haifa..