Hot and sweaty, filled with the sounds of traffic and yelling locals, the ever present smell of food, open sewers and motorbike fumes. All mixed with a blend of Colonialism, Chinese authenticity, blaring Bollywood soundtracks and 'keeping up with the Jones' modernisation. That pretty much sums up the cities of Malaysia that we've visited in the last two weeks. We arrived from idylic and travel friendly Bali into the hectic hotpot of Kuala Kumpur and got pretty overwhelmed by it all. The city is of opposites: on one side you feel like you've landed in 1950's China with barbers shaving people on the streets, hawkers cooking noodles on every street corner and cockroaches running over the pavements at night. But then you have the modern Western world on the other side with the famous Petronas Towers (the highest in the world until 2004), metrolines, highways and icecold shopping mall after icecold shopping mall with all the European, American and every other brand you can possibly imagine. Filled with the head-scarved Malaysian girls with in one hand a Blackberry and in the other a Starbucks cup. Almost like a reversed culture shock!
So as you can imagine, we left Kuala Lumpur quickly to see more of the real deal. And we found it in UNESCO World Heritage town Melaka. The old heart of the town has an amazing mix of Dutch, English, Portuguese and Chinese heritage houses filled with guesthouses, restaurants and shops. It is so funny to see a Stadhuys (Dutch city hall) and Heeren Straat in the middle of Malaysia! We found a very pretty loft-style guesthouse with free internet, bikes and icecoffee with soy milk (very rare) so we decided to relax and hang out in Melaka for a few days. Basically strolling the nice streets, biking around, reading and trying out lots of local food specialties. The best one - in my opinion - was satay fondue in which you could dip your own selected veggies, tofu, seafood and meat sticks.
But after bearing that sticky heat, followed by some rainfall, we really needed something more to cool us down than just some lousy fans. So we took the nightbus (which definitely cooled us down, or lets say almost froze us) to the North-East coast of Malaysia. From there we took a speedboat to the tropical island Pulau Perhentian. No roads, just two islands with lots of deserted beaches and a few paths in between them. And beaches even more tropical than those of the Gili Islands: the sand more yellow, the water more blue, more palmtrees and less people! But due to heavy monsoons, poor thinking, and bad constructing, also a lot more run down than the Gili's. After making the mistake to sleep in a cheap bungalow for the first night, 'surprising' us with cockroaches and spiders at night, we moved to a much nicer beach with much nicer accommodation. For only 10RM ($3) more, we could sleep through the night! The days were mostly spent near the water and every once and a while we braved to get in the heat to walk to a different beach. It's funny how the heat slows you down like that! Every one of those slow and relaxing days was followed by a heavy cloud of accumulated heat that may or may not have turned into a huge tropical storm. Most nights it did. And always at the point when we just finished our dinner at one of the three beachside restaurants and were about to return back to our beach bungalow. Resulting in us running through the pouring rain, dodging anchors on the beach and almost being blown away and struck by thunder! 'Just' a preview of the monsoons that are about to hit the island in two weeks. But when morning comes around, all is nice and quiet and sunny again. For now...
On our last day we decided to get a little more active and join a snorkeling trip with the very energetic local guide Jeffery and four Frenchies. The only people visiting Perhentian seemed to be Dutchies and Frenchies. Actually during this whole trip we've been surrounded by Dutch people. It's so weird since I've barely seen or heard so many in over a year! Anyway... the snorkeling trip was a lot of fun and we saw lots of different beaches and fish, coral, a huge sea turtle and even a shark! But - again - not as nice as the Gili's. I think it will take a while until something will be better than Bali... eventhough the locals there kept on bugging us to buy things, their interest and their hospitality are things we do miss in Malaysia. The people here are a lot more distant and less friendly. And the nature of Bali still beats the rain forests of Malaysia. By a lot!
On our last evening we met up with two of the Frenchies for dinner and tried some of the notorious local Monkey Juice. Which turned out to be nothing more than homemade watered-down rum, but nevertheless tasted very good with fresh pineapple juice! It was good to hang out with some other people for a bit more than some small talk. We do get to meet people and talk to locals, but it is still harder to connect when you are travelling as a couple. But I'm not complaining! Travelling with Tom is great and we have a lot of fun exploring new places together! It's also good to have a male companion since you do hear stories about girls being harassed when they are alone. I also immediately notice the difference when I'm alone, when all of a sudden the politeness drops and is being replaced with 'hello miss!', 'how are you?', 'where are you from' and 'where are you going?'! It is funny but I'm very happy that I do not have to deal with that all the time!
After Perhentian we moved back to the West, to another heritage town on Pulau Penang: Georgetown. A bigger and much busier version of Melaka. The first impression was rather disappointing, but that changed around as soon as we started exploring the many many streets and areas - and local dishes! We discovered some awesome heritage buildings and houses with crumbling paint on the walls and pretty wooden shutters and doors. My camera has been very busy in the last few days! We also got to prepare for our next destination Thailand! Since there are many floods around Bangkok, we got a bit anxious but after some research and local reports we think we will be able to dodge the worst of it. Up first is the island Koh Lipeh and we'll see how the trip unfolds from there!
