The Cameron Highlands tour finished just in time for me collect my stuff from the hostel and walk to the bus terminal. Surprisingly, this one left on time and even more surprisingly, arrived in Kuala Lumpur an hour and a half early. This left me with more time than I thought I’d have on my first night. Luckily, help was at hand from my fellow Europeans! I met Chloe (from France) almost straight away and though she was a little frazzled (her only credit card had been damaged and she was frantically trying to arrange for a replacement), she was delightful. It could have been worse for her as she was nearing the end of her 6 month trip (she later told me she’d spent over 5 months in Australia and was going to see out the last few weeks of her trip in Asia), but she was still visibly upset as she was trying to sort this out. German Chris showed up shortly afterwards and was excellent company too. After the three of us had our bearings and had unwound a bit following our respective journeys into KL, we headed out to a big nearby night market. It was actually just on the adjacent road, Petaling Street, so we didn’t have to go very far. Street markets in Asia are always lively and this one was no exception. Chris, having been in Asia for 6 weeks and nearing the end of his trip was well into the flow of things and was very game when it came to trying strange foods from the street vendors. I took his lead and tried some of the weird stuff on offer. It included: dried meats, (tasty) coconut pancakes and the next day, some red bananas (it turns out that they taste almost exactly like the yellow ones). The only thing that looked too horrible to even entertain the idea of trying (not even Chris tried them), were these black ovals that looked like coal (we were told they were “salted eggs”). After a quick dinner (we weren’t too adventurous as we went for the claypot chicken and rice but it tasted very different to anything I’d ever eaten before), and a 640ml bottle of local beer each (strangely, it was called Myanmar), we headed back to our hostel and the bar that was directly below it. We had a good night just chilling in that bar over the next few hours, having a few beers and swapping travelling stories. Chris and Chloe are the types of people I love to meet because we have so much in common and it’s just so easy to get on with them and chill over a few drinks. It was even better because our hostel’s affiliation with that bar meant that we got 20% off all drinks and food there.

During the previous night, the three of us had made some plans for Tuesday and they included more or less everything Kuala Lumpur had to offer. Even though I had a great time in KL because of Chloe and Chris, the city itself is not so good and probably my least favourite of the ones I’ve ever been to. There’s nothing wrong that with it, it’s no hotter, dirtier, noisier or more polluted than any number of other Asian cities but it’s got almost nothing to offer. I was only there for 3 nights and I saw everything, I definitely would not recommend that any of my friends visit this city. So anyway, the three of us had made a plan, and it involved going to the Petronas towers, Kuala Lumpur city centre, little India, Merdaka Square (the main square) and after I’d convinced Chris we should go, the Batu caves.

Our journey was off to a slow start because of Chris’ insistence on only taking taxis that would use the meter but fair play to him, because it did turn out ridiculously cheap for us that way. After being split 3 ways, the most I ever paid for a taxi was about 50 pence, it would have been maybe 4 or 5 times that otherwise. Our first stop, the Petronas towers, was cool but unfortunately the sky bridge (the bridge connecting the two towers and the main reason we wanted to go) was closed for maintenance until December. It was a disappointment but the bridge wasn’t as high as we’d thought it would be so we got over it quickly. I still tried blagging us a way into the building on a “special visitors pass” but some of my best lines tanked so I took what dignity I had left and headed back to Chris and Chloe to deliver the news. Like I said though, it wasn’t a big deal and we quickly jumped into a taxi to little India. Little India was indeed very little but there was still some good stuff there, this was where we found the red bananas and Chloe tried her first Thai coconut there (they’re delicious). Chris was trying to find an Indian suit for his niece but didn’t want to pay the extortionate prices so instead settled for some Indian bangles. I introduced both Chloe and Chris to some Indian sweets too. They liked them but I think they’d have been more impressed if the sweets had tasted like I know they were supposed to.

Since it was (supposedly) close by, we decided to walk to Merdaka Square. I wouldn’t say it was a mistake doing it but it certainly became a much longer (and more dangerous) walk than we had intended. Longer because we apparently had very little idea where we were and dangerous because we had to run across a few motorways to get to where we were going (there was no other way across, our only other option was to walk back the way we’d come and spend another hour walking through the baking Malaysian heat, while probably dehydrated, in a direction we already knew would be a much longer walk). We also had to take an (ill advised) detour through a construction site but we all got to Merdaka Square in one piece so it was no problem. The Square itself was pretty shit when we got there (apart from a massive Malaysian flag there wasn’t much there) but like they say, it’s the journey, not the destination. We headed back to the hostel to chill for a bit after that. When we were ready to head out, we had some lunch at the bar downstairs (not very adventurously, we each went for the burger and fries but Chloe made a very persuasive argument) and then got on a bus to the Batu Caves. The caves are a site of religious importance to Hindus as there is a temple inside (and a Giant 43 metre statue of a Hindu deity outside). The statue is just to the right of a long set of 272 steps that must be climbed to gain entry to the caves. The other obstacle that must be overcome is the various monkeys that hang around on the steps and on the nearby trees and rock face. They were (thankfully) very well behaved when we were there but I’ve heard at least one unpleasant story about those monkeys. With all the steps and the massive statue, the cave entrance was very impressive but it’s spectacular (and absolutely huge) when you get inside. Definitely the best thing I saw in Kuala Lumpur, I’m glad I managed to convince Chris to join Chloe and I at the caves. The bus ride back was much quicker than the one out there and we were all in good spirits because we’d seen everything we’d wanted to and with my help, Chloe had sorted her card problem out earlier in the day. We headed back to the hostel bar for some drinks (my god, that first cold pint tasted amazing after an entire day outside in Kuala Lumpur!) and to get some dinner. We weren’t very adventurous again (pizza this time) but what can I say, Chloe makes a persuasive argument! Since it was both Chris’ and Chloe’s last night (Chris was flying out to Bangkok for one last night before heading home and Chloe would be back in KL but after I’d gone, after hearing about how good it was, Chloe wanted to spend a couple of nights in the Cameron Highlands), we decided to stay at the bar and get merry :) It was a pretty good time there with all the other backpackers and everything, and after the ridiculous prices of Singapore, the cheap drinks didn’t hurt either.

Even though I was only with them for a short time, both Chris and Chloe made a big impression on me and it was sad saying bye to them the next day.

After they’d gone, I decided to do the only two worthwhile things that I thought Kuala Lumpur had left. I went to the Kuala Lumpur bird park (the world’s largest free-flight walk-in aviary) and the Kuala Lumpur orchid garden. The bird park was very cool, just like the butterfly garden in the Cameron Highlands, you could walk up to everything, and most of the birds were just flying free. Also, it was funny seeing people run for cover when a parrot would try to land on their head. There were a lot of cool species there (check some of the pictures) but I was almost as impressed with how clean it was and how nice they managed to keep it smelling. If you ever find yourself in KL for some reason, the bird park is definitely something you should go to. At the other end of the enjoyment spectrum was the orchid garden. There were some nice flowers there but nothing else and the only reason I even went was to kill time.

So there it is, Ipoh and the Cameron Highlands were excellent but Kuala Lumpur, not so much. I still had a great time at both but for a very different type of holiday, I’m really excited to be seeing my best buds again when I get to Bangkok!

When I was planning this trip, I considered almost every aspect of it in detail so I wouldn’t feel like I’d missed out when I looked back on it. Something I paid particular attention to was international transfers. I’ve heard many stories about trouble at border crossings when travelling overland so I made every effort to avoid similar problems, so far so good I say. Although I realised today that perhaps I should have paid similar attention to domestic transfers as well… Langkawi to Ipoh was not supposed to be a stressful journey, it wasn’t supposed to be a lot of things but it ended up being them anyway.

Some general details about the trip: I left my Langkawi hotel at 6:30am with a 25 minute walk to the ferry terminal and a 7:30am ferry to catch. The ferry took about an hour to get to Kuala Perlis (as expected). Then also as expected, there was a 5 minute walk to the bus terminal and a 1 and a half hour wait for the first bus at 10:00am. 1 and a half hours didn’t seem like a long wait on paper but sitting on a seat at an outdoor bus terminal, while in the baking Malaysian heat and surrounded by mosquitoes did not help pass the time. The bus arrived at 10 and left 15 minutes late. The journey to Ipoh was 5 and a half hours (again, as expected). What was not expected was the 1 hour wait for the bus from Ipoh to the Cameron Highlands and the following 1 hour delay in its departure. The reason I said earlier that I should have researched domestic transfers too is that I had no idea I’d be getting to Ipoh at nearly 4 in the afternoon. This left me with no way to see the Cameron Highlands (my only reason for stopping in Ipoh) and to get back to my hostel on the same day, problematic because I was only supposed to be there for 1 night anyway. Uncharacteristically, this led to my decision to abandon my plans and instead book a one way ticket to the Cameron Highlands (one way because by the time I’d get there, there would be no buses going back the other way and I’d have to spend an unplanned night at a Cameron Highlands hostel). So I bailed on my Ipoh hostel without telling them (sorry Shanghai hostel, I couldn’t find any internet access!) and made spontaneous plans for somewhere else.

Anyway, back to the Ipoh to Cameron Highlands bus, so instead of leaving at 5, it left at 5:50 and instead of arriving at 7, it arrived at 8:30. When I actually got on, I noticed that it was seriously old, and I mean 20 or 30 years old, I also noticed that the top speed when going uphill (incidentally, most of the journey was uphill), was around 25mph. When it wasn’t moving at top speed, it was hovering somewhere around the area of 10-15mph. I couldn’t be sure though, the speed gauge was broken. Also by-the-by, it didn’t have any seat belts and the headlights didn’t work properly, something that made me fear for my safety later because it started getting dark at around 7 but we were rolling until 8:30. Since mountainous regions create their own weather systems, there was a lot of cloud and mist up there too, causing visibility to drop to only a few metres as it started getting darker. I was not comforted by this or the fact that there were thousand metre sheer drops only a few feet from the edge of the road. Even though the views were incredible (being surrounded by numerous, vegetation rich mountains on every side is never a bad thing), the whole experience has soured me on some of my plans for the rest of the trip. In particular a 24 hour bus ride through similar (but apparently much more poorly maintained) terrain between Vietnam and Laos. Yeah, I don’t think there’s any need to be a hero with that one, I’m going to book a flight instead! That said though, I very much enjoyed parts of the bus ride up the mountain, the parts where I wasn’t thinking death was imminent that is. There were at the very least, literally millions of trees on those mountains and such thick, richly varied vegetation too. I can only imagine how many different kinds of animals were living up there. There was even a cool little village at the top of the mountain, it was small, and it was clear that the main reason it existed was for tourists but it was still very cool. As were all the tea plantations, fruit orchards and flower gardens. In fact, minus the last three things I mentioned, the whole area, with its mountains of varying sizes and thick, lush jungles was very reminiscent of Peru. I wasn’t expecting that and didn’t know Malaysia had this sort of thing to offer.

Also on the plus side, the amusingly hobbit sized hostel I found only set me back £3 for the night and I managed to find a great 5 hour tour of the Cameron Highlands (including a 4×4 ride, a visit to a tea plantation and a lot of jungle trekking) for only £10.

My bus from the Cameron Highlands to Kuala Lumpur the next day was at 2pm so it was an earlyish start for the highlands tour at 8:45. While I was waiting for the start of the tour, breakfast at the cheap hostel was surprisingly delicious; as well as tea plantations, strawberry farms and various other fruit and vegetable orchards in the highlands, there are also a number of honey farms. I don’t normally like honey but thought I’d try some (probably the freshest honey I’ll ever eat) on my French toast and it was fantastic.

I was the third person to be picked up for the tour but there were 9 of us in total, an older English couple and 6 Dutch girls around my age. As always, everyone was a pleasure to spend time with. Our tour guide/driver took the 4*4 to a butterfly sanctuary at first. It was cool as you could walk through and go right up to them; none of them were in cages. What was even cooler were the things like the pit vipers, the 3 horned rhinoceros beetle, the horned tree lizards and the banded geckos, thankfully, all of those were in cages. Next it was a rose garden, it was kind of boring but at least there was a nice view at the top. We headed to the peak of the mountain we were on after that, at 2,000 metres it was the second highest in the area. Sadly, it was misty when we got up there so there was no point in climbing the viewing tower but as we’d all had a great view of the area from the rose garden, nobody was too upset. At the top there were several routes through the jungle and forest too and when I say routes through the jungle, I don’t mean routes paved with cement or artificial steps or anything like that, it was just gaps in the trees wide enough for us to squeeze through, it was pretty rough. The ground was soaked because it had been raining earlier and at some points I thought I was going to literally sink into the mud. There was a lot of thick vegetation, cool types of trees that I hadn’t seen the likes of since Peru and a few small animals but nothing too impressive. Apparently, there were a bunch of deadly pit vipers around (the kind that blend in very well with their native environment) so everyone was slightly on edge as we trekked through because we were told they could be anywhere. It was something that needed to be said but I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I was more concerned about the snakes than the sheer drops that were around practically every corner. Obviously I’m fine but in hindsight, I probably should have paid a little more attention to those. It was really cool being in that jungle though, weaving between the trees and hanging branches, navigating the very muddy, uneven and at times, very vertical terrain was good fun and definitely the part of the tour I thought was most worthwhile. Nearly at the end of the tour, we went to the star of the Cameron Highlands, the tea plantations. Another of the postcard perfect sights I’d seen in Malaysia, the plantations stretched as far as the eye could see and because of the mountains, were very vertical as well as horizontal in nature. We saw a few workers collecting the tea that was being grown there (boh tea) and I commented that they must have calves of steel because it can’t be an easy job. The final stop of the tour was a strawberry farm. It was nothing impressive and the Dutch were even less excited to be there, a few of them sarcastically sounded surprised when we were told that the strawberry seeds were imported from Holland. The fresh strawberry milkshakes were good though!

As well as discovering Singapore, I’ve also learned what hostels are like, never having stayed at one before. After I found what looked like a good one (The Little Red Dot), I went for the cheapest type of room they had (a dorm with four bunk-beds in it), so it’s cramped but at least it’s air conditioned at night! The common area is pretty sweet, I was just chilling playing video games and watching films with the main guy Jon on my first night here. The people have all been cool too, I’ve met a bunch of fantastic dudes and dudettes from all over; Australia, China, England, Germany, Singapore, Ireland, America, India, South Africa… My first experience with a hostel has definitely been a pleasant one.

It’s a shame everyone stays for such a short time though, far too few of these cool peeps were partied with for my liking. Though worry not, some epic partying was indeed done, and funnily enough, it all started with the arrival of four Irish people on Friday. There were a bunch of Indian guys in my room at first. They were MBA students studying in the Phillipines and were only here for a careers fair. After seeing them all suit up before heading out though, I quickly realised they weren’t here for fun times :( The day they left though, the four Irish people checked in and after all the obligatory introductions, promptly headed up to the roof garden to drink. I joined them after a bit and they were only too happy to spread the love and send a few beers my way! Jon headed up too and he brought a whole bottle of vodka with him! It wasn’t as good a thing as I first thought though, he was pouring these ridiculous shots that were just completely full of neat vodka, we got messed up pretty quickly.

It helped when a few more people showed up to share the love and it was brilliant that the American, Eric, and the two Germans, Phillip and Daniel, were knocking them back as quickly as Jon, I and the Irish had been. What didn’t help though was the massive beer run we went on when all the booze finished; we ended up coming back with another two bottles of vodka and probably more beer than was wise. It was really cool just chilling on the roof with such good company and stopping by downstairs every now and then to meet and drink with new arrivals at the hostel. We were all on a pretty good level by this point, Phillip had plugged his speakers into Mikey’s (one of the Irish guys) iPad and Jon was DJing, it’s incredible how much liquor that tiny Chinese man can take. I reckon he had almost half of the first vodka bottle by himself and he wasn’t even a little bit hung over the next morning. That would have been enough to make me feel terrible the next morning (and I did, especially because a hot, humid country is not condusive to hangover recovery but also because I lost my wallet, or at least thought I did for several hours after waking up. To say that would have messed up my holiday is a gross understatement but it was good because I ended up getting an expensive lesson for free. I am definitely not going to take more than a single card with me on nights out from now on!) Anyway, since we were all so merry on the roof (and because Jon apparently goes clubbing every night except Monday and Tuesday (!)), someone suggested we make movements and find somewhere to get our funk on. The Irish and the American had drank enough by then but the rest of us were all gonna go to the same place. That is, the plan was to go to the same place but then these two lovely English girls showed up at the hostel and Jon quickly headed off with them, leaving me, Phillip and Daniel with no idea where the hell to go. I later learned that Jon took the girls (who I found were great company after I sobered up the next afternoon) to this club called Attica. Some useful info and a bit of context: this place is known locally as slutica, which is probably all that needs to be said about that!

Elsewhere in Singapore, the club the Germans and I ended up at was called Grooove. It was absolutely packed and the music got us even more lively than we already were. We knew the drinks would be expensive in there, alcohol is pretty expensive in Singapore (those bottles of vodka we bought earlier were 50 Singapore dollars each), but we weren’t expecting prices quite as steep as 16 dollars per bottle. We still had an amazing time though and we partied with a lot of cool people in there, there were some very interesting characters outside afterwards too. Every good thing comes with a price though and I paid heavily the next morning. I woke up at around 1 in the afternoon and just felt like dog shit. I was worrying like crazy for hours trying to find my wallet too but in the end it wasn’t as big of a thing as I thought because I ended up finding it in my locker (well done Jaz). I definitely had it with me at the club though and didn’t remember taking it out of my jeans so I don’t know how it ended up there. Getting into the locker was a bit of a problem because one thing I did actually lose was the key to the lock I had on it, nothing a pair of bolt cutters couldn’t solve though. All in all, it was a pretty excellent night then but after how I felt the next day (I was by far the most hungover), I wasn’t looking to repeat it the next night like the English and the Germans were.

I can’t believe that it’s taken me this long to discover how awesome hostels are! This is the kind of living a guy could get used to!

Top: Shots!; Above: Me and Mikey