It's blogging hour again and this time i'm on another Air Asia flight leaving Kuala Lumpur and heading towards Bangkok...very exciting! I've got Eminem shouting in my ear, an empty sweet packet beside me and a blank screen in front of me so lets go.
The Lonely Planet sings the praises of Thailand something chronic and i've read every page about the city so feel prepared to land amongst the chaos which is undoubtedly heading our way. Lady boys, go go bars, unrelenting touts, endless curries, pad thai dishes, cheap beer, bring it on I say, i'm ready for you Bangkok.
So since I last posted 2 weeks ago Tina and I have done our little circuit of the Malaysian peninsular and ended up where we started in KL.
Our first stop was Malacca in the south west and as usual we kinda ballsed up the timing of our visit without realising. It turns out that the religious festival which had left KL so quiet was the same festival that prompted all the locals to take a weekend holiday down in Malacca and therefore left us buggered when trying to find some accommodation. We thought we'd be all carefree and 'travelly' by rocking up and looking for a place once there but when the guesthouse owners started laughing in our face it became worryingly clear there were not many rooms to be had.
Luckily we came across a table of locals in one of the hostels that were very sweet and managed to book us into a room at a place they knew (although it was horribly overpriced) and then gave us free food and beer which always goes down well!
There was Vung, born in Melacca but now living in Chessington back home for over 25 years. Tang, the owner of another local hostel and Joe, who was a 60 something classic New Yorker of Italian decent with an outrageously brash accent and spoke about being on the run from the Mafia after selling up his businesses and emigrating abroad.
We only spent 2 days there which was more than enough time to soak up the vibe of the place and had some great unexpected food experiences - namely an amazing banana/strawbs milkshake, crazy good Chicken Rendeng curry and an epic breakfast at the 'travellers cafe. It's funny how important food becomes when travelling, the day really revolves around meals and drinks out. I love it so thank god the only other person that loves it more than me is Tina!
From Malacca we caught a coach down into Singapore, which was a bit something and nothing in my eyes, it was nice and i'm glad we went but nothing particularly grabbed me about the city. It was bursting at the seams with shopping malls in which I wasn't allowed to buy anything and seemed to lack a cultural identity because everything was either Chinese or Indian influenced. It was extremely clean though and the public transport system was excellent...but it's all so new and has been designed for modern man so I guess it should be.
The highlight of my 3 days there was the free scooter tour that our hostel put on and we were lead around the city on two wheels whizzing from museum to park to library to Chinatown to harbour front, we even got to skate along a section of the F1 track they were erecting for the grand prix!
We also adopted a nice guy called Steve but we called Dan for some reason and dragged him along on our day trip to Sentosa Island. Sentosa is marketed as 'Asia's playground' and supposed to be full of theme parks, pretty beaches and luxury resorts but something must have gone wrong somewhere along the line, maybe the budget ran out or the builders went bust but it had an unfinished dilapidated vibe about it and everything was sort of, falling apart.
When we finally reached the beach we were met with the beautiful view of about 50 oil tankers all just sitting out at sea. Very bizarre, almost post-apocalyptic actually.
Anyway, Sentosa wasn't all that bad, we had fun and ate the new 'Magnum Gold?!', not to be mistaken for 'Magnum Gold'. We were shocked to discover this new flavour masquerading as our all time favourite limited edition flavour from Australia (The difference being caramel inside not honeycomb sauce...I can't believe i'm even writing this, okkkk, so moving on....).
We had a 7.45am flight to catch from Singapore up to KL and then a connecting flight booked to take us up to Kota Bharu in the very north east. This meant getting up horribly early and in the middle of the night but having a sausage and egg Mc Muffin followed by an Oreo Mc flurry for breakfast at the airport compensated for it lol.
We were only using Kota Bharu as an over night pit stop before heading down to the Perhentian islands which was a good thing really as it wasn't much to look at. The vibe was much more muslim up north and even though we were covering our shoulders/knees some of the locals still seemed to think we had three heads.
I'm ashamed to say we ended up having a second Mc D's for dinner(!) We tried to be authentic and buy from the street markets but after circling the same stalls 10 times we just couldn't bring ourselves to eat it...whatever 'it' was. I mean, to get to the food at one stall you had to practically fight your way through a curtain of flies, not tempting.
The next morning we hopped onto a minibus which took us down to the harbour town of Kota Besut and from there took the 30 minute speed boat ride to the Islands. The Perhentians is made up of 2 islands, Besar the 'big island' and Kecil which we were staying on. Good accommodation is pretty hard to find on Kecil but as usual we'd done our research and were v.happy with our wooden stilted bungalow at Senja Bay resort on Coral bay.
The next 3 days went by in a blur of pancakes, milkshakes and sunbathing by the sea but it was Tina's birthday on the Sunday so we made it extra special by going out for a delicious breakfast, followed by a 3 hour snorkelling trip where we followed a turtle and shark, a beer at sunset (of course) and then the most amazing dinner at Bubu restaurant on Long Beach.
In the morning I'd set up a little birthday shrine of coral on our balcony to present the prezzies and homemade card I’d been working on but it typical blasé fashion she walks out, looks straight through it and says "Right, down the beach?!' haha!
On our last day in paradise we had to be extra careful about being in the sun as our malaria tablets seem to make us feel as if we're being burned alive for some reason. We just lounged about on the sun beds and chilled out with our adopted Perhentian boy Ben.
Ben specifically told me that I should be honest on the blog about the people we meet so I have no qualms in saying what a tosser he was and how pleased we were to leave him behind, marooned all by himself muhahaha.......ah only joking, he's very nice :)
Before we knew it it was time to leave and we scrapped our idea of catching the 'jungle train' to the Cameron Highlands (sometimes things just arn't worth the hassle) and we took a direct bus there.
Up in the mountains there was a distinct chill in the air and for the first time in over a month we even got to wear leggings, exciting times! We drove 1300 meters up and found ourselves surrounded by a series of rolling green hills covered head to toe in a patchwork blanket of tea fields and strawberry farms, it was very cute.
The main town wasn't as quaint as the Lonely Planet made it out to be but there was still an air of Englishness about the place. Probably because of the tea and scones on offer at some of the hostels, which yes, we did sample within an hour of sliding out of the mini bus.
We only spent one full day there and used it by doing a half day tour of the area, firstly to a pretty rose garden way up on the hillside with stunning views over the land and then to a strawberry farm, bee farm, insect/butterfly house, bhuddist temple and the main attraction, a visit to the Boh tea plantation where we enjoyed a great cup o' tea :D.
Blah. blah, blah, skip forward 48 hours (we went back to KL for our flight) and now we're back to the present and headed straight for the crazy capital of Bangkok...
Bring. It. On.
P.S Because I haven’t got round to posting this until now we’ve actually been to Bangkok (4 days), Kanachaburi (2 days) and am now up in Chiang Mai. I never knew keeping on top of a blog would be so hard! Update to come shortly...
