Samui to Kuala Lumpur

Hello Hello!!

Today is the 27^th of June and we are in Bali, in a town called Ubud in the center of the Island. We have been in Indonesia about 12 days and are loving it.

I left you with Koh Samui and our nice room, so I need to check my memory card for the details:

Oh yeah. The first night, we went walking down the road to a little restaurant serving local food. Some idiots ended up eating half of our dinner! Pretending that our spring rolls looked like the crepes they had ordered, right, and one of the guy ordered noodles, but still ate Steve’s dish of rice and curry without a frown, humhum.

The next day we just spent around the hotel, chilling in the AC room (it was boiling outside), went for a little walk and climb on the beach and rocks around it, and finished the day with some cocktails in the pool at the neighboring resort (expensive room ours, but no pool).

We rented some bikes that night and went back to the same little restaurant, then went around the town to see what was there. We discovered a smaller Chaweng Beach. Loads of restaurants, bars, clubs, tattoo places, shops… We didn’t stay long and went back to our quiet hotel.

We kept the bikes the next day and went riding on some small roads inland, went up some mountain roads that ended up as trails at the top, and turned back into tarmac halfway down the other side. We went for a drink in a panoramic restaurant where we could see the whole island. Samui was ok out of the busy bits, but we started thinking about Indonesia, and how to get to the South of the planet…

We checked out the next day, after making a few enquiries about ferries and trains, and got back to the mainland in the afternoon. We booked a train for 1am to Butterworth, Malaysia. We had to check into a room until 1am because there wasn’t much to do around the train station, and it was kind of far from everything. We watched American movies dubbed with Thai language, most of the time they only have one voice for all the characters, male or female, doesn’t matter, which makes them quite entertaining!

We got a sleeper class ticket for the train, and fell asleep as soon as we got in, and until we hit the border station with Malaysia. There we had to get out of the train, get our visas, get our bags checked, and get back in the train. Pretty swift.

When we got to Butterworth, we decided to cross to Penang Island, a 15 minutes ferry crossing. On the ferry we met a German guy, Daniel, who was traveling by himself. He had a guide book for Malaysia, which we hadn’t bought. Instead, Steve insisted that we buy an old guide book from 1991, I state:”to see how different it is”. Well, it’s very different from having a guide book hey!! It was quite interesting, but really useless when you’ve just arrived in a new big town, and you’re wondering where to go and how much things are supposed to cost.

So we started chatting with Daniel, who offered to guide us with his book to the cheap hotels area. We ended up in the same hotel, and decided to go for some beers a little later. A little later, Daniel was knocking at our door, so off we went. Daniel was ok… but extremely silent for someone soooo sticky (he stayed with us about a week!) I mean, he just wanted to do things with us, and quoting his guide book for things to do and all that, but apart from that, he was completely silent. We had to force questions and conversations at him, which is ok for a while, but then you start to wonder why the person actually wants to spend time with you!

Malaysia has a very big Indian community, and we soooo enjoyed having some lovely Indian food, and talking to them about our time in India. They’re such lovely people. The Malay… I’m not sure we met so many, because Malaysia is also taken over by Chinese, and the whole western part of the country is inhabited by them. The East part is apparently more Malay, but we didn’t have much time to go there, and skipped it.

In Penang we went to a botanical garden, we rented motorbikes one day (Daniel couldn’t ride one so we had to carry him at the back) and visited a big part of the island like that. There was also a dragon boat race when we were there, on one of the dams, and we went to watch that. Apparently, dragon boat racing is quite a big thing, and a lot of international teams were there… We saw a few, 12 people in a little boat with a dragon head at the front, 1 person at the back beating the (no, not the people) the drums to give rhythm… quite cool.

After 2-3 days we decided that we had enough of Penang, and needed to move on to Kuala Lumpur. As I was discussing that with Daniel, he decided that maybe it would be a good idea for him to go to KL also, and asked if he could join us. My mouth said yes, the rest of my face said no, but… he didn’t get that, and off we went and booked our bus tickets for the 11^th of June.

Comfiest bus ever. It only had 3 seats on each row and they were airplanes seat. They even had a little rest for your feet coming out of under the seat, excellent. I said that to Dan, and he seemed surprised and ask if the busses in other Asian countries were not all the same… hahaha

We checked into a little, quite dirty hotel near china town and a night market which had everything there.

We got some food from a food stand in a corner, and went for a little walk through the amazing market where people called on to Steve to buy a new Gucci handbag, and called on to me to buy a new tie… go and understand!

The next day we went… to the zoo!

Daniel said there was a good aquarium somewhere in town. We said it would be cool to visit an aquarium. Then he said it was at the zoo. I haven’t visited a zoo since, sorry no, I can’t remember the last time I visited a bloody zoo!! Anyway, after a 20 minutes train ride, we got to the zoo, and Steve and I started paying interest to the place, looking at all the animals, reading their cards and things. Well, Daniel was just waiting for us at the end of each section, looking bored, and just letting us know from time to time that the time for the animal show at the auditorium was almost there… Did we care about the animals doing some tricks for us? No! But still, we went along. The auditorium was in front of the so-called aquarium. There were 2 big tanks with, I have to say, enormous fishes in them, but that was it!

The animal show lasted about 5 minutes, and involved some parrots trying to educate people and placing old can of coke in a bin with their beaks… quite impressive (irony), and a baby orangutan climbing a rope over people’s head in the assembly, and then… oh it was so amazing I can’t remember!!

Oh, I forgot to say something about Dan. He’s a gothic! Why the hell would a Goth want to go and see an animal show, at the zoo!!!!

Right, you’ll have understood I didn’t hold him close to my heart.

Later that day we went to the KL Twin towers (with the most amazing shopping center at their base, every big designer in there, amazing!) that were pretty cool, we took about 100 pictures of them, in the light, in the dark with the lights on, every profile! They say it’s the tallest twin building in the world. We wondered if that was a fact before or after 7/11!

We managed to ditch Dan the next day finally, and we went by ourselves to the national museum. Unfortunately, the second floor was being renovated and that was obviously the more interesting bit. We did read though, about all the different clothing attires that the people of Malaysia wear for their weddings, circumcision, everyday life… They also had a whole section about a team of guys who climbed the Everest about 20 years ago, with pictures and comments like: “That’s when we started to be cold!”

We went to see the old main train station that an English architect who had also worked in India designed. Funny, the station is enormous, and it looks like it could still do a good job at being a train station, but it is almost empty. There are no ticket offices, but only a handful of people waiting on the platforms. All the offices are packed to the ceiling with junk that you can see through the windows, and it just looked useless now. Strange that they keep it in this state…

When we got out of there, it started raining, and we ran under one of the numerous road flyovers and hailed a taxi. He took us back to China town and we had some food at the top of a shopping center where there also were small karaoke boxes… Just a tiny little room, soundproofed, and 2 seats and a screen, and at about 2pm, a man was in there with a soda, practicing his “I will survive” or whatever version of it they have in Malaysia! Strange!

After lunch we treated ourselves to a foot reflexology treatment… forget about full body massage, the feet is the way to go! Especially after all the walking we had done that day.

Then we went shopping in that crazy fake things market, and then back to our hotel to meet Daniel.

We left KL the next day, by train, (this time Daniel didn’t follow!) and headed for Singapore.

This will be for the next update, hopefully soon, so I can get this thing really up to date.

We have about 3 weeks left on our Indonesian Visa. Staying on Bali and touring on motorbikes for 5 days, then going up to Java (next island up) and then maybe fly to the North of Sumatra (again, next island up) and back down a bit, and then we’ll probably also fly for Sumatra to Singapore, and spend a few days spending the last of our money there!

Hope everyone is still well, quite glad to know we will be seeing all of you fairly soon now, although our adventure will then be finished…

Take care,

Lots of love from the two of us xxxx

Now it’s time for a Bintang (indo Beer)

Jenny & Steve live from Ubud xxx