Malaysia

Ha! Malaysia! We have a lot to tell about it since we've spent over a month there. We had a cultural choc on arrival.

Multiple things disoriented us... First of all, the fact that the country is majoritarily muslim whereas all the other countries we've seen in Asia so far are mostly buddhist.

Then, the wealth of the country brutally brought us back to the civilization we know in Europe: overconsumerism, junk food, obesity problems, pollution...

A graffiti in Dublin we saw everyday on our way to work said: "Greed is the knife & THE SCARS RUN DEEP". Malaysia is no exception since more and more Malaysian people want to get more and more money. Here, this is put in evidence through the logging of the tropical jungle... To this waste of (thousands years old) forest, we need to add up the palm trees plantation that we can see everywhere... At the start, you think: "Oh, that's nice, it's all green, it's amAAAAzing!!" but then the more you see the country side, the more you cry... The country side is wasted. Moreover, it's even worse when you meet people who're fighting against this issue and who tells us how bad palm oil is for our health! It's present everywhere so it's easy to overconsume it and it's almost impossible to avoid it. :'(

But they'll have to try harder to make us leave!!! Etienne, who should not be taken for a black truffle from the Perigord, and Aurore, who always keeps her irreducible Gallic temper, are determined to discover and apreciate the culture and the good things that Malaysia has to offer. And we haven't been disappointed ;)

NB: Dear reader, you can continue reading further, we're not complaining anymore after this (or not too much...) :P

Peninsular Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur

Las Petronas

We've been twice in Kuala Lumpur, the capital. It's not a pretty city (have a look at the Petronas towers above for a good example) but there are a few quarters worth seeing like the Chinese and Indian ones, and also a lot of shopping malls with air con (very handy for a cool break ;D).

We fulfilled our duty as tourists and we visited the museum of Islamic Arts and a butterfly farm, here are a few pictures of our visits:

One of the multiple buildings with a Muslim architecture that we can see in KL

Rosace in the museum of Islamic Arts

Butterflies poop

We even visited a mosque by curiosity and ended up in a "trap" layed by a fervent believer who wanted to convert us... His attempt lasted for a good 30 minutes and his best line was that Cat Stevens is now a muslim ?! ;)

Alibaba and Alimama, feeling very comfortable in their stage costumes... :)

A small stop at Chow Kit market, very traditional:

It goes from the sweet and appetizing stalls...

... to the bloody and disguting ones.

Batu caves with its hindu temple and statue...

and its nasty macaques... They look very cute but they're real gangsters!

Penang island (George Town)

We've spent a few days in the town of George (haha) where life is good! We stayed in Love Lane (how romantic is that?! :P). We hung around in the streets with different styles, from colonialist to Chinese and Indian. The city is very nice and is really worth stopping by! Here are a few pics of our stay:

Love lane...

One of the cultural aspects of the city: beautiful graffitis spread around the city.

Yes, you're right! Well done! It's a temple. :D

This one is a temple too but a different kind... Can you guess? Yep, it's a mosque!

We went to see Kek Lok Si temple and its statue of the Goddess of Mercy, gigantic, 46m high!

She did not show any mercy for us since it started pouring buckets of monsoon rain when we were there!

And to finish our stay at George's (haha again), we went to the Botanical Garden hoping to see some beautiful flowers, but we only found wild monkeys there! The macaques were still nasty but the langurs were very cute! Especially baby langurs who are orange, lovely!!!

Cameron Highlands

We carry on our trip in Malaysia in the direction of the mountains, in the center of the peninsula: the Cameron Highlands. It was cooler (25C only ;D) and the climate is favorable to the culture of vegetables and fruits, especially strawberries and tea.

We were a bit unlucky because we arrived there in the middle of the Malaysian school holidays and it was difficult to find a hostel as everything was fully booked or overpriced. We still managed to visit a tea plantation, a strawberries plantation, a butterfly farm and a night market.

Boh tea plantation

Butterfly sandwich, it's full of proteins!

Strawberry-mania: the strawberry is the queen of the Cameron Highlands, all the Malaysian tourists had a big strawberry plush at the back of their cars!

Yummy! Our favorite dessert in Malaysia: pancakes with peanuts, sugar and sweetcorn!

After Cameron Highlands, we went to KL for a short time before taking a bus to Kuantan, where we spent 10 days doing Vipassana meditation. For more information, please refer to our article "Vipassana mediation".

Perhentian Islands

We chose to unwind after our 10 days living like monks :)

Unfortunately, it didn't go very good from the start... After being shaken for 20 minutes in a small boat, the captain stopped in the middle of nowhere and started asking for more money to take another smaller boat... A Russian family and we decided to complain and not to let go. The captain held us "hostages" for maybe 10 minutes, until we finally surrendered and paid the bill... We still had to get off the boat with water up to our knees and our 15kg backpacks! Welcome to paradise...

What we did not know is that it was only a warm up! We arrived on Long Beach, we started looking for a ho(s)tel... Surprise! Everything was either full or dirty... and way overpriced! Since we didn't like the beach (too many bars with loud music and nothing Malaysian), we decided to walk through the jungle to get to Coral Bay which was a little quieter. After choosing a bungalow... hum a shelter falling apart in pieces actually... to spend the night, we moved to the other island the next day. We found the new spot a little nicer but still not like what we expected... In the end, we only spent two days of "semi-relaxation" and we were not unhappy to leave...

Aurore on Besar beach dressed with a Malaysian swimsuit :D

Kota Bharu

We ended up satying longer than expected in this little very traditional muslim town because we had to wait for our next flight to Melaka. We spent our time living "ordinary" days i.e. without running all over the place all day long, preparing diner, watching movies, wasting time on Internet... Nothing special and it was good to feel again the small habits from our previous day to day life. :)

As we didn't play the role of "Super-Tourist", we don't have many pictures except this special one:

Spot the odd one out... :P

Melaka

Melaka town square

Melaka reminded us of George Town that we liked a lot. It's a multicultural, artistic and dynamic city. There's everything to spend a good time! We explored what the city had to offer and we saw a show organized by the city council to celebrate the UNESCO World Heritage day. We even saw fireworks at the end!

We also had very nice food for our taste buds thanks to the Malaysian and Chinese night markets, YUMMY!

Bob and his green taxi! Much nicer than Dublin ones, but are they as much talkative as them? :)

Walking down the river with its original graffitis

A typical Malaysian house in a kampung (kampung = village)

We also went to Borneo Island, still in Malaysia, but it will be for another article. You see, writing an article represents so much work for us long-term travellers that we need some rest now. ;)