Malaysia

So from The Highlands we catch a night bus to Kuantan via a little place called Tapah. In Tapah we wandered around the night market checked out the shark for sale and had some roti, then waited for our bus which was.... late. We arrived in Kuantan 3 hours earlier than expected which makes it 3.30am, hmmm, what to do now..... we sat in a cafe till they got bored and threw us out and then joined the rest of the locals and the cockroaches sleeping in the bus station, cosy. Our connecting bus was at 9am, so not too bad until we went to book it and it was fully booked! Turning into a rather awful journey now, next bus 2.30pm, 11 hours after we had arrived! Wearily we set off, sleepless, stinky and looking a bit worse for wear to chill out in the typical Malaysian shopping mall.
The 2.30 bus arrived at 4.30 and off we went, knowing we had missed the boat to Tioman. A good meal and a bed in a nice dorm everything seemed a lot better.
The alarm went off at 6am and we set off again! We arrived on Tioman which is a Malaysian island south east of the peninsular and very close to Singapore at about 9.30am and got ourselves a nice little bungalow to chill out in for the next few days. We ended spending 4 nights on the island, enjoying the duty free alcohol, the small but excellent beach and some of our best scube diving so far..... still no turtles though! The diving was excellent, some amazing coral and our dive guide was a nutter, Glenn the t-shirt designer.... he kept telling Andy to relax and breathe properly as he was having problems with his buoyancy... it wasnt until the second dive he admitted that Andy's BCD was leaking air as we had told him!
The island was really nice, a lot more built up than the perhentians and a lot bigger with more beaches and accomodation to choose from. There was lots of wildlife too, some huge monitor lizards, bats, spiders and zillions of monkeys that we thought were amazing but the locals found quite pesky as they steal a lot of food, he he! One day a family of about 50 monkeys ran past our room, stopping for the odd photo!
After some amazing sunsets and happy hours we decided we had to leave the island or miss our flights to Indonesia!

After we flag the bus down from Cherating to Kuantan, connect to a bus to Felda chiney, get dropped off in the village, barter with the locals at the cafe in broken english to get a lift, we finally arrive in Tasik chini. Tasik Chini is a group of 12 lakes that are fringed by jungle. We stayed at "Rajan Jones guest house" and were the only tourists there, this being the only guesthouse meant that we were the only tourists at the lake and surrounding village. The accomodation was very rustic and in the sticks so giving us a real sense of adventure, making our way to the toilet could have been a risky business with the amount of animals we could hear through out the night. The area and lake was lovely and the owner of the guest house made us very welcome providing lots of info and very yummy food, although a few to many eggs.

After a couple of days relaxing by the lake we decide to hit the road in search of people, we head for the capital, Kuala Lumpar (KL). First impressions as you drive towards and through KL is how much richer and western the city is with its massive sky scrapers and numerous shops including topshop, marks and sparks etc. We stayed in China Town which houses all the cheap accommodation and is alot more grimy and asian than the ultra shiny KLCC. We find an awesome eatery and use it as our fueling station for the next few days indulging on countless servings of Roti cani (flakey bread and dahl curry) which costs around 15p. We cruised around the city for two days using the underground and sky train systems, going up the petronas towers (the worlds highest twin towers); MASSIVE, visiting the thankfully, air conned plazas with their; shops, which i had to try and hide from zoe, indoor theme parks, cinemas, and ten pin bowling, wich we partook a game of and zoe nearly beat me, not my finest moment! we also walked to the mosks, and citys gardens. the city was very cool and shiny and we really enjoyed our three nights in the big smoke.

So we move on, up north a little to the Cameron Highlands, an old colonial British hill station with countless number of tea plantations dotted amongst its hills and mountains, very beautiful. We look into doing a tour of the tea plantations and highest peak "Gunung Brinchang", and after a look at the cost we decide to go it alone. We set off nice and early after our first decent cup of tea in south east asia, we needed that! We catch a bus to Brinchang and the foot of the 2031 m mountain, take a look up and set off through the jungle with the motivation of amazing views at the top! The trek/climb/scramble/crawl takes us 2 hours. thats two hours of hanging on to tree routes, crawling under fallen down trees walking up no less than a 30% gradient, and climbing over ledges. Pretty tired we reach the top and look out over....... nothing as the mist has rolled in just as we were nearing to the top, never mind the climb was worth it anyway. We decide to walk back the road way. The views on the way down were amazing, rolling hills covered in bright green tea plantations where you could just about make out "tiny" tea pickers doing there daily chores. We carry on down the path another 5 km to "Sungai Palas Boh tea plantation" and another well deserved tea refueling pit stop and to look out at some more fantastic views from there view centre/cafe. We are quite tired now we hitch a ride to a junction from some very nice Malaysians, who picked us up despite our sweaty and muddy exterior and carry on down the hill to Brinchang via some strawberry, flowers and vegetable farms that the Cameron Highlands have in a abundance.
The next evening we were leaving by night bus to the island of Tioman, so we decide to go for a slightly easier walk through the jungle to and beyond Robinson Waterfalls, another great walk with some fantastic scenery.

We made it to Malaysia after the longest stint of travel that we've done to find ourselves in desperate need of REST! We opted for East coast as on the West coast it is the start of Monsoon season. We had a really easy border crossing, made slightly more stressful by the Germanator who did not believe the local taxi men and has a little stress fit. A nice portrayal of tourists for the locals! On to Kota Bharu that afternoon where we were greeted by our worst ever accomodation, literally a prison cell with two lumpy beds, very icky! Plus Andy was suffering from all sorts so he slept and left me to sort our stuff out!
The next morning everything looked much better, bar the Germanator and off we went to catch our boat to the Perhentains. The Perhentians are two islands north east of Malaysia, we went to the smallest one Kecil and managed to bag ourselves some amazing accomodation, which was extra lucky as it is school holidays in Malaysia so everywhere is super busy! It was a little wooden hut on a beautiful beach with amazing views from our sexy little balcolny! We ended up staying for 5 nights and had a well deserved rest. The island was awesome, quite small with two main beaches, one side quiet and one a bit more developed. We stayed on the chilled out side and you could walk through the jungle to the other side, only 15 mins, all very well till you take a moment to look around you and check out the enormous spiders that are literally everywhere! Quite scary and caused me to duck for most of the walk so I did not walk into the webs and become spider food! We also saw Monitor Lizards which are crazy huge, I thought Andy was exaggerating till I saw one for myself, more liike dinosaurs! Bring on the Komodo dragon I say! We also thought we would check out some underwater wildlife as there are supposed to be sharks, turtles, moray eels in abundance, 2 dives later we had seen trigger fish and some more trigger fish (which bite if you enter their territory). Not our luck, the dives were excellent though, we saw loads of cool fishies and got to practice our skills. You could snorkell around the island too and see loads of parrot fish.
So, we dragged ourselves away from the island and went off to experience some real Malaysia, we caught the bus from under the Mango tree to Terengganu with our lovely Irish friend Jo. Terengganu is the state capital and rather wealthy due to the oil production, there wasnt too much to see and it was ridiculously hot but we indulged in some cakes and internet time!
Next stop Cherating, a old time backpaker beach which is now something that resembles a ghost town! A really huge beach and a strip of guesthouses and resorts and mainly Malaysian tourists. There was shark fin soup on the menu in the Chinese and a monkey chained up outside a shop. We spent one day here and decided it was time to move on. There was nothing specifically wrong with Cherating it was just very odd.
So we are about to head inland to go to some lakes and get some city action in KL.