From Hat Yai we got our overnight bus through the border and onto Kuala Lumpur, where we arrived around 5am. Thankfully we were dropped off close to our accommodation and after more or less pleading with taxis to take us the short distance with our bags, we finally took their advice and just walked. We were able to check-in almost as soon as we arrived and went for a wee disco nap since we'd not much slept on the bus.
I woke around lunch time and found a million small bites all over my back! We were thinking this must be bed bugs. We usually sleep on a bed bug sheet just to be safe, but we had been so tired that we'd just collapsed on the bed. This had been, thankfully, our first experience of bed bugs while being away. We put our clothes in to get washed and asked to be moved to another room. We saw later that they had put someone else into our old room!
We took the monorail to Little India which is an area of KL where I'm sure you can guess is full of Indian restaurants and shops. We had some lunch here and bought some lovely Indian sweets from a stall. From here, we took the monorail again to see the Petronas Towers. We had decided against paying the £20ish to get to the top viewing platform and instead settled for taking photos from the bottom and thought we would come back that night to have a drink at one of the sky bars close by which would give us a great view of the towers at night. Unfortunately though, I had been feeling not very well after waking from our nap, and by this point in the day I was feeling very unwell. We headed back to our accommodation and shortly after I started to be sick. I spent the rest of the evening back and forth to the bathroom hugging the toilet. Sorry, I'm sure that was too much information. Thankfully I woke the next morning feeling better which meant we could spend the day shopping in china town. We had only been in Malaysia for two days by this point, but I was already sure I was going to love the place. The people are by far the nicest we have met. They are unbelievably friendly and so helpful without wanting anything from you in return.
That night we took another night bus to Kuala Besut where we got a speed boat in the morning to Perhenian (small) Island. We were dropped of on Long beach and Kay set of to find us some accommodation. After checking in, we spent the rest of the day lying on the beach or swimming in the crystal clear turquoise waters. One of the restaurants at Coral Bay, which is a few minutes walk from where we were staying, shows a film every night on a projector. That night they were showing Horrible Bosses 2 and so we settled ourselves down on the couches and watched our first film in over 4 months.
The next day we did a snorkel trip around the island. We were taken to Shark Point first, where myself and Kay unfortunately didn't see any sharks, but everyone else on the boat had! Gutted! One girl said she saw one so big that she freaked out and came back to the boat early. We stopped at another place after and saw some amazing fish, so big and colourful, it's times like this that I am so unbelievably thankful that I bought an underwater camera. We were then taken to a spot where we saw turtles which was such an amazing experience. Lunch came next which was followed by yet more fantastic snorkelling sites. We had dinner and then want back to the restaurant showing the films so that we could have dessert there and watch The Hobbit 3.
The following day, I had a very relaxing day while Kay did another scuba dive.
We then arrived in George Town very early, having 'slept' on an overnight bus. We headed straight for our hostel, dumped our bags and then went in search of some breakfast. George Town is famous for its hawker stalls and it wasn't long before we found one selling Roti Canai which is Roti with eggs. Some nice local men, who were also having their breakfast there, helped us to order this and also a hot chocolate each. We sat with them and they spoke to us about the Malaysian economy, which was a bit deep for 7am. When they went to leave, they told us they had paid for our breakfast. Our breakfast was so cheap, about 40p each, but even so, it was very nice of them to do that.
Even though we hadn't really slept, we decided to take a map from the hostel and walk around the area we were staying in to see what there was to see. We stumbled upon a festival sight and after talking with some guys who were working there, we found out that it was a world music festival that had been on the previous night but that was also on that night too. They told us that we should take the train to Penang Hill to get the panoramic views over the city.
We needed to make the most of our couple of days in George Town, so we went back to the hostel after that so we could make a plan for the day. We decided to go on the Hop On Hop Off tourist bus which would take us to the bottom of Penang hill and other sights in the city.
From the bottom of the hill you need to take a short train ride up a very steep hill to the top which is 700m up. The views of George Town were amazing and the breeze up there was very welcome. We made it back down to the bottom of the hill just in time to catch another bus. We only went one stop to a massive buddhist temple which was up on the side of the hill. On the way up the many many steps to the top, we stopped at a bit where they had hundreds of tortoise in a pond. There was actually far too many of them for the size of the pond, but it was fun getting to feed them. We decided our last stop of the day would be a bit out of George Town where there was a market, the traffic was really bad though, and by the time we got there, it was shut. We headed back to the hostel and had a BBQ for dinner and then opted to have an early night. We were supposed to go the the festival with the others from the hostel, the guy running the place had told us not to buy a ticket and that we would all just go with some beers and sit outside and listen to the music, but we were just so exhausted by this point that we couldn't bring ourselves to go.
The next day we went to a mall close by hoping to get the lens on Kay's camera fixed. We finally found a shop that could fix it but he was looking for quite a lot, so Kay decided to wait and see if they would do it cheaper in KL. We planned to go to the National park that afternoon but the traffic was so awful because of the Thai water festival that by the time we got there on the bus it was starting to get late. Kay went to a beach close by to do some sunbathing and I went back to George Town to do some sight seeing in the area where we were staying, which is a UNESCO world heritage site.
We ate some lovely food from the hawker stalls for dinner and then watched the first episode of the new series of Game of Thrones back at our hostel.
We woke up super early the next morning to catch the first bus back to KL as our flight to Borneo was leaving the following morning.
We arrived in KL about lunch time but had so much to accomplish that we just dumped our bags at the hostel and headed straight out. First stop was try and get Kay's camera fixed. We went to a massive electrical mall and asked every shop there, but none could fix it, none of them even had a new lens she could buy. We went to another mall to the Nikon shop to see what they could do, but they advised that she would need to send it away and it would take two weeks to fix. We eventually found a place that had one in stock that she could buy, it cost almost as much as the camera, but needs must.
We went back to china town, not before getting on the wrong bus and going in the wrong direction for 15 minutes, and then got conned into buying some iPads. They were crazy cheap (£130) but we thought they were fake which was why they were so cheap. Turns out, we had actually signed up for a mobile phone contract and it took almost two hours to get them to cancel the transaction and give us our money back, all this eating into the very little time we had already.
After finally getting our money back, we had a very quick dinner and then we went to our hostel to get showered and ready to go out to yet another sky bar for a drink and a view of the patronas towers lit up at night.
All this had taken so long that we made it to the bar at 11.30pm, last orders was midnight. It was just as well anyway with the drinks being £10 each!
We met some lovely Turkish guys and ended up going for a couple of drinks with them after the sky bar. We told them we were headed to Borneo the next morning which drew blank stares. Even though I'm not convinced they were entirely sure where we were going, they asked if they could come with us? Thinking they were joking, we told them that of course they could.
They actually came to the airport the next morning, bought tickets and came to Borneo with us!!
The first of many very cheap internal flights in Malaysia!
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