Malaysia

I haven't had access to a computer for way too long so forgive me for being behind on the blog.

Malaysia was crazy. We got off the boat from Indonesia in Johor Bahru - the second biggest city in the country. We had planned to spend the day walking around looking at colonial buildings and seeing whatever the city had to offer (not much) while we waited for our midnight train to Kuala Lumpur. We ended up walking over to the state police complex, which was a huge park in the middle of the city with Japanese zen gardens, hiking trails, temple-like structures, and a lot of joggers. We decided that we were actually waaayy too exhausted to see anything, so we sat on a bench and read for a while. Eventually we started walking down the hill to get back into town - maybe to find some food, maybe to find an internet cafe. On our way down the hill a minivan pulled up next to us with two Malaysian guys in business suits. They rolled the window and asked us why we were there.. two Americans with enormous backpacks don't usually stroll around in the state capital's police gardens I guess. They offered us a ride back to the train station. Yeah I know - don't get into a van with two Malaysian guys who offer you candy and ask you to help find their lost puppy.. but they seemed nice enough. So we hopped in. We never got the complete story, but from what I could gather, the driver was a Malaysian business guy and the other one was his friend from Australia who was visiting Johor Bahru to meet up with a woman who was flying in from a remote tribal village in Borneo to do a business deal. Their English was much better than we expected - they started asking us about our travels, where we were going, where we were from, had we ever had Malaysian food, etc... When we told them we hadn't had dinner yet, they said "oh, then we have to take you to the best Malaysian restaurant in town!" They cancelled their plans and took us to a place on the outskirts of the city where they ordered us 5 dished of incredible food and a few beers, which they paid for. They wanted to hear all about or travels and all about our opinions of American politics, they told some great stories about their part of the world, and they dropped us off at the train station - full and happy, but quite confused about our surreal evening.

We waited for a few hours in the sub-zero temperature train station, wondering why no one else was freezing and how it made any sense to waste this much energy on keeping the train station cool when the temperature outside was much more comfortable. At around 1am we hopped on our sleeper train and squeezed into our tiny beds. Luckily I brought ear plugs because the guy in the bunk below me was hacking up a lung all night (Brian wasn't as lucky...) We woke up in Kuala Lumpur and went to find a hostel. The differences between this city and everywhere else we had been were immediately apparent. It was much more rugged, the smells were overwhelming, the people were less Chinese, and the architecture was more interesting. After dropping off our bags at the hostel in Chinatown, we headed straight to the Petronas Towers (the tallest twin towers in the world) to get on line for free tickets to the skybridge. We met some Danish girls on line, with whom we shared travel stories and kept ourselves entertained while we waited. After we got our tickets we went outside to take some pictures of the towers and walk around the beautiful park on the other side of the street. We were approached by some Buddhist monks who bowed to us with their hands together, wishing us peace. They offered me a red envelope and a yellow buddhs-bead bracelet and asked for a donation in exchange for "a life full of peace." I gave them 10 bucks and watched as Novello struggled with them and their badgering - he managed to escape.

Much like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur is segregated into different racial areas, but these ones seemed more authentic. We walked through Chinatown and Little India and saw the Moorish style government buildings. The fact that this is a Muslim country is very obvious in the architecture and the conservative attitude of the people. We went up to the Malay section of town, which was separated from the rest of the city by a huge, walled-off highway. The attitude here was much more relaxed, the food was great, the architecture was very unique and Asian, and we loved it.

We went on our tour of the Petronas Towers, got some dinner, walked around a little more, and went to sleep. There really wasn't much else for us to do. The next day we caught a bus up to the Cameron Highlands. The drive was incredibly beautiful, and it was great to have air condition in the scorching heat. Three hours later we arrived in the Highlands, about a mile high, through a nauseating series of switchbacks. I had been talking to a girl from Slovenia on the ride up, and when we got off the bus we decided to look for a hostel together. From out of nowhere another Slovenian couple latched onto us, and we settled into a great place up on a hill overlooking the town. We went on an organized tour which brought us to a rose garden, a butterfly garden, a starberry farm, a bee farm, and a tea plantation - all important industries of the area, but not too exciting.

The next day we decided that instead of going to Penang, which we had heard was way too touristy, we would stick around and explore the Highlands on our own and then head up to Thailand. We went on a "trek" through the mountains in the Jungle, which was incredible. It was not a well maintained trail, and we had to climb over fallen trees and shimmy across slippery, steep drops where the rains had washed out the clay trail. The trail ended in a rural farm where we walked through working villagers and found the main road again. We saw a sign for the tea plantation we wanted to go to, about 9km up the mountain. While we were waiting for a car to see if we could hitchhike, a Dutch couple joined us and we flagged down a school bus which brought us up to the Boh Tea Plantation. We thanked the driver and said goodbye to the smiling kids and hiked to the top of the hill which overlooked the dramatic rolling mountains of tea trees below us. The temperature up here was a refreshing 20 degrees cooler than the lowlands. We sat down at the cafe, enjoyed an assortment of the local tea (the best tea I've ever had), and took a tour of the factory. When we decided to leave we asked if there was a bus or taxi that could bring us back to the town, but there was nothing available - it was pretty remote - so we left the Dutch and decided to start hiking down. We realized we only had an hour and a half to get back to catch our bus to Thailand, so we decided to start jogging, in hopes that we could catch a ride back into town with the next car that passed. The jog through the steep switchbacks of the tea plantation valley took us down one of the most beautiful roads I have ever been on - even rivaling the PCH through Big Sur. After running 9km back to where we had picked up the school bus, we still hadn't seen a single car pass (except for the full one bringing the Dutch couple back to town), but judging by Lonely Planet, it should have only been 3 more kilometers back to the hotel. Just a bit further down the road we saw a sign that said "10km to Tanah Rata" - we would never make it back in time! Luckily, a pickup truck pulled up behind us and we jumped in front of it to flag us down. A Chinese guy around our age gave us a ride back into town, and we made our bus with a good half hour to spare. We met up with a French kid who was staying at the same hotel, and set off for our night bus to Thailand.