Malaysia
MALAYSIA | Friday, 23 January 2009 | Views [186]
Selamat pagi, apa kabar?
We entered Malaysia
on yet another boat. We had to be quick getting off the boat as the next bunch
were already getting on with their luggage, boxes, chickens, goats etc. We got
our stamp at Tawau immigration, again being escorted past a long row of
Indonesians and Malaysians who were on our boat. We shared a minibus together
with the three Swedish girls from the boat to Semporna. It was quite clear that
they were a bit more aggressive in haggling down the price than we were. On the
bus they had actually informed us that Tarakan, the city we had come from, was
in fact an island. This was news to us, and kind of explained why we couldn't
find any trains to Malaysia.
In Semporna we stayed at the Dragon Inn, a beautiful hotel
on stilts above the water. It had a long walkway where at night some young
Malaysians were having dance offs for entertainment. That night we booked a
trip leaving the next day to Mabul
Island. This is a remote
island about 1 hour by speedboat off the coast of Sabah Borneo in the Sulu Sea and a great spot for snorkeling.
Marco and I rented some gear and went out for a plunge on
arrival. This turned out to be a good decision as we saw some beautiful fish, but
more importantly was our only chance to get out, due to the weather. It started
to rain for the first time on our trip and continued to do so the following day.
What else for us to do on this rainy bounty island than to drink rum and play
games. It turned out to be quite a laugh.
So back in Semporna the following day we decided to hop on a
bus to Sandakan
to catch up with Lahiri again, who was already chilling there with the Orangutans.
At the bus stop we had a laugh with some local kids, or more specifically I was
laughed at by some kids, as I couldn't really handle the hot sauce I had tried.
Never again...even my tongue was sweating ffs.
We met up with La at Sepilok Orangutans Sanctuary and we
couldn't wait for the 3 o'clock feeding session. It was an amazing experience
seeing these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat. They moved so slow
in contrast to the ADHD macaques who were jumping from tree to tree all across
the place.
In the evening we went on a night jungle track in search of
some slow lorises. I turned up in flip flops and our guide just laughed, so I
had to run back to the bungalows to find some boots. We ended up seeing some
awesome flying squirrels which would climb up the massive trees, jump, spread
their wings and glide through the sky. It was an amazing sight. We carried on
and saw a large snake chilling in a tree, some toads, huge ants, but we were
mostly occupied on keeping the leeches from stealing too much of our blood. Good
thing I did go back for those boots.
From Sabah we knew that there were no boats going to Malaysia
mainland so we decided to just head to the airport and buy the cheapest ticket
to anywhere. Turned out they only flew to Kota Kinabalu (same island we were on)
or to Kuala Lumpur.
We bought the tickets and had about 5 hours to spend, so we head straight to
the bar to kill some time.
We arrived in KL in the evening and didn't really want to
spend too much time in a city so directly got a night bus to Langkawi. We didn't
know anything about Langkawi, just that Row and Tau had spent about a month
there and loved it, so couldn't really go wrong for us.
Langkawi is a beautiful island off the west coast of Malaysia close
to the Thai border. The ferry showed hilarious Asian vampire films, but occasionally
we managed to take our eyes off the TV and witnessed some beautiful scenery. We
were surrounded by dozens of uninhabited green islands and clear water.
We stayed at Rainbow lodge with great hosts Eddy, Dan and
Hummy. It's a great island for backpackers...duty free, which means cheap and
lots of fun. I can kind of imagine Bali to be
like this in the early days. A boulevard of restaurants, food stalls, shops and
a beach full of bars. We ended up spending most our days and night outside
Babylon Reggae bar which was a nice beach bar with tunes playing non stop. We
also became locals at a restaurant next door with the craziest host ever named
Michael. He was the kind of waiter who would unashamably pick up his mobile
phone or walk off to play with his cats whilst he was taking your order. He let
us bring our own drinks to his restaurant to save money but again wasn't
ashamed to help himself to our bottles of rum or vodka during the night or take
some beers to his chef. He often would change your order saying "no that's
not good for you, I'll get you something else" and would also openly admit
that his chef was shit. When he was hungry he would go to the kitchen, grab
some shrimps and let the cook in the restaurant across the road cook them for
him. We had such a laugh eating at Michaels and every night our table got
bigger and bigger. We thought it would be fun to invite more people we met
every night at the beach fire so it would confuse him even more. Good times.
We rented out scooters for a few days and drove around the
island. One day Lahiri, Marco and I decided to drive to the opposite side of
the island to a place called Kisap. Thought it would be funny to have a piss up
in Kisap. It turns out there was a golf course there so after a few beers we
drove the scooters up to the driving range to hit a few balls. This was the
most beautiful golf course I had seen in my life. We had such a funny time
there and Lahiri stole the show a few times. His first shot managed to fly over
the ground hit a gutter about 5 meters away and bounced back for him to catch
it. We couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes. Another time he had an awesome
swing and the tee went flying off into the sky, but left the ball at exactly
the same spot. Lot's of fun and we also all
got a few awesome shots after we managed to control our laughing.
Langkawi was just what we needed after travelling around Indonesia and Malaysia for a while, so we had no
problem getting caught there for a week. Had some crazy nights making fires on
the beach and each night the crowd around the fire got bigger and bigger. Good
times meeting great people in Langkawi. I mostly ended up falling asleep first
which was no surprise, but Kelly, Marco and Lahiri mostly had some funny
stories the next day. Like meeting Jens at 10 in the morning who hadn't slept
yet, or Lahiri being spooned by Loki.
So after a week in Langkawi it was time to move on and our
next destination would be Thailand.
We had bumped into some girls who told us that the new government in Thailand had
changed the visa rules a week ago. If you where entering Thailand over
land you could only stay for 14 days. So we were told we could buy a 3 month
visa if we went to Penang, an island about 4
hours away.
We decided this would be a cheaper option for us than border
hopping especially as Lahiri wanted to do the Muay Thai for a month. So the
next day off we went to Penang. We bumped into
a Dutch girl we had met the night before on the beach and who had been to
Michaels with us. We had a few bottles of Vodka on deck and where joined by an
Australian brother and sister who were traveling for a few months. When we
arrived in Penang we decided to meet up with
them that evening for dinner and set off to find accommodation. We ended up in
the centre of Penang where there was some kind
of Chinese street
parade going on. It was pretty cool to see and when asking around for accommodation
a lot of people told us it would be impossible to find something as everything
was booked out. Maybe it had to do with the street parade, but it was really
busy in Penang for the weekend. Nevertheless
the second hostel we entered we found rooms. We checked in and heard a familiar
voice around the corner. It was Jens the funny Finnish dude we had met in
Langkawi, who was also in Penang to get his
Thai visa. We had a session at the hostel, the Dutch girl and the Aussie
brother and sister all dropped by and we had a late night. We ended up just
having dinner at a burger stand just across the road from the hostel and Marco
got lucky.
The next day we got our visas and hopped on a minibus
towards Hat Yai. Unfortunately we had to share the minibus with a very negative
and annoying Canadian dude who just wouldn't stop talking his experiences in Thailand. We
all tried to be friendly but couldn't really care less, so tried to get some
sleep. We got to the border and had to go through a bit of beaurocratic bullshit
getting stamps for leaving Malaysia
and then for entering Thailand
but finally we had made it. We were in Thailand!
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