As you know, end of June we flew from Indonesia to Kuala Lumpur. We stayed 2 days in Kuala Lumpur and spent most of our time discovering the area around China Town and Little India. It is simply what we enjoy most, Â strolling along these colourful streets full of life and great food. We knew Malaysia is famous for its diverse food, as there are lots of Asian ethnities that immigrated to Malaysia. We got our first taste of it in Kuala Lumpur and loved it. We also watched the Germany vs USA game in a German bar in the Golden Triangle district. It was full of German expatriats and students and you could tell that they live in a little bubble here in this district, while real Malaysian life is going on somewhere else.
After 2 days, we left Kuala Lumpur and made our way to the east coast, Pulau Kapas island specifically, to spend my birthday there. On the way there I caught my first bad cold in the freezing airconditioning bus trip. So while we spent 3 days on another quiet lovely island, we read books and slept most of the time. My birthday was still lovely though. Mathias was just amazing, managing to surprise me with a special fruit birthday cake and birthday song from the staff. After 3 days, the worst of my cold was over and we were excited to go back to the mainland and discover some cities.
We first went back to Terengganu. The explanation in the travel guide probably describes it best: fishing village finds oil, money flows in, modernity ensues, dominated by an Islamic community. And that is what this city is. You see old run-down houses next to high-rises and a harbour trying to show off the wealth, while the water channel looks disgusting and smells like shit and waste water. It is a very strange mix. Because it was Ramadan while we were there, we ended up in Chinatown again to get some food during the day. Chinatown there is a very beautiful district though. The rest of the time we spent on the market discovering local specialties or in the internet cafe planning our further travels.
And this brought us to Penang, the island on the upper west coast. Even though it was an island again, our destination was Georgetown, the historic city with Unesco heritage site status. To our luck, when we got there we learned that the city was celebrating its Unesco heritage status with a big festival that weekend. Perfect timing! Historically, Â Penang was the waterway between Asia’s two halves and the outlet to the markets of Europe and the Middle East. It created a place that seems to have everything, depending what you are looking for. From modern Western shopping malls to expensive mansions and restaurants to old Asian houses and small street shops and poor run-down houses.
It made this place one of Malaysia’s most tolerant, cosmopolitan and exciting, especially when it comes to food. And oh my god, how incredible the food was. This place is basically a massive open kitchen with fantastic smelling food everywhere you look. You could spend weeks there, trying to taste everything. We will post our favourites in the recipe section.
Apart from the food it was great to see all kinds of ethnities and religions living together in the same place peacefully. Just as proud of their own culture, as respectful of the culture of their next door neighbour. Â A leaflet that we received visiting one of the mosques there read: One God, one humanity, one religion, many prophets. Thinking of the current world conflicts, I wish more people would see it that way. Â We also watched the Germany vs France game in Penang and once again were amazed about the Malaysian enthusiasm for the German team.
After 4 days in hot Penang, we were really looking forward to cool down a bit and thus travelled to Cameron Highlands, the mountain region which is known for its big tea plantations. We took a morning bus and arrived in Tanah Rata mid afternoon. We got out of the bus and were immediately glad we made it here. It was about 22 degrees and less humid, which felt incredibly nice after weeks of over 30 degrees and humidity. After we dropped our bags at the hotel, we walked through the town and realized that this only took 10 minutes. There is not much to do there other than use it as a base for hiking tours. As Mathias was suffering from digestion problems since 1 day though, we took it slow. Not that we had much option anyway, since only 2 tracks out of 10 were actually open. The rest was closed due to land slides. So we went for a small walk in the woods the next day around Tanah Rata, but were quite disappointed. It was not particularly beautiful, nor unique nor special. It felt like the government tried to create a track for tourist just to have a track there. At least Mathias started to feel better later in the afternoon which made us decide to go and hike up the highest mountain in the region the following day. When we woke up the next morning, Mathias felt great but I was starting to sneeze again. Was there another cold coming, how was that possible? Anyway, it wasn’t very bad, so we decided to go ahead with the hike.
We started hiking up the mountain through a really nice mossy forest. It was nice and cool and would have been a beautiful hike, except that I could feel the strain on my body which was obviously fighting with something else. I did not want to quit though, so we took it really slow. After about 1 hour the track was getting really muddy and the path was basically nothing more than climbing over fallen down trees and big roots covered in mud. It was very exhausting for me, but there was no point turning back. Going forward was shorter and we wanted to have the view over the tea plantations. So we went up and up and finally made it to the top, to have a view covered by clouds! Oh, it was quite disappointing. But this is part of traveling, not everything will be perfect all the time. Little did I know then, that we will have another lesson of this coming up soon. So after a break we walked down the way along the street through tea plantations.
It was a nice sight, but again not stunning. There are much more impressive plantation sights in Asia than that. In the end it was quite a long day with 6 hours of walking and my body was starting to let me know that it wasn’t a good idea. By the time we got back to the hotel, I was feeling really ill and weak and felt like a fever was coming, even though my temperature was normal. I still started to worry a bit. This was my second bad cold wihin 2 weeks. I had just recovered from my birthday cold. What then happened though, Â is still a big mystery to us. Mathias will tell you about it himself.