A quick browse throught Malaysia

We are just about to leave Malaysia.

We spent 2 weeks in this country and we have a lot to say. Here are just a few "malaysian stories and pics".

Chinese Malaca;

A myth for sailors, this historical city doesn't quite live to its reputation...
There is some really nice old chineese shophouses, and the chinatown definitly got a feeling about it...but a lot of historic places have been erased by new developments and the others have been "disneylandised" to suit local tourism taste...

Anyway, we enjoyed the quiet atmosphere of our homestay, in an old shophouse, complete with inner courtyard and sculted panels, and walking in the old streets...

Melaka; old chinese shophouse renovated into restaurant and hotels

Multiethnic Kuala Lumpur

Kuala-Lumpur (KL) is a bustling city...but is very well organised for an asian metroplis; underground, buses...transports are really easy and efficients. Downside of this is that it is not very easy nor enjoyable to walk in the city center!
KL host a very multietchnic crowd...but weather they are indian, chinese or malays...everybody wears the latest fashion, sports fashionable haircut, plays with the latest mobile phone and speaks english (for the youngest, even between members of the same

community!).

Petronas Tower;

Have you seen "Entrapment" with Connery and Zeta-Jones?
This is the Petronas Towers!
We visited them...but the most impressive wasn't as much the view as the exhibition about the construction (We ARE civil engineer, aren't we?)
A trick to remember to avoid a construction job being late; give one of the tower to a south-korean contractor and the other to a japanese one!
The result? 1 floor every 2 days!!!
Did the one who finish last commit hara-kiri?

Cars...

One thing which is quite chocking when you arrive from Indonesia; nearly no more motorbikes...only cars!
They even have their malaysian cars, made locally; Perodua and Proton, that can be seen everywhere!

Buses...

Another thing, which is quite chocking when you arrive from Indonesia; the buses are comfortable (only 3 seats over 1 width), new and climatised.
Moreover, everybody has 1 FULL seat and the luggages go in the trunk!!!

Cameron Highlands

After spending Chinese New-year in Kuala, with Anabel, we decided to burn off all the good chinese food, doing some hicking...
The ideal place for that seemed to be Cameron Highlands. They call it a Hill Resort and it's like a Ski Resort (at least the french ones) without snow; ugly big buildings which DO NOT blend in the wonderful scenery, high prices, holidaying families (chinese new-year holidays), traffic jams and queues everywhere...
We were quite unlucky to hit Chinese new-year holiday, because it seems that otherwise it's quite a relaxed place...

Anyway. We did 2 nice hikes. One in a NZ-like forest and the other one in one of the tea plantations.
The scenery in itself justifies the crowds!!! Luckily for us, those crowds are more interested in the Tea Shop which you can reach by car, than by hiking up the hill...

This is our first tea-lovers stop. We loved the seren atmosphere of the tea-covered hills and learned a lot about tea culture and cultivation.

We are looking forward to taste the Laos and Yunnan "crus"...

Perhentian Islands.

Trying to get out of the crowd, we headed to Pulau Perhentian, in the China sea.
The malay name of this little group of islands means "stopped islands"...so we hoped to find a laidback atmosphere...

We actually found a very busy beach resort, full of european tourists (amongst which the english gap-yearing-heavy-drinking-loudly-flirting crowd and the go-back-to-the-wild naked germans...)

It was hard to find a place to stay the first night...and we had the feeling of being like sheep; staying in the same beach bunglows, eating in the same overpriced restaurants, diving with one of the 20 outfits of the place...
Not a very nice feeling after Indonesia...
But we slowly got used to it.
We found a jungle trail leading to some deserted beaches(that even the german didn't find!) and did some very nice dives.
One of the dives was in a wreck, where the atmosphere (and my wild imagination...) transported me to the XVIII century, although the wreck is only 6 years old!

Pulau Perhentian Kecil, Coral Beach

Overall it wasn't that bad...
Actually, I am being fussy and SPOILED...It was actually very good to catch up with the sea, the diving and a New-Cal sort of life style...

While some are working...

Kota Bharu, Kelantan, North Malaysia.

This is our last stop in Malaysia, where we did our Visas for Thailand.

This town is much less touristy, as most tourists use it as a transit point for Thailand.
Kelantan is a mostly muslim region, where charia is enforced, but although the muslim police patrols, the muslim law is adapted to the Malaysian way...women can drive, we saw couples holding hands in the street...

In this town, we found a very friendly atmosphere. We caught up with the spontaneous smiles and warmth of the malay people, which we loved so much in Indonesia (the people from Indonesia and the malay people all come from the same origin in Borneo)...

On our first day there, we were interviewed by a group of young girls, as part of their english course. We spent about an hour chatting with them around a glass of iced tea, and we learned a lot about Malaysia...

These young girls where clever and ambitious; 2 of them wants to become doctors, 1 is taking up a career in biochemical industry and the fourth is considering engineering...

If they read this; I thank them for the good time we spent together and wish them success in their studies!

Hajar, Sabati, Najwa et Asma. 18-19 years old and ready to conquer the world!!!

All in all, Malaysia is a very nice country to travel in, very organised, with friendly people.
This is also a very multicultural place, with indian, chinese and malay triying to live together...which makes for a very complex society, which we got to understand a bit better...but still find a bit confusing!

Highlights of the trip will definitly CNY in KL with Anabel and her family and our stay in Kota Bharu.

Market in Kota Bharu

We are heading to Thailand tomorrow, slowly making our way up the peninsula towards Bangkok.
In the plans, we have; jungle and islands; hikes, dive and kayaking; partying in Phuket with Phillippe...and some cultural sightseing in and around Bangkok.

See how hard we are trying to make this blog interesting?

We send you a tea scented wind and a ray of South China Sea sun

04:36 - 1/03/2007 - Ajouter un commentaire

Commentaire sans titre

Bravo pour le bon exemple que vous etes en train de donner a deux copains, un allemand et un nepalais voyageant avec moi en Inde> Ils vont certainement creer leur site a votre exemple. amities d un kine globe trotter de passage par New Delhi.

ericlon@hotmail.fr - 02:59 - 15/03/2007

Thnx.

Thnx to ramian n heidi..Nice blog..
N thnx for accept our interviews..
we had a nice moment with both of you..
and our madam,says that our presentation quite good..-Sabati

Anonymous - 09:19 - 19/03/2007