Swimming with Sharks

April 12th-16th

Before Yagil and I visited the Batu caves, I had to go to the Myanmar embassy in Kuala Lumpur to make sure I would be let in to the country considering my flight was only 5 days away.

The embassy itself was quite hard to find but instantly recognizable by the hundreds of queuing Burmese people eagerly or desperately waiting to speak to a consul. Of course, being a white foreigner allows you to access another line which only requires waiting a few minutes before speaking to someone and filling in the necessary forms.

Despite the fact I had no idea about Mike and my itinerary, what we planned to do or see, or even what Myanmar had to offer; they still considered me a valid candidate and would have my visa ready for the following day.

Before picking up my passport, I made my way to Jalan Petaling, the heart of KL's Chinatown where you can find some of the most convincing knockoffs anywhere.

From there I walked to Merdeka square, where Malaysia's independence was proclaimed from Britain in 1957 and then admired some colonial architecture flanking this sprawling green space.

Since the embassy was located near Kuala Lumpur's golden triangle: KL's main business district; I decided what better time time to visit Malaysia's most famous landmark, the Petronas Towers.

The world's tallest skyscrapers until 2004, these futuristic towers set in a lovely urban park are really quite impressive and actually quite difficult to capture in their entirety without a wide angle lens.

When I finally found a good vantage point, I failed to find a suitable person to take a photo (Mike was still in Singapore partying it up with Loy), so I settled on a crooked photo taken by a spatially challenged Russian woman (at least she tried).

That evening I met up with a friend I had met while doing a day-trip to Jordan's Petra from Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in 2010. Huey lived in KL and is quite the photographer and also an avid traveller. We had a great Malaysian meal and discussed things I should do in Myanmar because she had already been there.

It is truly amazing that after only a brief meeting, we would meet again 3 years later in her hometown halfway across the world. Travelling is truly a gift!

Meanwhile, Mike had finished his stint in Singapore and we agreed to meet halfway on Palau Tioman, another one of Malaysia's terrific duty-free islands. I hopped on the earliest bus I could to Mersing, the jumping off point to Tioman, but for some reason I still managed to miss the last ferry over. I guess I was spending the night in Mersing!

For the rest of the day, I wandered around the scenic harbour and visited the town mosque perched on a hill providing lovely views over this fishing community.

Even though I was there unintentionally, it was still nice to get away from the tourist spots because the locals were very genuine and very happy to interact with a foreigner. After watching a lovely sunset on the beach I retired to my cheap guesthouse and called it a night.

The next morning I caught the first ferry and within a few hours found myself on Tioman. Mike and I had settled on Air Batang Beach or ABC as it's known to Malaysians. Even though I didn't know where Mike would be staying (there was no reliable wifi on Tioman), I still managed to find him within an hour.

After having found a dive shop to go with the following day, we decided to trek from Tekek, Tioman's main town, to Juara on the other side of the island. Our intention was to make it to a waterfall three quarters of the way there, but after several hours of sweating our asses off in the stifling humidity and being bitten by unrelenting bugs, we decided to turn back, go for a swim and have some duty-free beers at sunset corner bar instead.

The next day, we made our way to Blue Haven Divers, the Japanese-operated dive shop we chose to do our diving with. Since Mike and I were the only 2 divers with them that day, we got to choose where we wanted to go.

Our first two dives were at Pulau Tulai or Coral island and this name was not a sheer coincidence: the coral around this island was absolutely stunning. Our final dive was around Pulau Rengis and we definitely saved our best for last. The shallow 12m dive lasted nearly an hour and the whole time we were surrounded by massive turtles and close to a dozen black-tipped reef sharks!

All my previous bitching and moaning of not diving with sharks was finally put to rest. Not only did I see around a dozen, but some swam near metres from Mike and I! To make matters even more incredible, we had the whole dive site to ourselves!

Upon our return to KL , we revisited the Petronas Towers again and I finally got a straight picture in front of them.

I also gave Mike my camera so he could take pictures from atop the Menara KL, which is even higher than the observatory deck of the Petronas; because I was too cheap to go up myself.

Our next country is Myanmar or Burma as it is still known to many western nations. A country that has only recently opened itself up to the west, but everyone who has visited says it is a mystical and magical place not to be missed. As more major corporations and tourists slowly enter this former military dictatorship, it is likely to change dramatically in the next few years, so we wanted to visit before it became another Thailand (not that there is anything wrong with Thailand) and discover it for ourselves.

   

     

Malaysia and Singapore: Off to the Races!

April 5th-11th

The three of us caught the early morning speedboat back to Kuala Besut, where we had breakfast and waited for a bus to take us to the Cameron Highlands.

The Cameron Highlands are just that, highlands that give you a respite from the ridiculous heat and humidity elsewhere in Malaysia. It is an incredibly fertile area with sprawling tea plantations and strawberry fields; and it has a cool climate that allows you to be comfortable in jeans. Yes, jeans!

We arrived in the afternoon and settled into Daniel's Lodge (www.daniels.cameronhighlands.com) while rain started to fall. We were supposed to do a small hike around the area but my hatred of rain made me back out and Mike followed suit. Yagil went out anyways and we'd send out a search party if he hadn't returned in a few hours.

Tanah Rata, the main town in the Cameron Highlands has a large population of Indians and as a consequence, amazing Indian food which I indulged in while Yagil was gone. He did, however, eventually find his way back and we went for Indian food yet again for dinner.

Since we had such a limited time there, we had to sign up for a half-day tour of the area. Our first stop was a butterfly farm. Now this may sound like the fruitiest thing on earth, but there were not only butterflies, but other insects, scorpions, snakes and reptiles; and bunnies, the most deadly of them all.

From there we stopped to look at a beautiful panorama of one of the Cameron Highlands iconic tea plantations covering the area's rolling hills.

We continued further uphill until we reached the entrance of a short trail through a mossy forest.

Our final stop of the day was to the Sungai Palas Boh Tea Estate. This was a tea company started during the British colonial days. We took a brief and rather uninteresting tour of the factory before getting to the cafeteria and trying some of their specialty teas and baked goods while enjoying a beautiful view on one of their picturesque plantations.

As soon as we got back to the booking agency, we hopped on a bus to Malaysia's modern metropolitan capital, Kuala Lumpur. Our only reason for stopping in KL for the night was to hit up the clubs since it was a Saturday night.

We checked into the luxurious Reggae Mansion Hostel in China Town before heading out on the town. We decided to head to Zouk. The club was big, popular and foreigners got in free! The club was pretty fun: packed, good music and they didn't play Psy's Gagnam Style once! Although they did play Baauer's Harlem Shake 4 times!

With very little time to sleep off the booze, Yagil and I caught the LRT to the bus station going to Melaka. Mike preferred to sleep in a little longer and would meet us there.

Melaka is another one of Malaysia's UNESCO World Heritage Sites and was first settled in the 14th century by Indonesians, protected by the Chinese in the 15th century, taken over by the Portuguese in the 16th century, followed by the dutch in the 17th century and finally given to the British in the 18th century.

With so many cultures intimately involved in the development of this city, it is no wonder it is peninsular Malaysia's top tourist draw. Like Georgetown in Penang, Melaka still possesses much of its colonial architecture ranging from Portuguese forts to Chinese temples and Dutch windmills.

Yagil and I checked into Riverside Guesthouse along the Sungai Melaka River and strolled through Chinatown to eat some of Melaka's famous chicken and rice balls.

Following our delicious lunch we made our way to the town square whose red buildings centred around Christ Church and Stadhuys, built in 1753.

We continued along the river until we reached Porta de Santiago and replica waterwheel.

We then passed Stadhuys, a huge red Dutch colonial building before arriving at the Portuguese fortress A Famosa built in 1511.

A staircase led up to St. Paul's church built by the Portuguese in 1521. We explored the ruined church and a small cemetery before heading back to Chinatown.

We took our time wandering down the lovely streets of Chinatown and admiring the architecture. We also stopped several times to try some Nonya (Chinese ingredients with Malay spices and cooking techniques, yes, as good as it sounds!) cuisine when we saw Mike sauntering aimlessly down the street.

From here we went past the Kampung Hulu mosque before visiting Chang Hoon Teng temple, the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia, having been built in 1646.

The tour of multicultural places of worship continued with a stop at Kampung Kling mosque, said to be the oldest in Melaka, followed by a long walk leading us to St. Peter's church, a beautiful building with impressive stained-glass windows.

After walking several more kilometres we ended up at Poh San Teng temple, sitting at the bank of Bukit China, one of the largest Chinese cemeteries outside mainland china, being the final resting place of 12,500 graves dating from as far back as the Ming Dynasty.

We finished our crazy day by waiting in line for an hour and eating at a unique Melaka restaurant serving a spicy peanut sauce hot pot with self service skewers. Fantastic!

The following day we caught a bus to Singapore, the tiny city-state of over 5 million people. We checked into our hotel, the tacky and overpriced 70's retro hotel Re!

A short walk through Pearl's Hill city park brought us to Singapore's wonderful Chinatown. We started off having a fantastic cheap lunch at one of Singapore's famed hawker stalls, food being the only affordable thing in the entire country.

From there we visited the Buddha Tooth Relic temple which supposedly houses one of Buddha's teeth.

To stick to our Chinese temple motif, we then visited the Thien Hock Keng temple, the oldest in Singapore, and then the Hindu Sri Mariamman temple (not so Chinese) to escape the pouring rain outside.

Singapore is an interesting country: although it is attached to Malaysia, its architecture, food and even ethnic demographic (75% of the population are Chinese) differ significantly to that of its neighbour.
Singaporeans even have a unique dialect of English, and although it is their native tongue, I had a surprisingly hard time understanding it.

The country as it stands today is due to the arrival of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in 1819 who secured a British base here to guard the strait of Melaka. In less than 200 years, it is now one of the most modern, clean and richest countries on earth; also with the 3rd highest population density.

We continued our stroll towards Singapore's beautiful Marina Bay and impressive Marina Bay Sands hotel looking like a cruise ship balancing on three sky scrapers.

It was only a short walk away from the city's bizarre icon: the Merlion. Situated at the mouth of the Singapore river, it is an 8.6m half fish/half lion, vomiting water into the bay. Not extremely ferocious but does have a nice backdrop of the central business district behind it.

Our next stop was fort canning park, a nice refuge in the middle of the city where Raffles had built his first residence and botanical garden. Eventually the residence was dismantled and replaced by the present namesake of the hill: Fort Canning.

Being quite pleased with our walking tour of Singapore, we went to the Raffles hotel, an icon of this city state. It was here where the world famous Singapore sling was apparently invented. However, at almost 30 bucks-a-pop, I just tried a sip of Yagil's and considered myself content.

The next day, Yagil went to the Botanical gardens and Mike and I went to the Myanmar Embassy in the fancy Orchard Road district. We then reconvened at Re! where our boat-driving Singaporean friend (from Castaways in Ha Long Bay) Loy came to pick us up and drove us to the Tiger Beer Brewery!

Even though Loy had been born and raised in Singapore, he had never been. Once there, we joined a tour with an American couple from the northwest. We started off by posing with large novelty bottles and old-timey trucks.

It was actually a really enjoyable tour and to finish it off, there was a 45-minute all-you-can-drink portion in their nice pub. It also turns out that at 16S$ for the tour and 3/4 power hour, this was the cheapest drinking in all of Singapore!

Loy then took us to a hawker centre that was the perfect remedy to the litres of beer we had previously consumed and then was so kind as to drop Yagil and I off at the train station to catch a night train back to KL.

It was already time for Yagil to head back to Canada so we spent our last day exploring KL and visiting the impressive Batu caves. These caves are 13km away from central KL and act as a Hindu place of worship

The caves themselves are quite impressive and remarkably huge. To add to the fun, they are inhabited by hundreds of monkeys, one of which almost stole Yagil's wallet!

The caves are guarded by the world's largest Murga statue and house several other intricately decorated Hindu temples.

Despite the fact that Yagil and my time together in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore only amounted to 12 days in total; we still managed to see pretty much everything that these two regions had to offer.

While I wouldn't necessarily recommend visiting them at this pace, it definitely is possible and I have to hand it to Yagil for pushing us slackers to see as much as humanly possible in the least amount of time!

          

    

Malaysia: The Mook has Landed!

March 29th-April 4th

As I made my way to Saigon's public bus terminal through the ever-bustling Cong Vien Van Hoa Park, I stopped when I noticed a Caucasian jogger coming towards me. I couldn't believe it, but it was John, an American I had met on my first day in Cairo. He was currently living in Ho Chi Minh City and training before he went to a Muay Thai camp in northern Thailand the following month.

It had been over 8 months since we had initially met and to see each other at this exact time and place really blew our minds. It never ceases to amaze me how small our world really is!

I then took the bus to my stop and thanks to a Vietnamese pilot also headed for the airport, I was ushered to the connecting bus to the international terminal.

My next destination was peninsular Malaysia to reunite with Mike following his travels in Cambodia and to meet up with my friend Yagil.

Yagil and I have been friends since Cegep (Quebec College), and I personally take credit for introducing him to the wonderful world of partying.

Since that time, we have studied together at McGill University in Physical Therapy; and travelled together to Niagara Falls, New York City, Boston, North and South Carolina; and even in Turkey.

He was looking for an exotic location and I thought Malaysia would be a suitable place to meet up because it has beautiful beaches, historical landmarks, outdoor activities; while still having good infrastructure and western amenities that would not throw him too off guard.

While Yagil and I are very different travellers: I prefer backpacking and he prefers more luxurious holidays; we decided to compromise and find things that pleased us both.

Good Luck!

Our first stop was Palau Langkawi, peninsular Malaysia's duty-free island, and closest thing Malaysia has to a party spot.

Even though the three of us were flying in from different countries, we all had a seat booked on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Langkawi.

We arrived to Langkawi after dark and took a taxi-van to Zackry Guest House on Pentai Tengah. We then moved our stuff into our private room and joined some other guests for some beers.

Malaysia, being a moderately conservative Muslim country, has comparatively high taxes on alcohol and as a consequence, it is quite more expensive to drink than in the rest of South East Asia.

However, Langkawi has had a duty-free status since the 80's to increase tourism and as a result is the cheapest place to drink in Malaysia.

Party on!

After eating dinner and listening to the Malay-Samoan-Kiwi hostel employee run his mouth for over an hour, we made our way to a beach-side bar/club before heading to Sunba Retro Bar, a packed place with a really decent band.

The next day, after a late breakfast, we joined Andreas, a German traveller, and took a taxi to Langkawi's impressive cable-car located at Gunung Mat Chin Chang.

Despite my aversion to cable-cars in China, this one allowed us to see spectacular views over the archipelago of 99 islands and even see Thailand from the top!

We then went to Seven Wells, a series of natural pools where we could cool off after climbing the hundreds of stairs to get to them. We also spent a brief time watching locals flipping into the pools trying to impress us.

On our way back, we were fortunate enough to witness fighter jets flying overhead because our time in Langkawi coincided with an airshow. Pretty cool stuff!

After spending the rest of the afternoon at Tengah beach, we partied with the best of em after playing drinking games at the hostel and then hitting up the same places as the night before, only in reverse order.

We had an evening boat to catch so we spent our last day in Langkawi on the surprisingly beautiful Pentai Cenang. To be honest, I think that this beach was the best maintained and pristine since arriving in South East Asia. Sorry secret beach in Koh Rong, you've been knocked down a spot!

 Andreas joined us on the ferry to Penang, our next island destination on Malaysia's west coast. The ferry itself only took 2 hours and then we proceeded to walk through the historic centre of Georgetown to get to our heritage-home guest-house, Red Inn Heritage (redinnheritage.com).

Despite most restaurants being closed, we still managed to find one of Malaysia's famous Hawker stalls: pretty much a late-night food court selling some of the best and cheapest food that Malaysia's Malay, Chinese and Indian inhabitants have to offer.

Georgetown, located on the north-eastern coast of Pulau Penang was founded in 1786 by the British and was one of their three initial straights settlements with Melaka and Singapore. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2008 and still has many of its historic buildings and charm intact.

We commenced a self-guided walking tour, passing the cathedral of the assumption and St. George's church, said to be the oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia, having been built in 1817.

We then spent an hour in the Penang State Museum to get a history lesson about Georgetown and its multi-ethnic population.

A short walk down the seaside esplanade led us to the remnants of Fort Corwallis and the city and town halls.

The next part of the tour brought us through Chinatown with its narrow, ornate alleyways and some beautiful street art.

We visited the beautifully decorated exterior and uninspiring interior of the Hainan Temple built in 1895, strolling past the Masjid Malayu Lebuh Acheh, built for Georgetown's Arab settlers.

We then stumbled across Khoo Kongsi, a fantastically decorated clan house belonging to the Khoo Kongsi Klan, who we hilariously convinced Yagil started the KKK in North America.

 

This building gives most temples in China a run for their money. Really really impressive.

 

Our next stop was the Kapitan Keling Mosque, which we weren't allowed in due to our status as infidels.

We had some delicious samosas in Little India before visiting the Goddess of Mercy Temple and strolling back along the quaint streets of Georgetown before reaching our guesthouse back on Love Lane.

A hostel employee had promised us a free tour of Penang the following day, but had slept until noon and completely forgot about us. We decided to visit Kek Lok Si Temple, the largest temple in Malaysia instead.

The complex is located on a hill and is as imposing as it is beautiful. To reach the seven-storied Ban Po Thar Pagoda, we had to walk up several staircases, past turtle ponds and hundreds of Buddhas.

After, we took a cable car to the immense 36.5m bronze statue of Kuan Yin, housed in an even larger frame. This was the first time I actually heard Mike say something actually impressed him. From up there we got some nice views of Air Itam and the surrounding hills.

Yagil and I arranged to take a night bus to Kuala Besut, the launching point to the spectacular Perhentian Islands. The bus we got was spacious and incredibly well air-conditioned. It didn't even matter that we had to share it with a group of travelling American Christian Missionaries.

Things were too good to be true when halfway through we had to change buses because of an air-con problem obviously felt by everyone but us, and we were put on another bus with way worse air-con and who dropped us off in Kota Bharu, a two-hour drive from Kuala Besut!

We were forced to pay for a taxi with a German guy which dropped us off at our intended destination. The only consolation was the absolutely incredible sunrise we saw over Kuala Besut.

Eventually, we caught a speed boat to Palau Kecil and settled into our long beach accommodation. It was hilarious to watch Yagil's reaction to every wave we hit on our surprisingly fast boat.

The Perhentian Islands are blissful, laid-back backpacker havens. Their beautiful beaches and shisha/fire-show evenings were beyond divine. The Perhentians, much like Thailand's Koh Tao, are renown for cheap and beautiful diving.

Our first day consisted of us chilling out at Long Beach and me trying to teach Yagil how to snorkel. My instructing him consisted of telling him to breathe through his mouth while keeping his head underwater. That's all there is to it!

The next day, Mike and I went diving with Turtle Bay Divers (www.turtlebaydivers.com), where after countless attempts, I finally saw sharks while diving in Southeast Asia! I saw a coral cat shark and a black tip reef shark. Take that Koh Tao!

That afternoon I did a snorkeling trip with Yagil and saw turtles, black tip reef sharks and it was successful because Yagil didn't drown and I didn't have to rescue him!

Our final night we went to Coray Bay for dinner and enjoyed another relaxing evening on the beach.

Because of Yagil's relatively short schedule (only 12 days), this portion of our trip together was the slower, more laid-back part, allowing us to stay a mere 2 nights in each place. From here, we would only be staying in each city for one night before heading to the next one.

Let the race begin!