Riders on the Storm: Two Weeks in Rainy Malaysia
The island of Langkawi in Malaysia is only an hour and half ferry ride away from Ko Lipe, Thailand. When we left Thailand, it was sunny and gorgeous. As soon as we crossed the border into Malyasia (which, by the way, was our third border crossing by water), we were greeted by the storm cloud above. And that’s pretty much how it went during our next two weeks in Malaysia.
The near constant rain, combined with our excitement to leave Asia behind and start a new adventure, meant that Malaysia didn’t get our full attention. We found Malaysia to be pleasant, but not overly exciting, probably half owing to our attitude at the time and the other half owing to Malayisia itself. Malaysia is the most developed country we visited in Southeast Asia, although there was no mistaking that we were still a long way from home. It also was sort of a culmination of our travels, reflecting religions, cultures and ethnicities we had encountered previously on the trip (the Cape Malay in South Africa, Indians in India, and Asians and Muslims in general).
It had been a long time since we encountered a country that is so ethically diverse. About half of the population of Malaysia are Malays, who, according to the Malaysian constitution, are Muslims who practice Malay customs and culture. The government grants certain non-Malay indigenous peoples such as ethnic Thais, Khmers, Chams and natives of Sabah and Sarawak a special “bumiputra” status. These citizens makes up 11% of the population and get certain rights other minorities do not have, such as the 23.7% percent of the population who are of Chinese descent and the 7.1% of the population who are of Indian descent. While the ethnic groups exist in relative harmony, they don’t mix much and there is resentment from the Chinese and Indians, many of whom have been in Malaysia for generations.
All of these ethnicities present in Malaysia means there is a broad array of architecture (including some with a British influence left over from the days Malaysia was a British colony) and most importantly, food. We struck out with our attempts to find delicious Chinese food (I’m sure it’s out there, we just stumbled upon a bad tourist restaurant when we were famished) but our reunification with Indian food did not disappoint, nor did our foray into Malaysian food. Maybe all of this variety means Malaysia is closer to home afterall.
Langkawi
Our quick two night stay on Langkawi, an island slightly more upscale than the backpacker havens we just left behind in Thailand, was mostly spent on the relatively affordable Cenang Beach, where we fit in a trip to the beach before we were rained out. Probably the most exciting thing that happened to us in Lankawi was our realization that we had spent two days living an hour in the past. We didn’t have a guidebook for Malaysia, and no one told us there was one hour difference in time between Thailand and Malaysia. The locals were just as confused as we were when we couldn’t figure out where the 2:30 ferry to Georgetown was. They kept telling us it left; we kept telling them that it couldn’t have because we were sitting at the terminal the whole time. Confusion ensued until we realized that oops, it was 3:30.
I made friends with the kitty living in our hotel lobby.
Cenang Beach (before the downpours began).
Georgetown
Georgetown is known for its UNESCO World Heritage buildings and multi-cultural food. We fit in a pretty good Indian meal and checked out the buildings around town before torrential downpours put an end to our exploration.
The City Hall in Georgetown
A Chinese influenced building
Perhentian Islands
We made a major detour over to Malaysia’s eastern coast because we heard the Perhentian Islands were fabulous and not to be missed. We spent 6 nights on Perhentian Cecil, the smaller, more developed island of the two. (More developed being relative, of course; the Perhentians are very low-key with just a sprinkling of locally owned restaurants and general type stores in shack-like buildings). Unfortunately (and I’m sounding like a broken record here, I know) we were plagued by storms again, making our decision to stay in a real concrete room at the relatively expensive Shari-La Resort instead of one of the cheap dilapidated shacks a good one. Perhentian Cecil is small. There’s not a lot to do except snorkel, dive, boogie board, and sun at the beach. We worked on our Advanced PADI scuba certification with Turtle Bay Divers while we were there. The weather progressively declined, but we were able to fit all of our required dives in. The constant runoff made the conditions were horrible – so much that we couldn’t even see our hands during our last dive, let alone any fish – which is a shame, because the diving is supposed to be amazing. This just means we’ll have to go back someday. Oh shucks, force me to go back to a beautiful lush tropical island with blue, blue waters. I just hope our return trip won’t require a speedboat ride where us and our luggage get soaked from the pounding rain and the boat is trying to outrun a giant wave about to overtake us on our way to shore. (By the way, March normally is well outside of monsoon season. All of the locals told us the weather was very unusual – just our bad luck).
Our most favorite meal in Malaysia - roti canai. Much different than the roti in India or Thailand, this roti is more fluffy and slightly sweet. Malays eat it for breakfast dipped in a spicy curry sauce.
Chicken paprik from Eawan's Restaurant, which was in rain-avoiding sprinting distance from our chalet in the back of Shari-la's resort. Good thing, too, because Eawan is super friendly and his food is tasty.
The biggest critter on the Perhentians - a monitor lizard.
Coral Bay where we stayed.
We stayed at Coral Bay mostly for its great sunsets, which disappointingly never came out in full force during our stay. Dinner on the beach was still enjoyable.
One fabulous afternoon on Long Beach on the other side of the island.
Gorgeous. (But also really rough, which necessitated us trekking up over the hill - sometimes with our scuba equipment - to board the dive boat from the calmer Coral Bay).
Cameron Highlands
Another highlight of our Malaysia travels was the irresistibly green Cameron Highlands. There are crops all over Cameron Highland’s higher elevations like hydroponic strawberries, but the one the Cameron Highlands is most known for is tea. The green blanket of tea bushes over rolling hills is a beautiful sight. We toured the BOH tea plantation and had a cuppa; chowed down on some tasty Malay and Indian food; and hiked through a mossy forest.
We loved the super cheap Indian/Malay restaurants lined up on the main road. We especially liked these ayom (rice pancake like things dipped in coconut milk).
Nasi Lemak, a Malay specialty. It is rice cooked in coconut milk, topped with a hot chili sauce, egg, sardines and cucumber.
Monkey Cup flower in the mossy forest
View of the Cameron Highlands
A blanket of tea at the BOH tea plantation
Kuala Lumpur
With 1.4 million people, Kuala Lumpur is Malaysia’s largest city and it is also its capital. By the time we rolled into Kuala Lumpur, we were over Asia and ready for New Zealand. Sorry, KL, I’m sure you’re a great city, but you didn’t immediately engage us and so that was that. While we were there, we checked out Chinatown; went to KLCC Suria, a huge mall; and went to the viewing platform of the Petronas Twin Towers (a bit of a snore especially since they’ve already been topped and we’ve been there, done that).
Detail on an Indian temple
Petronas Towers from the ground. They are attractive buildings with their brushed steel and all.
Malay women getting some lunch at the mall food court.
Four Thai Islands
For 24 days in March, we island hopped our way from Thailand to Malaysia, criss-crossing the mainland twice to go from the Gulf of Thailand over to the Andaman Sea and back over to the South China Sea. There was a stretch of 12 straight days where we didn’t hit the mainland, not even to cross the border, moving between islands by ferries of various sizes and shapes. We hit four islands during the Thailand portion: Ko Tao, Ko Phi Phi, Ko Lanta, and Ko Lipe. We had been looking forward to lazy days, and for that, the Thai islands didn’t disappoint, which is why I am able to sum up our two weeks in one post. We had next to zero cultural interactions, and there’s only so many ways to describe our beach bum lives. We visited the islands during the high season and found ourselves surrounded by tourists. Unfortunately, all too many of them were of the young, partying variety, the types to walk around shirtless or hanging out of a bikini hooting and hollering in a rather conservative (and in some of the islands, Muslim) society. The tourism industry is all too eager to cater to these tourists, with shoddily constructed cheap construction tacked up haphazardly next to sewage and water pipes jutting out of the ground, tourist agencies and shops selling the same crap, and most annoyingly, pounding bass music at night. I didn’t expect to be the only ones around, but finding decent accommodation in a quiet location became the bane of our existence. Everything on the islands is more expensive than the mainland and food and accommodation is not nearly as good. But we managed to find some good stuff, we just had to look a little harder. Plus it’s hard to be cranky when the water’s warm and crystal clear, the sand is white and fine, and the sun is shining. Here’s our take (and photos, of course) from the four islands we visited:
Ko Tao
Despite spending 5 nights on Ko Tao, I couldn’t tell you a thing about the island other than it’s great at churning out certified scuba divers at dirt cheap prices. We went there with a one track mind and left after successfully getting our PADI Open Water scuba certification from Buddha View Divers for about $325 a person. Other than that, we saw diddly squat. While we could have made more of an effort to explore, we felt lazy after days spent doing homework for our class and mastering new skills out in the water. So that’s all I have to say about that. (Spoiler alert: we ended up getting our advanced diving certification through Turtle Bay Divers on the Perhentian Islands in Malaysia. More on that later, but if I had to do it over again, I’d probably would have gotten my open water certification through Turtle Bay as well since it was actually cheaper similarly priced [Sean tells me I’m remembering wrong], classes are more intimate and less like a factory, and our instructor Harun was awesome. Nevertheless, the diving schools on Ko Tao get the job done efficiently).
Ko Phi Phi
Ko Phi Phi: definitely winning the award from my least favorite Thai island. You may remember Phi Phi as it was destroyed by the tsunami in 2004. Seven years later, many of the signs of the tsunami are gone, save for new signs displaying the evacuation route. I’m not sure if it was this bad pre-tsunami, but today, it has little charm and it’s crammed full of tourist agencies, trinket shops and clubs. Most people that are there seem to be there to party. In Phi Phi’s defense, we only were there for 2 days and didn’t get a chance to explore beyond the tourist-packed village close to the ferry pier. It rained rather hard while we were there, pinning us in our room and cancelling the boat outing we had planned. And it is a beautiful island, with two crescent shaped bays curving inwards to meet each other. But overall it’s not my cup of tea.
Ko Lanta
Ko Lanta may be the least tropical of the islands we visited, but it probably was my favorite. For starters, it’s bigger than some of the others (but easily circumnavigated in a scooter), meaning that it is less crowded and more spread out. We stayed on Klong Khong Beach on the central western coast, but explored all over the island from the popular Klong Dao Beach in the northwest to the secluded beaches and national park down a dirt road at the southern tip to the less beachy but quaint east coast where the locals live. As we went south in Thailand, the Thai Muslim culture became more predominant, and Muslims operate most of the guesthouses and restaurants on Lanta. The longer we stayed, the more we discovered little hidden gems like Shanti Shanti’s homemade ice creams and sorbets (we tried lime and papaya, chili mango and cinnamon) or Bulan Lanta’s bargain homemade muesli. Our favorite past time on Ko Lanta was sunset watching; there are great sunsets every night up and down Lanta’s long western coast.
Ko Lipe
When you’re daydreaming of escaping to the Thai islands at work, Ko Lipe might be the closest to the picture you have in your mind. Only an hour and half to the Malaysian border by boat and in the middle of a marine reserve, it’s less developed and a little harder to get to than the more northern islands. There’s no pier; the ferry picks up and drops off in the middle of the bay. The water was the bluest and clearest of any of the Thai islands we visited and the sand the whitest and softest. Unfortunately, some of those fabulous beaches can also be strewn with a little too much garbage for my liking. Some people fear Ko Lipe is turning into a mini Ko Phi Phi. Like Ko Phi Phi, motor traffic is prohibited on much of Ko Lipe, and any development that is occurring is shortsighted. It’s also a tad more expensive than even Ko Phi Phi (although we managed to find a decent hut for under $20, albeit without a sink). Hopefully, development won’t run amok, as it is a beautiful gem.
Happy Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day to our moms. We’re sorry we missed Mother’s Day two years in a row! But we’re really excited to see you again soon.
Scenes from Abel Tasman National Park
It’s so easy your grandmother could do it, the guy at the Motueka Top 10 told me when I inquired about the most popular hike in Abel Tasman National Park. While a couple of lazy non-hikers like Sean and me managed the 5.4 mile hike from Bark Bay to Anchorage Bay without any troubles (save for a few grumbles along the lines of hills? no one told me there was going to hills!), I’m not sure I can picture my grandmother trucking along the trail (may she rest in peace). Perhaps his statement should have been qualified that it was so easy a New Zealand grandmother could do it, judging by the sweet 90-something couple we chatted with on a hiking trail in Arrowtown. But what do I know? We passed the 90 year olds in Arrowtown, but a 4-year-old girl kept smoking us on the trail at Abel Tasman.
Abel Tasman National Park, located on the South Island’s northeast coast, is New Zealand’s smallest national park but it is packed to the gills with beautiful unblemished coastline. There are no roads inside the park, so we took a water taxi along the coast to get to our hiking destination and were blessed with one of our few sunny days in New Zealand.
Happy Place, Thailand
Before we headed south all the way to the Thai islands, we stopped at a quiet little seaside town for a few days. The town is called Happy Place. No, that’s not it’s real name, it’s just what Daniel and Helena from the Backpack Foodie christened it after spending two peaceful weeks there in 2009. As he says on his blog, if you ask Daniel nicely, he might reveal the real name of Happy Place to you; he did for me. His descriptions of a small Thai town unblemished by tourism and blessed by fresh seafood reeled me in, and so we set off for a short detour to Happy Place.
Had I known then what I know now, I might have never left. In her broken but steadily growing vocabulary of English, Tchim, the owner of the Coco House, a small local cafe close to our hotel, told me, the islands – very crowded, very expensive. Here – not very crowded, not very expensive. Boy, was she ever right. Don’t get me wrong, we enjoyed the Thai islands – they’re tropical paradise, how could we not – but not as much as we anticipated. More on that to come, but let’s just say traveling in high season makes it hard for the paradise part to shine through.
In Happy Place, on the other hand, nothing gets in the way of its simple pleasures: watching the green lights of the fishing boats bob on the horizon every evening; watching the same boats return in the morning light; eating the fruits of the fisherman’s labors at restaurants on the promenade; hiking up to a great view and dodging thieving monkeys; trying to track down the roving VW bus turned cafe; and listening to the sea lap at the sandy shore.
Happy Place is the type of place that is more likely to be frequented by Thai tourists than farangs. We weren’t the only foreign tourists there, but it wasn’t hard to find yourself surrounded only by locals. We stumbled upon a local fair and besides us, there were only Thai faces around. Sean got a hankering for some bugs and downed some along with a Chang beer much to the amusement of some bystanders. He described them as “earthy” and said they didn’t taste too bad. Blech. I opted for strawberries and doughnuts instead. While we were at the fair, the Thais stared at us in polite curiosity, particularly Sean, as we took our turn playing the fair’s games; we politely stared back at them, trying to figure out why they were sitting in chairs connected by strings to monks up on the stage.
In his post about Happy Place, Daniel wrote that “[i]t’s, sadly, entirely possible that in a few years, we will barely recognize our favorite spot under the concrete of a beach resort” because “like many places before it in Thailand, the vanguard of foreign tourism has already begun its incursion.” Almost two years later, it seems time hasn’t marched quite yet. There’s no banana pancake cafes or booming bass and there’s only one 7-Eleven. Tchim is still there, selling coffee at Coco House and eager to chat about the two farangs that befriended her in her early weeks of operation. The Deemer family still cooks up delectable pad thai and som yam and their cat still scarfs down any of the delicious seafood that it can get its paws on. In other words, Happy Place is still happy.
