Stop 4; Kuching, Malaysian Borneo

Its easy to imagine Borneo as one gigantic primary rain forest but, obviously, this really isn't the case.  Kuching is a city attempting to usurp Kota Kinabalu as the capital, its pretty small (as cites go) without a huge deal going on.  That said, we both really liked it, simple, easy to get around and great street food.

We landed early, threw our bags in our hostel and went out for breakfast and a little exploration.  What we found was a lot more organised (=expensive) tourist trips out to all the nearby-ish nature reserves and national parks.  We quickly headed back to the hostel and spent an age on their flaky internet working out Borneo's bus systems and other ways save a few bob.

Researched to the hilt we hit out early next morning (for a pittance on a local bus!) to catch feeding time at Semmengoh orangutan sanctuary for a first (non-wild obviously) glimpse of Borneo's biggest attraction.  Turns out its fruiting season and, as such, the blighters were happily feeding themselves deep in the jungle; great news for the rehabilitation project, rubbish for us tourists.  Balls.  We did see this great spider though [I'm happy with the most basic wildlife encounter as I'm sure you'll come to realise]

Back at the hostel a passing traveller mentioned that the very ominous looking spire of a mountain near the coast, Gunung Santubong, was actually scalable... This seemed a little far fetched due to its jagged knife edged peak and the lack of mention in any guide or tour.  A LOT more research later we had our next summit planned for the next day.

The information and reviews we found included "incredibly difficult, plan 8 hours to ascend", "great for thrill seekers" and lots of differing opinions on 20' vertical rope ladders... On the approach we both wondered whether or not we my have planned something a little in excess of out ability and/or fitness, she was a beast:

If Penang Hill hurt us then this was a whole new level.  It was an incredible climb though!  Scrabbling for huge sections and loads of vertical climbs in oppressive jungle heat.  These photos won't do it justice but it was brilliant and the sense of achievement was incredible!  Around 2 hours up and 6 total (on an alternative route back all the way to the sea via rivers and waterfalls) and I felt broken.  Big dinner, early night and a whole days rest before the next adventure...

Stop 3; George Town, Penang

So, it seems we were due a reality check after the high fives of the first bus trip.  The journey on from Tanah Rata to George town (estimated 4-5 hours) was not as luxury as the first trip, in fact it included a crippled machine with barely the remnants of a gear box and two bus changes thereafter.  This all resulted in a 7 hour journey, a lot of confusion and Bex losing her camera....

Wrapping the story up early in the tale; we had to stay 4 nights instead of 3 (no hardship at all) and the owner of our hostel (a multi-discipline commonwealth and Olympic athlete for Malaysia, obviously!?!) helped out with loads of phone calls in Malay and eventually drove us the equivalent of a round trip to the airport to recover the camera from the bus terminal.  The man was a total hero, a certain hostel now has two completely overblown reviews.

Anyway, back to George Town, its lovely.  Big cities like KL don't really stoke my boiler, this place was great.  Huge sections are protected by UNESCO world heritage and you can walk streets hardly changed since colonial times.  All the grand buildings in use today are all old colonial buildings too, even the police station (wish I'd remembered to go back and photograph this).

Of course this in the modern day and it has much more going on than that.  The food is rumoured to be the best in Malaysia and I think I'd agree!  There is also a whole swathe street art recently painted on decrepit building ends and odd walls.  Much to my surprise it was actually really entertaining to hunt down and interact with for a whole morning!

Penang isn't too large an island and its not all about George Town, so we grabbed unlimited bus passes and headed out to explore.

Penang Hill sits in the middle of the island.  Great views promised and a meagre 800m above see level, we thought we'd take a gander at that early in our visit... I've posted a more helpful review on TripAdvisor for this one, it was brutal.  To start with [we have since learnt and re-learnt] if something sticks out like a sore thumb then it basically starts from sea level.  Secondly, hills and mountains are a LOT steeper out here!!  We managed to summit both Penang Hill and second unnamed peak (got a bit lost on the way) in under 3 hours but were both broken quite badly...for days.  Thankfully there was a funicular railway down from the odd theme park style summit (there was an owl museum?!?!) which we took back with all the sightseers.  We were probably the only people that day to use the ticket office at the top to get a one way ticket down...

Next day we took the shortest and flattest trail we could (the legs were really not in a good way) at a preplanned visit to Penang's tiny national park.  Short story; our first experience of lovely beaches (though stinger infested) of our trip, and some incredibly lucky wildlife experiences.  First up a 2m monitor lizard leaving its sun warming to swim off into hiding in the sea (so incredible to me I didn't manage to capture even a rubbish photo).  Second a troop of dusky leaf monkeys which we watched for about 5mins [we not encountered anyone, even in latter travels in Borneo, who has seen them], incredible!

Our final act was a 5am taxi to the airport as we jetted off to Malaysian Borneo, very happy that we didn't skip most of the peninsular as so many do...

Stop 2; Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands

So, let's roll back the weeks shall we.  We both got a bit chuffed with ourselves for figuring out how to get the bus up to the Cameron Highlands - its in the middle of Peninsula Malaysia (4 hours north by bus) and a million times cooler at an altitude of around 1400m (I think).

As much as I liked KL this turned out too be far more to my liking, a lovely little place oddly akin to a town in the Alps:



It was a great few days away from the heat and the hustle and bustle, excellent walking along jungle trails and bagged our first summit (Gunung Berembun, 1840m).  Bad weather prevented another summit, but we did befriend two local dogs who came on a 4 hour hike with us through the jungle...I'm not sure this will be bested in Bex's opinion!  A quick tourist trip to tea plantations, strawberry farms and the summit we could not hike and we were on another bus north again....



(Also spotted our first wild monkeys; a troop of long-tailed macaques high in the trees - very exciting at the time, but the "jungle mafia" are VERY familiar to us after a month in Asia!)

First stop, Kuala Lumpur!

[So, It's been a long time since I posted this and, if possibly only for my own reference I've decided to revise it... completely!! - I had no idea at the time (or reference point really) what a great city I was exploring, it's taken a LONG while to learn to appreciate cities, I'm getting there!  SJT 04/06/2015]

So...13 hours flying without sleep and then 13 sleeping, thank god the hostel room had air con!

The hostel was basis, really basic, but the lack of windows was a dream for getting over the flight in.  Don't get me wrong, it was dreamy flying with Emirates... I just didn't actually do any dreaming.

It actually took a while to reach the hostel too; a few screenshots of the hostels location on my tablet might not be all we need going forward, maybe "banning" taxis for the off wasn't such a great idea either.  Anyway, we made it, it had a bed.  Sorted.

We rose in the evening to feed and got totally confused ordering food and even more attempting to pay for it [the latter would become a theme in Malaysia].  Nevertheless we had completed the basics one way or another, hazzah for us!!!  Now back to bed.

Next morning, in outrageous humidity, we started to stretch our backpacker wings and, for me at least, push comfort boundaries.  We risked life and limb crossing roads and then ventured onto public transport for the first time (all in the effort to shun organised trips and do it ourselves).  Turned out the metro system blows ours out of the water and it's a piece of cake!! - little LEDs light the way on a map in the coach so you know exactly where you are!!  Visitors to London would no doubt love to see this on the underground!

The destination for this little adventure was Batu Caves; no doubt the first of a crazy number of temple visits before 9 months is up! - not a bad start though, at least to my eyes!!  Some of the craziest sized statues you can imagine, a shed load of monkeys and my first near death experience... not bad for a few days in.

Once you've climbed a LOT of stairs and avoided all the monkeys, you arrive at the cave/temple proper.  The cave's "roof" is a massive open sky 50m up, edged in only partially visible vegetation.  That vegetation includes palm trees.  I know this as a coconut fell all the way down and shattered on the cave floor about 1 foot in front of me.  It actually took me a moment to fully register what happened; I was trying to work out why I had such a sharp pain in a rather private area and why there were monkeys everywhere... as it turned out some of the "shrapnel" had struck me in the nether regions and the monkeys were gathering up the unexpected free meal.  Bex obviously found this hilarious... as did I actually!

Over the next few days we visited a few odds and ends, started to learn a little language, got a lot more comfortable with the restaurants, markets and haggling; we didn't get much used to the temperature and humidity though - it was time to leave and quickly find somewhere cooler, and more mountainous!!

And so it begins...

Bex and I have taken the plunge and are off backpacking!!  the plan is to keep some kind of journal via this blog - hold the excitement for now (having trouble enough working out how to use this site)...

[This is, in fact, the second site I've used to host this and I', still not totally happy with it!! - you would have thought they would optimise this things for travellers!??!  sigh...]