But I digress, where have we been and what have we been up to? Well since our last post my Mum, Chairman and his tapeworm flew back to London and we stayed with our Goan friend Joe for a week finishing the painting job on his beach shack that Alex and my mum had started. As you can see it is a mermaid, top half lady bottom half fish (highly impractical).
On our last night we went for a meal with Joe who then invited us back to his shack where we spent the late night and early hours drinking Kingfisher and Old Monk, listening to the sea, reminiscing and putting the world to rights before burning our arms on the oil lamps and biking it back to the accommodation Joe sorted for us. Thanks for an awesome night Joe! From there we had a short stop in Mumbai during which I had intended to visit the same school as my lovely head teacher, Mrs. Wood, but stupidly I had not realised that our dates coincided with Diwali and the school was empty.
We left Mumbai for Singapore, which reminded me of a song Pete sung for us on our wedding bus, I can’t remember all the words but the end of the chorus definitely rhymed with ‘pore’. Although we only spent three days in Singapore, we both felt it was a place we will visit again. Mindblowingly modern with an alarmingly large number of young people and lashings of style. Alex accurately described it as ‘like living in an ipod’. The food was out of this world; pigs trotter in vinegar was my favourite although I was not allowed to try the turtle soup. It seemed as if Singapore was not trying to imitate the West but rather, aiming to better it. Reluctantly we left Singapore for Malaysia. We were slightly gutted as we had intended to go to the Perhentian islands off the East coast but flooding meant this was not possible. Instead we took the most luxurious of coaches up to Malaka on the west coast of Malaysia. It’s not often that I have excess room in my seat when on a coach, but this thing was immense and each seat came with a massage function (but unfortunately no happy ending feature).
Our guesthouse in Malaka was absolutely lovely with incredible free fresh coffee. We chatted with the owners and their friends, a French guy named Coco and his wife who had both travelled the world making short, informative educational programmes for Chinese schools. We were made to feel really welcome and given loads of tips about Sumatra by Coco, the really friendly French guy (maybe French really is worthwhile Debbo). Seeing as my Berghaus bag had broken already we decided to stay in Malaka for an extra day while we took it to be sent back to England, this also allowed Alex to extend her 100% record of post offices visited in each country. After our post office trip, a visit to the local pool and my required haircut, carried out by a local barber between cigarettes, we did what any decent Brit would do. We saw a queue and we joined it. As we neared the front we saw a collection of metal tables each with a hollow in the middle into which was placed hot, steaming satay sauce. We saw locals piling great skewers of raw meat, fish and occasionally vegetables into them. We were slightly unsure of what to do but luckily two local people beckoned us to join them. We chatted in between king prawns and found they were from our next destination, KL, and they insisted that we ring them on our arrival so they could show us the real KL.
Although we were told that KL was a shoppers paradise we were not that impressed, in fact neither of us were sold on the city, with the exception of the Petronas Towers which as much as it ethically pains me to say, were awesome and the indoor theme park inside a shopping mall. However, our impression of KL was to improve greatly when we spoke to our friends from Melaka, Angelique and Swee-Boon. They went out of their way to provide us with one of the most memorable nights of our trip so far. They picked us up from our hostel and drove us to the coast, over two hours away to a seafood restaurant owned by their friend. The fresh juices were great, the King prawns were huge and the crabs were fresher than Janet’s. We were really made to feel at home and had eaten our fill... or so we thought. After the two hour drive back, they insisted on stopping off at a fruit stall where they bought us a selection of traditional fruit and showed us how to peel and eat it. We especially liked a red hairy fruit called a rambutan and a smaller round one called a ducu and our friends showed us some tricks to opening them that were unknown to us. The last one we tried was a prickly melon shaped fruit, known in Indonesia as the ‘King of Fruits’... the Durian. It is known for its pungent smell, so much so that it is banned from all public transport and not allowed in airports. Some people like it so much that they become addicted to it and it is considered a delicacy. It is safe to say that we are not some of those people; the smell was repugnant, the texture was like biting into slightly hardened brain and the taste was initially of off cream and it got worse from there.
As if the hospitality Angelique and Boon had shown us was not enough, they insisted on taking us out for lunch before we left for the bus station the following day and we were treated to more delicious – and weird – food, including ice cream with sweetcorn and kidney beans in it! (Apparently invented after parents’ attempts to coax their children to eat fresh veg). Throughout the whole time they would not let us pay for anything and their intelligent, humorous and interesting conversation made them perfect company. Thank you both for making our time in KL so enjoyable.
From KL we began an epic journey to the island of Langkawi, off the West coast of Malaysia. We began by monorail, then a short taxi ride to the station. Although we’d been told that we’d have no trouble getting direct night-bus tickets, our hostel owner ‘Suzie’ had not reckoned on every Langkawian in KL wanting to get back home for the largest Muslim festival of the year, ‘Hariraya’. All buses were full. Luckily another bus had been put on that only left in 3 hours time and went within about half an hour of another ferry port that also serviced Langkawi. The bus was really comfortable and other than the night bus driver’s seemingly never ending love for bass heavy trance music, the journey was good. We arrived at ‘Alor Setar’ at 4.30am, a little early for the bus to the ferry port and the ferry, which did not leave until 8am. Luckily we met a really nice guy on the bus going home to Langkawi for Hariraya, who looked after us well and we even took the same ferry across. After an hour-long minibus ride to the part of Langkawi we wanted to go to and a 45 minute walk in the searing heat we could finally relax. It has to be said, on first impressions, regardless of the 20-hour trip to get there, Langkawi was stunning.
We decided to rent a car as at £5 a day it was within our budget, even though we had to fill the tank (£8). This enabled us to travel round to some of the most amazing waterfalls we had ever seen, including one with a natural water-slide. It wasn’t advertised but I was invited by a couple of locals to slide down some rocks, promised it was safe so thought why not. A risk worth taking, it was awesome.
Next-door to us were two Dutch girls, (a great opening, but a pretty timid ending) one was a teacher and we went out for drinks and dinner. The steak was so good that we decided to stay in Langkawi an extra night so that we could have it again. They are in the top two steaks I have ever eaten.
After we had rested and recharged we took a plane to Penang, stayed one night, ate at a brilliant food market (I just don’t get why these do not exist in the U.K.) then a further flight to Bukit Lawang in Sumatra, ready and rested for some full-on adventures.
