Malaysia (Part Two - Cameron Highlands and Kuala Lumpur)

We arrived in Bringchang, a town in the Highlands, right as it started pouring. As the Highlands name implies, we were in an elevated part of the country, which broke the humidity from the lowlands into bouts of rain each day. Since we couldn't start any of the hiking activities that we wanted to do, we had the perfect opportunity to hit some of the “tourist” attractions here. We quickly learned many are a bit tacky, albeit fun, and is more geared towards families than a middle aged (Nicole wrote "middle aged," Kyle thinks we're still young), adventurous traveling couple (I think we can all agree we fall in to middle aged now?). We started with the famous Big Red Strawberry Farm where after exploring, we of course had to try nearly every food on the menu (they had strawberry EVERYTHING: waffles, ice cream, milkshakes, tea, scones, pancakes, etc). We ventured through the greenhouse on the way out (they also had a cactus area and a small, weird zoo). We got Chinese food for dinner (again, there is a very large presence of authentic Chinese food in this area). That evening , it was time for Kyle's stitches from Thailand to come out, so we stopped by a 7-11 to buy some scissors and Nicole (very carefully and with great expertise…..) took them out.

Quick note about the Cameron Highlands: this area was a former "hill station" (town in the mountains) established during British occupation of the country. It was created as a vacation spot for the British to get away from the heat of the lowlands, and it is still used as such for the locals to this day. We think the tackiness comes from it always being a tourist trap, since day one...

The next morning we got up early to try and beat the rain for a hike. We had purchased some noodle soups at the 7-11 and ate those for breakfast before navigating to the trailhead. There were a lot of conflicting trail reports and trail closures with others reopening, but after 30 minutes we set out on the correct one. This trail ventured through the “Mossy Forrest”, which is one of the larger attractions in the area, though the official tourist park area was closed for COVID. While the hike ended up being quite a bit longer than some of the trail reports indicated, it was an overall excellent hike - equally challenging and beautiful. As the tourist park that the hike finished near was closed, we decided to walk a few more miles to the BOH tea plantation. We made a few dog friends along the walk and had a local guy stop us to ask to take a selfie as well.

We walked past a lot of the actual plantation on our way to the tea house, and enjoyed sitting and sipping the tea (6 ringit, or $1.50, for a whole pot!) on the observation deck as we overlooked all of the greenery. We then looked at the 4 mile walk home and the rain clouds rolling in, and decided we better hit it. About 1/4 mile in, the sprinkling began. Less than 2 minutes in, a Malaysian couple pulled over and asked if we wanted a ride. They ended up being one town past us so they were headed in the same direction anyhow, which worked out nicely. They told us they try to come up to the Highlands every couple of years in shoulder season and told us we picked a great time. They said they avoid high season at all costs and even worse than high season is school holidays. As we mentioned previously it is a great family destination and very kid friendly - so we weren’t surprised by this. We chatted with them about their travels and they asked about ours and overall, it was very lucky for us as within 5 minutes of them picking us up it was pouring.

For dinner we decided to try a “Steamboat” Restaurant. There were a staple in the area and we couldn’t walk down the street without passing a dozen of them. This consists of ordering random noodles, vegetables, fish, meats, and tofu and a base of soup in a boiling bowl over hot charcoals that you can mix and match to your hearts desire. Everything is raw (even the meats) and you wait for it to cook in the soup before you set it on your plate. Kyle tried to add a pepper that might have been SLIGHTLY too hot for him, but we quickly fished it out and added it to Nicole's plate. We made a spectacle of ourselves, but had a wonderful time and were very content heading home….until we passed “Will's donuts“, where we obviously had to stop to stuff ourselves even more.

We slept in a bit the following morning, but we then decided to rent scooters for the day in the area and hop from tea shop to tea shop (or plantation). Again, we were trying to gain some scooter practice for a future, to-be-explained, adventure. On our tea shop tour we drank A LOT of caffeine, got some good practice on scooters, and got absolutely poured on. Also, there was a pick-your-own strawberries farm that captured our attention. While it was way too expensive, we had fun strawberry shopping! We enjoyed every minute of the day, and found a local market for dinner where we got our first “bag” of coffee (if you order it to-go here, you get a bag instead of a cup) , a chicken saucy hotdog, and some noodles. We hurried home through the rain and enjoyed our meal back at our hotel. This hotel room was much nice than our previous one, and ran us about $14 per night. Another thing about SE Asia - hotels and guesthouses are as cheap, if not cheaper, than hostels so we find ourselves staying in more hotels until we are really craving the backpacking atmosphere, at which point we seek out a good atmosphere hostel.

We were set to head out the next day, but our bus wasn’t until 1:30 so we decided to squeeze in a morning round of golf - because why not? We were shocked to find the green fees to play were $17 a piece so we assumed it would be very reasonable. We didn’t realize clubs would be $18 to rent as well (while we know that’s not expensive by US standards, it was A LOT more than we were expecting). We also paid $3 for balls and tees, and this course ATE balls. Nicole lost 5 (luckily we found 2-3 along the way). We even watched a groundskeeper fish her ball out of a stream as soon as it landed (note that the course was swarming with random people picking up balls, so if you didn't hurry to a wayward shot, it was gone forever). We assumed he was just getting it for her, but he looked at us, pretended he had no idea, and walked away to sell the ball to someone else. While it was a beautiful course, we were in the rainy highlands so many parts were wet and muddy, plus we were on a time crunch. Luckily, we finished with time to take a shower before check out (thank goodness for 12 pm checkouts), and then headed to a nearby town for our next bus to the capital, Kuala Lumpur.

We were told that, as a backpacker, we would not want to spend much time in Kuala Lumpur (the locals just call it "KL"), so we only booked a room for two nights. It's a big, modern city which has lots of things to do, but not necessarily the typical things we shoot for. However, we had started the Vietnam (or alleged next country) e-Visa process earlier in the week, and still did not have final approval (there was a weekend and Vietnam holiday that shut down Immigration for some time), so we had to extend for an extra day...then another....but we decided to make the most of it!

In KL we stayed in China Town, which had both cheap accommodations and cheap, delicious food. Similar to Penang, there were distinct Chinese, Indian, Malay, and Arab districts - all with unique architecture and food types. We stayed right on the main shopping street (Petaling) known for high quality (albeit counterfeit) luxury goods. The street was always packed with tourists, and it made for lively trips out and back during our days. We ate at a Chinese street stand our first night in. We knew it was a good spot as it was packed with locals, tucked into a run-down alley, and only had 4 things on the menu, all of which are specialties of the area. We tried the dry beef noodles and asam laska (fish soup), which came out to a whopping 16 ringit ($4) combined.

The next day we ate at a hip breakfast spot famous for their kaya toast (toast with coconut jam and chunks of butter) and hainen coffee (a combination of coffee and milk tea). From there we explored the street art in China Town, a couple of temples, and the nearby Central Market. We also took some photos of a construction site with a tall building that is nearing completion. It turns out that, when finished, it will be the second tallest building in the world! Kyle had worked on high-rises so he was excited to see all of the ultra-tall buildings in KL. Their most famous building(s) is/are the Petronas Towers. They are two Islamic-motif-inspired high-rises that, at one point, were the tallest buildings in the world. We loved them so much that we actually went to a nearby rooftop bar that night for an expensive beer to get a better look (one of only two beers we had our entire time in Malaysia. That's good for us!). We finished up the night eating dim sum at the night-time food street of Jalan Alor.

The next day we tried kaya toast nami lasak (with a whole fried fish, not a super appetizing way to start the day) at another cool breakfast spot. We then visited the Batu Caves, a Hindu temple tucked into a massive limestone cave with a giant statue out front. From there, we booked it it over to the mall....to watch a movie. We decided that if we were going to be stuck in a city, we might as well do something city-like! The movie, two large popcorns, and a drink were a combined $14, which would barely get you a single ticket back home. Since Ramadan was wrapping up, we tried to find Eid celebrations in the nearby Kampung Baru district, but didn't have any luck despite seeing large "Ramadan Bazaar" tents everywhere.

With not much else to do, we spent our remaining time in KL stuffing ourselves full of noodles, rice, bagged coffee, char keow teow, Chinese pancakes, roti canai (Indian flat bread), and even more kaya toast. We still needed to wait out our Vietnam visas, and as we were a little cabin fever in KL, we decided to wait it out in Singapore instead, so we booked bus tickets to head south! While we were only in KL for a short time, we walked so many of the major districts, ate so much good food, and really enjoyed it as best we could.

Side note: we have mentioned in previous blogs that we often buy our own food to cook and save money. In most of SE Asia it’s actually just as cheap, if not cheaper to eat out, which is why you may see the influx of food photos. Also - it’s all delicious so that adds to the cause ;)

Finally, we hopped on a bus to Singapore to wait out the visas and pass a few days. It took about 6 hours with a snack/bathroom stop along the way. Luckily, the paperwork was minimal and we didn’t need a test to get in. On the downside - Kyle got stopped for a full bag search at border security so the bus was waiting on us…AND we got blamed for switching seats (because someone had sat in ours) so there was momentary chaos on the bus (the bus driver walked all the way to the back of the bus, where we were the last ones to get on, to ask Kyle why he switched seats...even though it was the last available spot to sit). We were relieved to arrive at our final destination safe and sound.

Just a couple of additional Malaysia notes:

• There are 7-11 convenience stores EVERYWHERE, sometimes two or three on the same city block

• Many cars in Malaysia had McDonald's or Starbucks stickers on their windshields....we still have no idea why
  

Levi’s shirt count: 453