South East Asia leg 2: Kuala Lumpur & Penang

In the end, we didn’t get into KL until midnight and it was almost 1am by the time we got to our hotel. We’d booked a big western-style one at the end of Bukit Bintang, since the one we stayed in last time was outside the budget, as fantastic as it was. We went to our room and the first thing we noticed was that the TV remote was missing (travesty). The second thing that happened was I went to the toilet and broke the flush button. But then when Toby looked at it closely he told me it looked like it had been already broken (thank goodness). He did some of his usual DIY to make it less obvious that we’d done something wrong. So we went back to reception and said we wanted to change rooms; we have never done that before but we were just not up to dealing with anything other than just right. We got given the room next door so a porter came and took our bags for us. The TV remote was there and the flush button looked dodgy but at least we knew to handle with care from now on. We sank into our bed and didn’t wake up until midday when a maid came knocking and I had to tell her we didn’t need any housekeeping.
This was when I realised I’d taken off my watch and evil eye bracelet from Turkey in the first room, and left it there. Neither was worth very much, but the watch belonged to Toby’s grandma and I’d worn the bracelet non-stop around Europe and was therefore much convinced that it was working to ward off the evil spirits and bad luck. Once we were dressed we went back down to reception and asked them to see if they had been returned; since we’d checked in at 1am and it was now not even 1pm we figured it would have to still be there. Unfortunately we were wrong; they even let me into the room to check myself. I was pretty upset because KL is so full of cheap junky jewellery and I hated that someone saw fit to take mine, when it had so much more value to me than them. Writing about it now, months later, I am still cranky. It wasn’t a very good start to our time at that hotel, which was otherwise very nice.

Much like Singapore, our time in KL was spent relaxing. We’d already done several of the touristy things the year before on our way to the UK, and we just wanted to take it easy. We went to the computer mall near our hotel several times – eight floors just of electronic items so needless to say Toby was in his element – where I bought the shiny awesome laptop I am now typing on. We ate some yummy food and walked through the Chinatown markets several times, even spending one afternoon successfully haggling to buy presents for people back home. Neither of us are particularly comfortable with the practice – partly because we figure those people probably need our money more than we do – but by the time we were finished we felt very pleased with ourselves for the bargains we’d managed to get. We ended up spending another 3 nights at the same hotel because we were enjoying it so much, so we had 5 nights in KL all up. It had a gym of course so we used that a few times. There was also a business lounge where we could go with our laptops and plug in to the net and make free cups of tea and generally be a very nerdy couple. We made a visit to Little India although perhaps we didn’t really get to the interesting parts because I wasn’t particularly impressed. On our last night we went back to the Starhill Gallery, the fancy schmancy mall we’d been to the year before, and visited to the same yummy trendy Indian place for a good meal. It was a lovely few days.


On the final day we went to the train station and bought tickets to Penang, in the north. It was another long train ride but this one wasn’t delayed by quite so long. We got to see some more interesting jungle and mountain scenery, and were better prepared with food and drinks. The train terminated at Butterworth, on the mainland, and then we had to walk a bit of a way to the ferry that would take us to Penang. While we were waiting for the ferry we started chatting to an Aussie guy who had just come from the Cameron Highlands. When we told him we’d just spent five days in KL he was amazed. ‘How did you find enough to do?’ he said. ‘I had one day there and I was bored.’ We didn’t really understand. I think I said we didn’t need ‘enough’ to do – the weather was good, the food was good, and we were just relaxing. Maybe he was expecting constant entertainment? It was obvious we were on different kinds of holidays so we didn’t really talk much after that. The ferry didn’t take very long and we were soon in Penang where the four taxi drivers on duty were locked in the office playing cards and refusing to talk to anyone. There were no buses to be seen and two taxi drivers not playing cards. Unfortunately I was still on a high from our bargain hunting in KL and when one of the drivers offered to take us to our hotel for 10 ringgit I said ‘How about 7?’ He waved me away and got other customers. At the time it didn’t really bother me but when we were still waiting for a taxi 15 minutes later I was feeling pretty stupid. There were several groups of us waiting for taxis but Toby and I managed to get one eventually – which cost us 15 ringgits. Live and learn.

Since we still wanted wi-fi and a gym, our hotel in Penang was another big western-style one near the water. When we arrived there was a band playing in the lobby, one of those cover bands with girls in sparkly lycra suits singing a pop song too loudly. It was an odd experience to be checking in with that amount of noise as we had to yell across the desk at the receptionist, and she had to yell back at us. The room was nice and absolutely huge, with enough room for two double beds and more. The view across the ocean was spectacular. It was pretty late by this point so we just went to sleep. We had 3 nights in Penang and I’m really glad we made the effort to go there. I’d wanted to see something a bit more traditional Malaysian than KL; it is also one of the few places in Malaysia to have a Chinese majority population so I was interested to see some of the temples and try the food, of course. We visited Fort Cornwallis, a relic left over from the British occupation, and the temple considered a ‘must see’ by the guide book. I think Toby was still sick of temples from our trip to Japan several years ago so we didn’t see any more than that. While we were there we were asked by a newspaper journalist to stand with one of the temple men and discuss the temple with him while they took photos. He told us about the Chinese population of Penang and when the temple was built. He asked us what we thought of it – I thought it was absolutely stunning but Toby said, ‘Well we’ve been to Japan so we’ve seen some pretty amazing temples...this one’s pretty good though.’ We never got a chance to see if we made it into the paper. We went to the movies on their cheap Tuesday and paid the equivalent of $2 each to watch ‘Wanted’ and also went to Pizza Hut for a meal, just because we could. They had signs in the window looking for staff, with an hourly rate of about 4 ringgits – less than the price of a pizza. Pretty depressing. A couple of other times we ate from the hawker stalls set up outside our hotel - fantastic food and very convenient to just run outside and grab some food.

On our last night in Penang we decided to try the food court near our hotel, which was a great experience. You ordered your food from a stall and they would bring it to your table; there were also waiters to take drink orders, although I’m fairly sure a few of them were also drug dealers. It was hot (of course) so we both ordered iced tea. The guy asked if we wanted sugar or milk, which we thought was strange, so we said no but when it came we realised why he thought we were the strange ones. It really was just cold tea. It was really horrible so we ended up getting beer instead. There was a guy playing muzak on his electric keyboard and families having dinner and all in all it was a great atmosphere. After dinner we walked up to a street with lots of clubs and went to one that had a band from the Phillipines playing. I remembered the cover band at our hotel was also from the Phillipines. I don’t know what that’s about. Anyway we got some drinks and sat in the corner and listened to them play old school music like UB40 and Ace of Base, and tried to be supportive because the rest of the audience was doing that ignoring thing.

We had decided to take advantage of the fact that our hotel had a concierge and asked him to book us ferry tickets to Langkawi. When we’d come back later in the day he had been very apologetic and had said that because it was school holidays the ferry for the day we wanted to go was completely booked up. We could go three days later instead. We told him not to worry about it and decided to check the website ourselves. Which is how we discovered the ferry wasn’t booked out at all. So we booked online instead. A few minutes after we’d done that we got a phone call saying he had a few other hotel guests wanting to go to Langkawi the same day so he might be able to charter us a private boat. Toby said thanks but we’ve already got our tickets online. He didn’t believe us, but anyway. The other issue we had with Langkawi was that while in KL we’d booked a hotel online through their own website, and had put a credit card number in as security. We’d been told we would get a confirmation email within 24 hours, but it never arrived. Several emails and days later, we were still without confirmation. We were getting a bit worried about it so I rang the hotel the day before and was told they had no record of our booking. So we sent another email to the website – which was a third party agent – and copied the hotel in, saying that as we had no booking confirmation and the hotel had no record we were cancelling our non-existent stay, and please don’t charge our credit card. We decided to treat ourselves to the Sheraton resort, partly because it was the cheapest option with wi-fi and a gym. As a post script to this, the money did come off the credit card but after a couple of emails threatening to involve Visa's fraud department it was put back on, with no apology or explanation. The joys of internet booking.

The ferry to Langkawi left early in the morning and I was very frustrated when we got there to discover that our computer print-out wasn’t enough – we had to pick up actual tickets from the office. I was certain the office was too far away and we were never going to make it, but I was being a total early morning drama queen and we had plenty of time. I don’t know why the website didn’t make it clear that you had to get physical tickets – we could have done it the day before and saved some time. In any case we gave our big backpacks to the blokes putting them into the ferry and went in to a very small area that I was sure was a total OH & S issue and we were on the Malaysian version of the Titanic. It was getting very crowded and in the end the guy next to us said he would go downstairs and see what was down there; he came back a few minutes later to tell us there were another 100 seats with no one in them. Great. So we went downstairs and got window seats and then had to wait ages while the ferry continued to fill up with Muslim families on holidays. I only mention the fact they were Muslim because I was fascinated by the idea that a resort island famous for its beaches and tax-free booze was so popular with Muslim people, who don’t drink alcohol and have half their population wearing non-beach-friendly clothes. The ferry trip wasn’t very exciting – mostly just water – but I did get excited when we started passing all the lush islands. I’d never been anywhere so postcard-worthy and I couldn’t wait for our beach time.