I dithered on the train for hours , should I go to Langkawi or Georgetown in Penang. In the end I went for Georgetown, the second city of Malaysia famed for it’s old colonial architecture and amazing street food. Malaysia is one hour ahead of Thailand and the border crossing at Padang Besar was very simple. Luckily the ticket machine took cards as not only was there no ATM, but the ticket office had a big sign on it saying gone to lunch. As an former British colony, they speak a fair bit of English, have an alphabet you can actually understand and use three pin plugs! Fortunately I had one in my bag.
I helped some fellow travellers with their train tickets and buses as they were struggling a bit and another guy who seemed quite lost and was looking for a money changer as he had no cards and only some Canadian dollars. Good deeds done for the day, I sorted out my own transport and took the commuter train to Butterworth, which is opposite Penang island. It takes about 2 hours and then the ferry ride was another 15 minutes. The ferry cost was 1 Ringgit and 20 cents. As there are 5.3 to the £, it was cheap to say the least! Indeed the 2 hour train ride was only 11 Ringgit.
My hotel is an old colonial building in Georgetown on Chulia Street, right in the centre of everything. I hired a moped from the shop next door, which was great value and very easy to do.
Now I’m mobile and the first thing was to go off to a nice beach about 12km away. The traffic is bad and everywhere takes much longer to get to than you think. Partly because the roads constantly turn back on themselves due to awful one way systems and secondly the terrible traffic lights. A five minute wait for the lights to go green is not unusual, while you sit there burning in the fierce sun. Quite a few locals wear a jacket put on back to front, while riding their motorbikes. The reason for which I can only guess at. I assume it’s to keep either the wind or the sun off of them while riding, but without making them too hot as the zip is not done up at the back. I don’t have a jacket and thanks to the 100ml airport liquid rules, I don’t have any suncream either.
The street food here is good, a mix of Indian, Chinese and Malay. Around the corner from me is a long street with numerous street food options. My favourite was a stall that had dozens of different items on wooden skewers. The colour at the end of the skewer denoted the price and the short skewers meant no cooking needed. There were a couple of pots of boiling liquid that you dropped your skewer into and then waited the 30 seconds or so it took to cook. You then help yourself to a variety of spicy or satay type sauces and enjoy. I went back a few times before going off to to little India in search of indian food. I stopped at a place selling fresh roti with the option of a bowl of chicken, mutton or vegetable curry on the side to dip into. I went for some mutton and a cup of chai. There were only locals eating there and I sat with them. A few westerners walked past and looked over with interest, but didn’t appear to have the courage to try and order. One couple did joined the queue, but changed their mind when it got near their turn to be served!
Another time I stopped at Vikram’s famous Penang samosa’s. I went for a vegetable one, a give away at 0.8 of a ringgit. Then just around the corner was his competetior also serving his apparently equally famous Penang samosas’s. This time I went for the chicken, which was fabulous. I think he’s outdone you Vikram.
I wanted to take the funicular railway to the top of Penang hill, for fabulous views of the city, but it’s closed for three days for maintenance. Disappointed I spoke to one of the workmen who said that there was a hiking trail nearby, which my moped would go up just fine.
This was ideal as the other option is to go to the main road entrance a few miles away, where you have to park and the pay an extortionate set rate to the taxi mafia to drive you to the top. Why this is necessary when there is a perfectly good road you can drive up yourself is clearly just a fleece the tourist opportunity.
Anyway I avoided that and I drove up the tiny steep twisting hiking path through the dense rain forest. Every so often you would come out on to a view point with stunning views over the town, mountains and sea. It was wonderful and fun. I met a few locals on their motorbikes as well, so it’s clearly a popular route if you are in the know. In the end I reached the top had a look around, while the taxi mafia glared at me and then drove down again.
Next up was the snake temple about 20 minutes away, but first I had to top up with petrol as I was on empty. Petrol is only 37pence per litre! Just proves what an extortionate rip off it is in Europe and the UK. The temple itself is not that interesting, but there are numerous vipers and other snakes hanging off trees or relaxing on the various alters. They have had their venom removed fortunately, but it was quite a sight.
Then I went to the upside down museum, which was great fun. A day in the sun, despite me being under the cover of the rain forest and taking as much care as I could, my arms are quite badly burnt. Writing this 4 days later they are still red. I blame the traffic lights. I must have spent at least three quarters of an hour waiting at red lights today, with nowhere to hide from the sun.
I also went to Chew jetty, which is a unesco heritage site and is one of six clan waterfront settlements of Chinese immigrants. They were built in 1888 and were used to unload cargo. There was a lot of competition between the clans and often violent confrontations between rivals. Water and electricity were added in 1957. Their future is uncertain as their rights as landowners are not recognised. They pay no local taxes as technically they don’t live on Penang, but live on the water.
I also visited Fort Cornwallis and saw a huge cruise liner moored up. It towered above the surrounding buildings and almost blotted out the sun!
I’m off to Ipoh today a couple of hours south of Penang and take an express bus from the local station. Things start well, it is very comfortable and we leave 5 minutes early. However the driver keeps stopping, people get on and get off and we spend 10 minutes or even longer stopped for no reason on several occasions. Finally we get going, however we have barely left Penang and 2 hours have passed! That leaves 17 minutes to get to Ipoh if we are to arrive on time. Rather unlikely as it is about another 120km away. We finally arrive over an hour late at the express bus station, which appears to be have been built with the sole purpose of inconveniencing anyone going to Ipoh as it is nowhere near the town centre. In fact a 15 to 20 minute taxi ride is needed to get into town.
Ipoh has a big Chinese influence, very little Indian food or culture to be had. In fact it’s like being in China a bit. There is a place called the Ipoh parade near my hotel, which is a huge shopping centre. There is a nice bowling alley and a cinema. After a days sightseeing I decided to go to the cinema and watched the new Avatar movie. I didn’t really notice it was over 3 hours long as the special effects and cinematography were excellent.
It was freezing in the cinema though, as are all the trains. I don’t understand why they don’t have the air con set at 21 or 22 degrees. It must be set down at 14 or 15 at most and you sit there shivering if you don’t have a coat. Of course the locals have long sleeves, but I don’t. I left them all at home in Europe, as I usually have no need for them here, apart from this problem.
There are some good night markets and a nice little bar called the Tin Corner. There is a street called Mural Art’s Lane, which has lots of brilliant wall murals, although some of them are really showing their age now. There is another street, which is more of an alleyway really with shops on either side. It is called Concubine Lane and is interesting to stroll down. At night it is lit up with lanterns strung up above the lane. In the past it was where the rich Chinese tin mining tycoons and British officers kept their mistresses. It was also full of opium and gambling dens. There is also a Wife Lane and a Second Concubine lane, but these have much less going on.
Having walked another 20,000+ steps I was tempted by the Chinese foot massage. It was a good deal at an hour for about £10. It was ok, but nothing special. The shoulder massage for the last 10 minutes was good though.
The next morning I took a Grab taxi to Tasik Cermin also known as Mirror lake. You walk through a cave for about 50m and then you come out into a hidden lake with steep cliffs all around. It is a really pretty spot and would be really tranquil if you caught it at a time with less visitors. There are also numerous monkeys scampering around. It used to be free, but someone realised that there was money to be made, so now you have to pay. Naturally it was twice the price for foreigners than it was for locals!
My Grab app is very clever, although it still sometimes talks to me in Vietnamese it knows I’m in Malaysia and works just the same, except there are no Grab taxi bikes here only cars.
I had a look at a couple of cave temples nearby. They all have workers busy tidying and preparing them for Chinese new year. The year of the rabbit will soon be upon us. Unfortunately Chinese new year hasn’t done me any favours as I wanted to fly to Malaysian Borneo, do some jungle trekking and see some Orangoutangs. The flight out was fine, but getting back cost a fortune due to everything being booked up by the Chinese visiting family and holidaying.
Next stop in Kuala Lumpur and I will take the train, rather than head off into the wilderness that is the bus station. Ipoh clearly has seen better days. There are some huge, ornate and impressive hotels that are closed up, but must have been fabulous back in the day and the train station is a magnificent structure that is falling somewhat into disrepair. Despite that and the overly excessive Chinese influence, I like Ipoh and have really enjoyed my couple of days here.
A couple of freezing hours on the train later I arrive at KL Sentral and hop on the metro to Masjid Jamek, the nearest stop to my hotel, which is on the edge of the exciting Bukit Bintang area and next to the Forest eco Park, which I will visit later. Masjid means Mosque and there are many of them. Indeed if Chinese influences were obvious in Ipoh, here the Arab influence is more noticeable.
There is plenty of Indian influence too, as much to my delight on walking out of the train station, I bumped straight into an Indian restaurant serving Dosa’s and Chai. Masala Dosa’s are my all time favourite, so I stopped and tucked straight in to a couple of them washed down with some Indian Chai. Yum!
My hotel is fabulous and well situated. The room is the poshest I’ve had for a long time, but only cost £24 per night. It’s hot and humid here and I’m trying to take care, after the burning my arms got in Penang. I head into the eco forest which has long bridges suspended above the various flora and fauna. It doesn’t take that long to visit, but does make for some lovely photo’s.
After that I go on a whirlwind tour taking in Central Market and Merdeka square, which is where the flag of Independence was first raised in 1957. I walk along the river of life, as it is called and look at other markets and architecture. There is plenty of old mixed with new here.
In the evening I walked down into Bukit Bintang. The whole area is stuffed full of bars and restaurants serving every type of food. At the end is the Jalan Alor food street, which is more street food and plastic tables and chairs rather than the posher restaurants and bars. As I’ve had my fix of Masala Dosa today, I look around and see a Vietnamese street food restaurant and feeling nostalgic for Vietnam, I stop and order one of their classic dishes Pho Bo.
They have a scooter system here called Beam. Unlike the ones in the US, Lyft and something else, I can actually use them. The USA ones insisted on ID to set up the app, but wouldn’t accept foreign ID, so were useless for tourists. Here they are quite rightly rather more pragmatic. If I was to try to steal one by driving it away they would be able to track it and they have my phone number and card details anyway. If I wanted to steal one without driving it, I would just lift it into a van and drive off, so I’d hardly need the app or an account for that. So it seems pretty silly to me.
Anyway I was soon whizzing around town on my beam scooter able to take in even more sights. I must say though that the hard rubber tyres make for a bumpy ride and kerbs are a nightmare. Still it was a bit of fun.
Today I am heading for the Batu Caves. There is an Indian temple there with some impressive statues. There is a train that goes all the way there from KL Sentral that takes about 40 minutes. The train was half an hour late and took over an hour. The efficient Malaysian train system failing on this occasion. Once you arrive you are greeted by an amazing statue that is 43m high and took over 3 years to build. It stands beside a long rainbow staircase that leads up to the temple, which is in the cave system at the top. It’s quite a climb as there are 272 steps and quite a few macaques monkeys begging for food. There are various murals and smaller statutes and a dark cave which is sometimes open to visitors. It’s well worth a visit.
The journey back into the city went like clockwork and I headed off to see the Petronas towers which at 451.9m high were the world’s tallest buildings from 1996 until they lost the title in 2003. The tallest building has since changed hands again and currently belongs to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. (828m)
There are lots of hawkers trying to sell you a photograph of you and the towers. I’m not sure what equipment they use, but is looked like a mobile phone with various mirror attachments coming off it. Inside is a huge shopping centre, but the option to actually go up the tower to the observation deck and skywalk (which was used in the film Entrapment) is 3 times the price for a non Malaysian and I’m fed up being surcharged just because I’m a foreigner.
After that I hopped on another Beam scooter and parked it on the edge of the no drive zone at an official parking spot, thus earning brownie points and a good parking discount off of my ride 🙂 Then I just walked around enjoying the sights and sounds of the capital city before I leave tomorrow.
I had some Pad Thai at the market before having a beer at a lovely bar that specialises in whisky. They have a menu that runs to about 16 pages, full of single malts and specialist whiskies from around the world.
It’s a lot more islamic here and a large number of the women wear headscarfs, although they seldom wear a face covering as well. There are a few mosques, complete with wailing at prayer time and there are quite a few street names that have Arabic sounding names, but all are written in our alphabet. In fact most things are written in English as well as Malaysian or sometimes just in English. Especially adverts and billboards.
For my last couple of days in Malaysia, I am going to head north to Langkawi where I almost started my journey. The flight is peanuts at £18 and I take the express KLia line to the airport. The flight is very short and I’m soon meeting up with ’Uncle B’ at Langkawi airport to pick up my motorbike hire for a couple of days. He is a great character and reminds me a bit of Mr Lee from the Motorbike station in Vietnam. I’m staying in an area calling Pantai Chenang. The capital is Kuah, but the best places to stay are outside this. The island is a duty free island like Tioman island situated further south on the other side of the mainland. There are a lot of duty free shops selling booze and cigarettes as well as confectionary. Why is it that duty free shops always have bucket loads of confectionary to sell. It’s not an item that attracts any special duty and is no cheaper than a high street store or sweet shop. Even so, I did buy a packet of peanut M&M’s, along with a couple of beers!
I headed off to the main attraction of Langkawi, which is the Cable car and skybridge. This is a seriously scary proposition as the cable car is the longest free span mono cable car in existence. It’s 2km long and very high. You can even take a glass bottomed one, but I thought that a step too far. The ride up has amazing views, but the weather was unfortunately closing in on the mountain and when I got to the top and took the Skybridge, visibility was rubbish. The Skybridge at the top is an amazing walkway around 120m in length and has glass bottomed sections that you can stand on and look down at the forest a long long way below. Due to the elevation at the top of the mountain and the weather I was effectively inside a cloud, so the view wasn’t the best and it was raining. The cable car swayed a lot on the way down too. Eeek!
There is a nice waterfall to visit nearby and quite a few people were swimming at the base, but I didn’t have my swimming stuff with me. I decided to drive around the island, but before I did I contacted Uncle B to let him know that I wouldn’t be flying out of Langkawi, but taking the ferry over to Kuala Perlis on the mainland. This meant I would have to drop the bike off at his associates at Kuah Jetty. As it was on my route around the island I stopped off there to make sure I had the right place and started talking with the owner. He spoke good English as he used to visit his sister regularly in Bognor Regis of all places. He gave me some great tips on where to visit and off I headed.
There is a giant eagle statue overlooking the bay, which is the symbol for the island. Lang being a colloquial form of the word helang, which means eagle in Malay and kawi which means reddish-brown.
I drove up to Gunung Raya which is at the top of a mountain in the central national park and has great views over the island. The road is almost deserted and twists and turns for about 10km as you make the ascent. I think I’ve been given the worst fuel consumption motorbike I’ve ever seen. I have already filled up twice and it’s only a small island. However fuel costs nearly nothing, less than £1 to fill the tank from empty so it’s only a concern that I might run out of fuel on a mountainside somewhere rather than the cost of filling it up.
There are a lot of monkeys here, but they just mostly sit and watch you as you drive by.
Every night there is a big food night market in a different place on the island. I’m lucky that it’s right next to me tonight. The problem is what to eat as there is so much choice. I tried some sort of arabic pancake with lamb, which was not that great. It was huge and would have filled me up, so I threw away at least half of it. I had some amazing samosa’s and various skewers of meat with dipping sauces. Some spicy pork wrapped in pandan leaves and several other little snacks.
There is a nice little bar called Cinnamons near the beach that double as a gift shop and is always full. I spent an hour there watching the world go by before heading back to my hotel to get ready for a long journey tomorrow.
The travel agents will sell you a ticket from Langkawi to Bangkok for 260 Ringitt, about £50. It includes a pick up your hotel, a ferry to Satun in Thailand and a 16 hour bus ride to Bangkok. I did it myself for 174 Ringgit. Not only that, but I took the sleeper train and so had a nice bed for the night, rather than a seat on a mini bus. I took the ferry from Kuala Perlis, so still in Malaysia and then a grab taxi to Kangar, followed by the bus to Padang Besar, which is the border. I thought I was going to have to get another grab taxi to the train station instead of the bus as it is friday and the late morning/early afternoon buses don’t run due to prayers!
I was just wandering out of the bus station pondering my options, when I saw a T11 bus that I remembered, from my research, runs to the border. I waved and he stopped and asked where I was going. I said Padang Besar and he waved me on board, even though there was supposed to be no T11 for a couple of hours. The bus was empty, although we picked up 2 other people soon after and the cost was only 5 Ringgit for the hour and 10 minute journey to the border. I say an hour and 10 minutes, because that is the official journey time stated on the timetable. This guy missed his vocation in life though as he did it in 48 minutes. We raced up the highway weaving in and out of any traffic as we went. It was fab and I saved another 10 Ringgit. I know it’s all peanuts cost wise, but it’s still nice to win.
At the border there is a footbridge that takes you over the tracks to the train station where there is a secondary immigration for those catching the train rather than crossing by foot or by car. For some reason this is now shut and chained up. What was a 1 minute walk is now a pointless 3.5 km detour. The taxi drivers know they have you and so quote stupid rates from the border to the train station and none of them will accept a grab taxi booking as that would spoil their game. Perhaps it is they who persuaded the appropriate authorities to close the footbridge in the first place.
I have a few hours to wait until my train, so I walked to the market very close by. I am glad I did, it was really vibrant and full of locals without a foreigner in sight (except me of course) I had a really tasty noodle dish and a wandered around all the stalls full of brightly coloured silks, spices and more mundane stalls selling flip flops and toiletries.
About a kilometre in to my walk, I got onto the long approach road to the station and as I walked along a grab taxi, who was on his way to pick up a fare at the station, stopped and asked if I was headed there. He then offered me a ride the rest of the way to the station for free, saving me 2.5km with a heavy rucksack in the afternoon sun. Thank you !!
I was soon through immigration and on the train to Bangkok. As we chugged away from the border and back in to Thailand, I watched the phone signal on my Malaysian e-sim get weaker and weaker until it went entirely and I switched back to my Thai e-sim. Technology can be a wonderful thing sometimes.