Because we only had 10 days in Malaysia we decided to focus on the North-West peninsular, namely Penang for the dragonboat races, KL of course and Ipoh for the Cameron highlands. Lots to fit in to this post!
We headed out of the internet cafe at about 6, after John wrote the last post. We wandered around Georgetown waiting for a cafe to open and watching the sunrise until we managed to get some coffee and breakfast at a little cafe.
Since the purpose for our visit to Penang was mostly the races, we decided to try to find somewhere to stay closer to that area. We hopped on a bus that headed up to the dam and watched the amazing scenery. After quite a while, lots of people got off the bus at one particular stop and the bus driver was shouting something in Malaysian. Assuming this was the last stop (which ours was), we hopped off. We pretty quickly realised it wasn't our stop! We tootled off to get a taxi the rest of the way, and challenged the driver to find us some nice cheap accommodation in the village. It was handy we did actually, because the area was a small village and we'd never have been able to find the homestay we did without him! The house we stayed in was a long bungalow with quite a few others staying (most of them were a bit weird!) We got a shabby room with a four-post bed for the bargain price of RN35 a night and had the opportunity to read some government pamphlets on why most foods are highly dangerous.
We spent the day at the races, which were smaller than we expected but still amazing! We got there in time for the opening ceremony, part of which was even in English. There was one poor team who were just miles behind every race, and the Australian Navy team wasn't the best either!!
While exploring the village, we saw a wedding taking place! Obviously we didn't go inside, but there was a girl singing, people arriving decked out in their finest and lots of banners. The nest day, we walked past the same couple at the head of a street part wedding reception!
We spent our last Penang day in Georgetown, seeing the sights. My favourite was Fort Cornwallis, which is one of the forts that we used when we colonised Malaysia! We happened to run into the taxi driver around the town, which was a bit uncanny! He approved of what we'd done on out visit because we'd experienced the village and town life of Penang, which the man was extremely fond of.
Next, we got back on the train to Ipoh to head to the Cameron highlands. Ipoh had some stunning architecture and was very heavily chinese influenced, with many of the public signs and shopfronts in Mandarin rather than Malaysian. We got a cheap room with aircon and a private shower (although there were some ladies of ill repute on our street).
We got the bus to Cameron Highlands and were initially really disappointed. The pictures of it in the guidebook were of rolling hills, but when we pulled in it looked like any other town! Since the guidebook mentioned them, we stopped for a cream tea, which was decidedly odd. The scones were cinnamony and crumbly, but for reasons unknown, the baker had decided to put jelly sweets in them?!? And I don't even want to think about what was in the cream!
We decided to make the best of it and hired a taxi for a couple of hours to take us to the main tea plantation. When we got there it was amazing! Exactly how we expected Cameron to be! We took a tour around the factory, walked through the plantation and drank some special tea.
We then got the train back to KL ready for our flight! We stayed in the same hotel with our nice man and today went to see the Batu Cave, which was incredible. Lots of steps though. We're flying out tomorrow at 3 to Vietnam, so next post will hopefully be from there!
Sorry if this post seems rushed, it's actually taken 2 hours but it's just lots to fit in!!
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