Malaysia, Second leg of the itinerary

By On 26/04/2016

Malaysia was not part of our initial route. Flying from India directly into Myanmar was quite a mission, so Alex found out that flying via KL would allow us to save money and reach Yangon easily. This is how we ended up there and therefore decided to make the most of it and spend 10 days in Malaysia.

After India, arriving in Malaysia feels like going back to civilisation, especially in Kuala Lumpur. We land there in the afternoon and it is about 34 degrees. Some of the locals tells us that it’s been roughly 20 years since it was this hot (usually it is about 29°) , Hello Global Warming !

Here I find people less smiley and less friendly. Is it because it is a city …probably. KL is a city of 1.5 million inhabitants, pretty rich and growing so fast. We walked around it a lot ; in order to get a feel for it (Alex already went when he was younger with his family, it was my first time). The museum of islamic arts was very interesting and we ended up in KL Park for a bit of shade and calm as the city can be quite manic. We ate quite a lot, especially in Penang, where food was incredible. Hawkers stalls are such a great thing. This is one of the main difference with Western culture that I like a lot. In Europe, I wouldn’t necesarily eat in a street stall for my evening meal. I would probably be scared to catch some bug, or that the products wouldn’t be fresh etc… In Malaysia, no need to go to the restaurant to eat well. Food is incredibly cheap. For 1 pound you eat such good things and a lot of them !

I therefore wondered what was the role of a restaurant, which seemed obsolete, if the hawkers are such good value. The main difference is in the time you spend there. One could also say the service, but we have been to restaurants where the service is appalling, and hawkers who treat you like family. In a restaurant, you take your time, to choose, to eat and to ‘savourer’ or indulge. We tried a couple which were just as good, but obviously three to four time the price of a stall.

Little note regarding their breakfast. Awwwwww Roti Canai. I love you. French people are one of the few that eat sweet food for breakfast. I lost that habit a while ago, and I have always loved English brekfasts. Here we discovered Roti canai, which is a kind of crepe, but with the consistency and layers of a croissant , for lack of a better description, it is savoury and you eat it with a curry sauce. Very fatty, very good ;)Our second stay was in the Pehentian Islands (which I still cannot pronounce), because we wanted to test diving in Malaysia. Beautiful clear water, 28 degrees, a dream. Night bus, ferry and we arrive in the small island at 8 am, and start looking for a romm fo the next three days.

These islands, are not so known yet,ut do have quite a few hotels. None of the big resorts though that would have ruined the landscape. Diving was OK, but Nothing special, it does depend on so many things, visibility, currents, rain etc…. We were supposed to do a wreck dive which was impossible due to choppy water and currents. As we are big fan of David Attenborough, but who isn’t, we watched countless of documentaries on the state of océans and corals, and how these have been endangered so many times because of weather conditions. We saw that despite a lots of dead corals (mainly due in this part of the world to tsunami and climate change), there is also a lot of them growing and this is reassuring.

From here, we then take an other night bus, direction : Penang and more specifically George Town. Very pretty town, about 1 million inhabitants, where we discover a big street art tradition. There are drawings in the walls everywhere. But not only that, it happens to be also the gastronomic town of the country…Alex finds us a list of dishes we HAVE to try, so we tried and we loved it. Laksa Assam, Hokkein mee, and some very small green crepes, filled with a coconut puree, no idea what it was but delicious. We unfortunately miss the Sunset from the hill, as we misclculated our timing, traffic exists outside of the big cities.

All in all a very good experience, and a lovely country. I feel that we barely scratched the surface and we met very few locals. But we only stayed a week. Going back to the Bornean side of Malaisia on the 13th of May, already looking forward to it.