Crowded Beach Time on Pangkor Island

“Gorgeous stretches of beach and hardly any people…the perfect place to hop over to if you’re after some isolated, low-key relaxation.”

That’s what we were expecting, thanks to our four year old guide book, when we arrived on Pangkor Island. It couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

The gorgeous stretch of beach was overshadowed by a long line of grey concrete shops selling the same crap t-shirts: I love Pangkor and Pangkor Hard Rock Café, despite there not being a Hard Rock Café within a 100 mile radius. The narrow stretch of sand remaining was cluttered with jet skis, banana boats, kayaks and an assortment of inflatables for thrill seeking Malaysian tourists.

And by gosh there were a lot of Malaysian tourists. Huge families bathing in the ocean fully clothed, screaming as they were dragged around on big inflatable doughnuts, speeding towards to beach on jet skis almost killing nearby swimmers.

At first glance we were a little disappointed with this supposedly isolated island, we’d unknowingly arrived not only during school holidays, but also on the weekend of a national public holiday.

Once we learned to look beyond the plastic bottles, polystyrene take-away food trays and abandoned flip flops that littered the beautiful white sand, it really was a beautiful island with clear turquoise waters and magnificent wildlife.

Hornbill at our hotel.

What we learned from the bus loads of Chinese tourists in Bangkok remains true for the majority of Asian tourists: they like crowds, safety in numbers. This meant that whilst the main beach near our hotel was shoulder to shoulder with Malaysians, the other nearby beaches were relatively quiet and we enjoyed some peaceful afternoons in the sun.

We were even able to wade out to our own little paradise, Coral Island, about 200m from the shore, which was nice until a speed boat deposited a boat load of screeching children and their parents alongside us.

Although it wasn’t the isolated retreat we envisioned, Pangkor made for a nice stop over on our way back south to Kuala Lumpur, giving us a couple of days to top up our tans before meeting my parents.

Ric wading out to Coral Island

How To Get To…

Pangkor: We travelled from George Town to Pangkor in one day, first taking the passenger ferry over to the mainland, then a bus to Lumut, and then a thirty minute ferry over to Pangkor.

We Stayed At…

Nipah Villas: we had a small but pleasant room in the back corner of the resort, hot shower, TV and wifi for 55 ringit (£11/$14).

Colonial George Town

Penang is an island state located half way up Malaysia’s west coast, its capital is George Town, the former colonial capital for the pesky invading British. It is Malaysia’s second biggest city and purportedly home to the country’s finest food.

Accommodation has been a constant thorn in our side since we crossed into Malaysia and in George Town we found out why: we’re currently in school holiday period for Malaysian children, the big six week holiday which English children have in the summer, meaning everywhere is astonishingly expensive.

While we’ve found food and transport to be comparatively priced here compared to other countries in South East Asia, the accommodation is triple the cost and half the quality. A room that we would pay £6/$10 for in Vietnam costs in excess of £20/$32 here.

In our efforts to find decent, reasonably priced accommodation in George Town we ended up staying in three different hotels during our four night stay:

The first place, Muntri Inn, was £14 (71ringit) a night for a tiny cell-like room with no window and a shared bathroom. The walls were paper thin and the included breakfast was merely a loaf of bread and a toaster.

Next we checked into the Wai Han Hotel, which was in an appalling state of disrepair but was undeniably cheap at just £5 (25ringit) per night. Unfortunately, while during the daytime it was bad, during the night it was by far worse; we came home after a night drinking with friends to find the reception area full of prostitutes, and were kept awake all night by the noises that resulted from their business.

The winning hotel was 54 Love Lane Inn, which appeared to be the busiest place in town and we could see why, the room was nice, breakfast was included and it only cost £11 (55ringit).

Colonial George Town.

George Town is really nice, albeit a little hectic with bus loads of tourists swarming around frantically photographing everything in sight. The city has retained a lot of its colonial heritage (it’s a UNSECO site) and the old white buildings with their shuttered windows are completely at odds with the Korean-style skyscrapers found further out on the island.

There’s a lot of pleasant street art around George Town and many art galleries, shops and trendy cafes. We enjoyed wandering around the town, mainly in the evening when the heat was bearable, looking at the art, watching the funny Asian tourists with their matching t-shirts, listening to live music out on the street and generally soaking up the atmosphere.

Metal work depicts the history of the town.

Street art.

To the north of George Town, Penang has some good beaches with warm clear water and coarse white sand. With some difficulty we managed to find an un-crowded beach and settled in the shade of a tree to enjoy the warm breeze. Little by little fruit started rolling onto the beach, brought in by the tide: oranges, bananas, flowers and, believe it or not, money, began to litter the beach. We think the strange collection must have come from an offering table that Asian people lay out to honour their ancestors, often containing money, flowers and fruit, perhaps fallen into the ocean from a boat. Did we eat the free fruit and take the money? Of course we did!

As for boasting Malaysia’s finest food I can confirm that the food we ate in Penang was indeed better than anything else we’ve had thus far. We tried Bak Kut Teh, a delicious pork rib soup, Nasi Kandar which is basically Indian Food served on a banana leaf, Poh Piah a type of fishy egg roll, and Roti Gangnam Style which has nothing to do with Psy or Gangnam and is simply half boiled eggs on toast with a lot of pepper.

The best food we’ve eaten in Malaysia has been in the hawker centres (or food courts), which are always packed to the rafters with local people. As in Singapore, there is an infinite amount of food on offer, however here there’s more of a party atmosphere, beer is served to your table and there is often live entertainment on a central stage.

How To Get To…

The Beach: We took the bus #101 to …, cost 2.70ringit one way. The journey takes about 45minutes or longer during heavy traffic periods.

Mossy Forest and High Tea in Cameron Highlands

We left the tropical, humid jungle climate of Taman Negara National Park in favour of the cool, rainy mountains of the Cameron Highlands, on the west coast of Malaysia.

We travelled west across the country taking rusty local bus after rusty local bus until we reached the town on Tanah Rata, just seven hours and four rickety old buses later. One bus was full of Indian men on their way to work at a hydropower plant, they filled that bus with so many different varieties of body odour that it made my eyes burn.

At 1,400m above sea level, the Cameron Highlands have a climate similar to that of Manchester, and I felt quite at home in the cold rain. We found a great hotel that had a big cosy living room with comfortable couches and a HDMI lead that meant we could plug in our laptop and snuggle down to watch all the films we wanted while the grey world carried on without us.

The town itself is small and uninteresting with one main street and a row of Malay-style Indian restaurants that serve huge portions of bland Indian food.

Fortunately we had one day of good weather during our three day stay and it happened to be the day we went hiking.

Steep climb over exposed tree roots.

We set off with three Dutch guys that were also staying at our hotel: Arnould, Timmy and Tom. The five of us climbed to the top of Gunung Brinchang, 2000m asl. I gave up keeping pace with the four boys and let them go ahead as I scrambled up through the mossy forest, admiring the dense damp vegetation as the clouds swirled in around us. It was a steep 90 minute climb to the top, crawling up over tree roots, scrambling up muddy banks and ducking under fallen logs.

Mossy and misty in the damp forest.

From the top we enjoyed the panorama of the surrounding hills before descending down the other side. After a few kilometres walking down the now paved road, we got our first sighting of the region’s most famous landscape: the rolling hills of tea plantations as far as the eye can see.

At the top.

We walked through the vivid green tea bushes to the BOH Tea Plantation and stopped at the site’s popular restaurant for a spot of English refreshment: tea and scones! A tasty remnant from the days of British imperialism.

Tea plantations.

High tea at the BOH plantation.

Down at the main road we hitched a lift back to Tanah Rata in the back of a flat bed truck. Just as we settled in for the ride, the heavens opened, soaking us all to the skin as we sped around the mountain bends.

If it weren’t for all our damp smelly clothes moulding in the corner of our room unable to dry we might have stayed longer in the Cameron Highlands, it was certainly a nice place. However, after the hot and wet jungle followed by the cold and wet highlands we were in serious need of some sunshine, and so we left for Penang.

How To Get To…

The hike: We took a 10ringit taxi from Tanah Rata to the start of “trail #1”, on the far side of Brinchang. From there the path is signed and is easy to follow, no real need for a map although we did have one, available free from tourist information. 

We Stayed At...

Dew Drop Inn: home away from home, 55ringit (£11) for a double room en suite. 

Taman Negara

Kuala Tahan is a horrible little town. The accommodation is poor and expensive and the five floating restaurants on the bank of the river must surely be competing to see who can produce the most revolting food. It's one redeeming feature is it's location on the edge of Taman Negara National Park: home to the oldest rain forest in the world.

View of Kuala Tahan and the horrible floating restaurants.

While we didn't like the town, which was a shame after such a long journey to reach it, we absolutely loved trekking in the rain forest. Around 40% of flora and fauna in the world can be found in Taman Negara, as well as more than 25% of insect species. The sheer size and density of the plant life was incredible.

This tree is MASSIVE.

We shunned the offer of an [expensive] guided tour and set off alone to explore one of the more accessible treks up to a jungle canopy walkway and down a mountain past some nasty leeches.

The walk along the canopy was not for the faint hearted, it was high, narrow and wobbly. As we shuffled from tree to tree, grasping at the thin ropes, we occasionally got brave enough to look down at the dense undergrowth, or up at the towering emergent trees.

From the canopy we continued up to the top of a small mountain (800m) and then started our descent down the other side. While the way up was a popular tourist path with a man-made walkway, the way down was much more natural and saw us climbing over felled trees, slipping in muddy bogs and being attacked by leeches. 

Descent into the jungle.

Leeches are horrible things that look like very fast, agile slugs. They stick to your legs and suck your blood and are really difficult to remove. Ric found six around his ankles while I only managed four. 

In addition to leeches we saw some fantastic wildlife in the jungle. This tapir was snoozing just a meter away from our path:

Tapir

I've never seen a tapir before, let alone a wild one, so it was a fantastic spot. It looks like a pig crossed with an elephant and coloured like a panda, such a weird looking beast. 

Also a short distance from our path was this poisonous viper which we would have walked straight past had a local guide not pointed it out to us. After seeing him we were much more wary of where we put our feet:

We saw monkeys jumping from tree to tree above us and a monitor lizard run straight across the path in front of us. I thought we would have had to go much further into the jungle to see so much wildlife but we were really lucky.

The trek took about four hours in total and was very easy, even in the intense humidity. 

We Stayed At...
Tahan Guest House: one of the cheapest places in town at 40ringit (£8) and also one of the nicest, set back away from the town in a quiet garden, rooms have balconies and en suite bathrooms. 
How To Get To...
Taman Negara: We travelled from Melaka to Kuala Lumpur (3hrs, 13ringit) and then changed onto a bus heading to Jerantut (4hrs, 18ringit), where we spent the night. The next day we took a local minibus to Tembeling Jetty (20 mins, 5ringit) and from there we took a boat upriver to Kuala Tahan (2.5hrs, 35ringit). 

Into Malaysia: Melaka

Unfortunately after just three days it was time to move on from Singapore to a less expensive city. We crossed the border into Malaysia on a pleasantly simple local bus journey which dropped us at the border town of Johor Bahru.

Our first impression of Malaysia was that the central bus stations are very well organised and the baked goods are disgusting. What I hoped would be a tasty savoury snack, purchased in a busy bakery, turned out to be a cream cake coated with spicy chicken. What a combination.

From the organised bus station of Johor Bahru we continued a few hundred kilometres up the west coast to the historical UNESCO town of Melaka.

What we didn’t expect when we arrived in Malaysia was that we would once again be faced with monsoon rains. After a summer of heavy rain in Thailand and Cambodia, followed by a typhoon which had us stranded for five days on an island in Vietnam, we were hoping to be over the worst of the weather as we headed into dry season. However, the dry winter season ends at Thailand’s southern border with Malaysia, and the monsoon begins again here. It’s bizarre that Thailand and Malaysia should have opposing seasons. The reason is that the monsoon we experienced in the summer comes from the west, while the monsoon currently soaking Malaysia comes from the east. The result is that we arrived in Malaysia and immediately scrapped all plans to travel up the east coast, as the resorts are all closed until February and the roads are dangerous to travel on in the rain. Instead, we went straight to Melaka, perhaps the most historical town on the peninsular.

Melaka's main square.

Historically, Melaka was a huge trading port which grew rich by trading spices. It was first colonised in the fifteenth century by the Portuguese, who remained for 130 years, leaving a distinct mark on the country’s heritage. Later it was colonised by the Dutch, and more recently by the British, before finally becoming independent in 1957. Today the town boasts several museums dedicated to displaying its colonial past, as well as being home to the old fashioned Chinatown, a couple of Catholic churches and a beautiful painted riverfront.

We enjoyed a relaxing river cruise past vividly painted colonial houses and a traditional Chinese village, and even spotted a monitor lizard swimming at the side of the bank. After that we walked around Chinatown and down the famous ‘Jonka Walk’, which really wasn’t worth all the hype. After a short jaunt up a hill to see a Portuguese Catholic church we’d pretty much seen all of Melaka. 

Painted houses along the river.

It’s a photogenic small town that can easily be visited in one day, but as we’d booked ahead for three nights we wisely spent our remaining time browsing shopping malls and going to the air-conditioned cinema.

Cycle rickshaws in Melaka really go the extra mile to decorate their bikes.

We Stayed At…

Backpacker’s Freak Hostel: one of the worst places we’ve ever been, a disappointing start to our time in Malaysia. Rooms with shared bathroom only from £7 (35ringit). Unfortunately the shared bathrooms are also used by the young boys who work there. We woke to find the toilets unflushed and covered in piss every day.