Tag: Malaysia

Relax!! What a relaxing final few days on the island. Laid back, feet up, doing the bare minimum, chilling out.

We haven’t walked nearly as far as we expected to each day, which means my body is craving exercise. It’s also not giving in to sleep very willingly. Hello insomnia, my old friend.

Once, I got up in the middle of the night to go for a quick walk, up and down the beach. It was still warm, pleasantly so, and quiet. Just the sound of waves gently caressing the shore and the odd cricket in the distance. But no boat engines, no music from the restaurant, no people, no children’s squeaky shoes, very quiet.

I spent some time looking for the owner of this garment, to no avail.

Plus, I tried to take some nocturnal photographs. As we’re quite close to the equator, the constellation Orion appears to be lying down. In theory, we can see the whole sky from here, but the view was obstructed by the Island Resort’s bunglows, the trees, a few clouds and the other islands.

One delightful sight was the Moon setting behind the smaller of the two main islands, peeking out from behind Snoopy.

Other attempts at artistic shots weren’t very successful. In fact, I immediately deleted all the rubbish pictures.

I heard a rustle in the bush, immediately turned on the flash and took a picture. Whatever it was, was faster than me. Probably just the cat that occasionally frequents the restaurant.

Our friends from the north have now moved onto their next destination. I say ‘from the north’ but although she’s originally from Yorkshire, they currently live in Brighton.

We made significant progress with the books we’re reading. Some authors need an editor though. Interesting story, but you told me most of it twice. We had mixed success with our puzzles too.

To keep body and soul together, we had to eat, so we walked all the way to the dining area twice a day. There are two routes to choose from, the short way and the slightly longer way which takes you by the beach. Most times, we sat at the same table. It was just too hard deciding where to sit, otherwise. Even harder, though, was deciding what to eat. Western or Malaysian? We tried to alternate but I think Western won overall as the breakfast was heavily biased in that direction. The rotis were fantastic, though not as nice as Jyoti’s rotis.

We always enjoy watching the other people and listening to them. Little Squeaky Shoes is still here and I’m sure he’s really trying to run away from his footwear.

On one of our short walks, we did spot a rare sight. It’s always hot and sunny here but the country is pretty much run for/by the oil company Petronas. So imagine our delight when we spotted this solar panel on the island. Just the one.

We never did get around to snorkelling. But we did go fish-spotting from the jetties and piers. Another opportunity to play with my phone camera.

It was of course very hard to identify the species, but we did see parrot fish and zebra fish plus shoals of little fishes, maybe sardines. One was bigger, it looks like a pike or something.

This crab was trying to climb the plastic pipe. Three steps forward and two steps back every time a wave came in.

Mind you, he’s brighter than these black crabs, who were trying to climb the stairs.

Sometimes the nerd in me takes over. I had to check that my phone was still tagging the photos with their geographical location. In most cases, yes, but this one gave me latitude and longitude instead, to a remarkable degree of accuracy.

By my calculations, that’s an accuracy of less than one millimetre! Amazing!

After our final evening meal, we were treated to a light show. There was a storm over on the mainland, and we could see lightning in the clouds. Another fantastic opportunity to take some exciting photos. Don’t worry: I have deleted at least 99% of the 1300 photos I took over about an hour, around the time of sunset.

I did take a video from the dining area too. Instead of rolls or claps of thunder accompanying the lightning, all you can hear is squeaky shoes walking up and down.

This long time exposure also shows the boat embarrassed by its own relatively insignificant display of lights. A green light to starboard, a red light to port, flashing every second or so.

Our final Perhentian breakfast gave us all the energy we needed to pack. The boat was due to leave at noon and while waiting, I walked to the end of the jetty for more fish photos.

Sadly, there was nothing as big as the swordfish in the sea. But there were zebra fish amongst others.

The sand on the beach is lovely, and there are bags of it all over the place. The instructions say ‘Store in a cool dry place’. Well, this island is never cool, not even in the middle of the night. And the beach isn’t necessarily dry: the sea can be quite damp at times.

But what makes the sandbags more interesting is that at least one lizard lives amongst them. I saw one yesterday, over a foot long, quite colourful, but very shy with humans. And with me.

The main shock to the system on arriving back at Kuala Besut and disembarking from the boat was seeing cars, traffic, roads, people covered from top to toe in thick clothing: such an anticlimax after our lazy week in paradise. But, the evening meal fixed everything.

We are now resident in a ‘Transit Motel’ right next to the airport in Kota Bharu. The journey was two hours, first by boat and then with another mad taxi driver. He held out his hand for a tip, so I shook it instead.

Our hostess is a lovely lady, she cooked us the most delicious meal we’ve had in Malaysia. Next time, we’ll definitely go down the route of home cooking! They offered us dinner and breakfast at a cost of 40 ringgits, we couldn’t say no. We had a coconut curry with okra, aubergine, corn etc with rice and an omelette with onions and greens, followed by curry puffs, pineapple and watermelon juice.

I’m embarrassed to say we don’t know her name, but our hostess told us about her family. She has 7 brothers and 4 sisters. Her husband has 10 siblings. When her oldest daughter got married, they had 2000 guests, all family and friends. Her second daughter says that she doesn’t want that big a party!

We spent the morning on a long walk into the little town of Fraser’s Hill and back again, completing the “telecoms loop”. It was a perfect temperature, gently undulating rather than hilly so not too challenging. Even though we were walking on the road, we only encountered about half a dozen vehicles.

But mainly, we just enjoyed the songs of the birds and the insects, the squirrels and the monkeys. As usual, we heard more than we actually saw. Speaking of which, we still don’t know if it was a bird or there really was a wood saw somewhere in the distance.

The rustle in the trees made us look up into the face of this dusky leaf monkey, or dusky langur. He watched us for a minute, but didn’t come down to say hello.

There were at least a couple of others, we caught a quick glimpse.

The views were fantastic: lots of green, unspoilt, we could only imagine what kind of wildlife was in there.

Before setting out, though, we’d had an early breakfast, parathas and dahl, toast and jam, tea and orange juice. The cereal remained untouched.

Overnight, our host had left a mercury vapour lamp turned on, outside in the garden. It attracted dozens, if not hundreds, of moths and other bugs onto the white screen.

Carniverous squirrels came into the garden to feast on the insects, and they sounded very nice, tasty and crunchy. Not so keen on the ones that screamed in agony, to be honest.

A nice variety of birds appeared too, very quick, and almost impossible to take pictures of them.

However, Liesel has taken pictures of the birds we’ve seen from one of Stephen’s books: it’s good to be able to put a name to the wildlife.

Amongst all these bugs we found a beautiful butterfly.

Just a coincidence that this picture was sent to us budding entomologists at the right time.

Stephen told us that this mantis is one of the rarest species in Malaysia. Such a shame then thet Liesel witnessed its demise at the beak of a robin.

In town, we had a pot of coffee at the hotel, with a jug of hot milk, and when I say hot, the handle-less jug was far too hot for me to handle. Liesel’s asbestos fingers managed.

The walk back from town was slightly harder, being more uphill and when we viewed the wider expanse of jungle, we again wished we’d booked this place for a longer period.

And they’re trying to look after the wildlife: at least, according to this poster.

Yes, it gave us an idea of what creatures we might be lucky enough to see. Tiger? No such luck!

So far, they’ve resisted the level of development that we saw at Cameron Highlands, and if Stephen is right, he and the other ex-pats living here will maintain Fraser’s Hill in its current pristine state.

So, with that in mind, it was disappointing to see a couple of large buildings over the valley, certainly not bungalows. The population of Fraser’s Hill is about 1000 so an extra couple of hundred people at a swanky hotel really will spoil the feel of place.

We’d been told about the landslide so it wasn’t a surprise to find this. Many are natural, maybe too much rain too quickly, but some are caused by old, rusty water pipes breaking. This is one such example. We were walking around “the loop” which is usually given to one-way traffic. Because of the landslide, vehicles aren’t supposed to come this way for now. But then, we walked round the corner to find this.

Here, some of the road had slid down too. We heard a car approaching from behind, so we hastily walked past this point in case this vehicle proved to be the final straw, and the rest of the road disappeared down the hill. But no, not this time.

We passed a bungalow that was half missing. I said it would be nice when it was finished. We later learned that Stephen’s Canadian friend, David lives here in one half as there are no utilities in the other. The middle of the bungalow had slid down the hill many years ago and so far, it hasn’t been rebuilt!

A cloud went by as we walked along the middle of the road. It must be smoke, we thought at first, disappointed. But no, it was a very low, actual, cloud, just drifting by on the breeze. We’ve been in dense clouds before, on hills, at altitude, but we’ve never seen a lonely cloud like this before, just above ground level. Fraser’s Hill reaches up to 1500m above sea level on this loop, and this is a common phenomenon, apparently.

Back in Stephen’s garden, we admired the orchids, said hello to the geese and had another look at the now depleted bug population on the screen. There was a storm in the afternoon, but still, we enjoyed watching activity in the garden from indoors.

Stephen and his wife Samiah had business down in Kuala Lumpur and they apologised because our evening meal might be late. In the end, they were still in KL at 5:30 so they called their friend David. He kindly drove us down the road to town and we ate at a Malay place, since the pub and the Chinese restaurant were both closed. We don’t know his full story, but he’s been here in Fraser’s Hill for seven years and doesn’t feel the need to move away.

Driving back, up the hill, suddenly, David braked. In the bushes, we saw an animal. Two.

There were two boars now running deeper into the bushes.

What a great day for exercise, for wildlife and for giving us a sense of enormous well-being.

It rained and thundered during the night, so neither of us got much sleep. How lucky then that we could have a lie-in… until 6.15am! It was still dark, but we had to pack and have breakfast quickly before being picked up by David the Canadian ex-pat from the half-a-bungalow just along the road.

The white screen in the garden was again covered in bugs, despite the ferocity of the storm. I had time to experiment with the phone camera and a pair of binoculars. You need four hands, really, but this isn’t too bad, after a bit of post-shoot editing.

We had a huge breakfast, and despite my best efforts, I couldn’t partake of the toast and jam.

The oversnight storm had brought lots of debris onto the roads but David just drove past the branches and rocks like it’s normal.

He did brake hard on one occasion. He spotted a scorpion crossing the road.

It does look like a plastic model but it was alive and kicking, unlike his mate just along the road. David lifted it above the low brick wall, so let’s hope it continued climbing the hill.

I feel embarrassed again for not knowing the exact names of all these birds and moths and other creatures and all the plants, but it’s was exciting to see them all out in the wild.

It became warmer as we drove down the hill, and as David predicted, as we turned one particular corner, the weather changed. Beyond this point, the windows were close and the AC turned on.

The one-way road used to be controlled by time. At 10, 12 and 2, you could drive up, at 9, 11 and 1, you could drive down. Everyone knew the system and if they had to wait at the bottom, there was a place to buy tea. This shack collapsed just a couple of weeks ago,

The large number of derelict building we saw, north of KL? Not so much derelict as never actually used. They were built by a developer in the hope the KL’s then new airport would be built north of the city. Some residential properties were sold off cheap to minimise losses. Kuala Lumpur International Airport, KLIA, was build far to the south of the city, in the end.

The road was cut out of the side of the hills. In an effort to prevent landslides, some hills have been sprayed with concrete, with many pipes allowing rainwater to drain. The grey concrete looks ugly, but ferns will soon and quickly grow to hide the eyesore.

David spoke a lot about Malaysia, Malays, the lifestyle here, but he was very reticent about his reasons for being here. It was very kind of him to take us to the airport, though, devoting six hours of his day to us total strangers.

The flight to our next desination was short and sweet and I slept through most of it, despite enjoying “Londonstani”, a really good book, from which I’m picking up lots of Hindi, Panjabi and Urdu slang, innit.

Every time we leave our apartment block, we glance at the Roman Catholic Church, St Anthony’s, just over the road.

A few times, we’ve heard its bells being tolled at about the same time as the nearby muezzin calls his people to prayer. I don’t know whether there’s an unofficial competition going on here.

It’s a cute little church but it would look so much better without that eyesore in the background.

Being Sunday, Mass would take place later. Meanwhile, outside, a group of Indian ladies had set up a stall. What they were selling, we’ll never know, as our Grab cab arrived very quickly.

The Kuala Lumpur Bird Park is the largest walk-in, free-flying aviary in Malaysia, maybe even in the world. The aviary doesn’t fly freely, but most of the birds inside do.

It was quite nice seeing a stork walk on by. Then another. Then a few more. By the time we were surrounded by dozens, it was quite intimidating, like being chased by those velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

The owls were all just sitting there. We’re not sure if they’d been tied to the perches somehow, but it was sad to see that not a single one was even shuffling from side to side.

The scarlet ibis was a suitably vibrant red colour. It certainly made up for the slightly pasty looking flamingoes.

The poor old galahs weren’t allowed freedom of movement. This chap was pleading to be let out, but there was nothing we could do.

I think we saw a significant number of the advertised two hundred bird species here but while the free-flight enclosure was indeed large, we still felt sorry for the birds that wanted to really stretch their wings. And especially for the caged birds.

It was a pleasant walk, hot and sunny, and the place was very popular today.

A short taxi ride away is Central Market, a bit like Camden Market only bigger, indoors and partially air-conditioned. While Liesel was actually looking at the stalls, I went on a faster walk, to get some steps in and to find an ATM. I passed through Little China, Little India and Little Kashmir, all within the Market.

When I caught up with Liesel, she was on the upper floor looking at most, if not all, of the batik stalls. Or, as some were named, Batik Butik.

The birds this morning had been very colourful, certainly, but some of the batik offerings came a close second in bright colours.

It was hard to resist everything, so we left the market with a bag of batik. The cushion cover shown above will, one day, adorn our luxury apartment for real.

We stopped for a snack and I asked for a cendol. Something that’s been on the ‘to-do’ list since we arrived in Singapore. A mix of coconut, ice, green worms and beans. A local delicacy.

It was alright, nothing special, and this bowlful was probably too much, to be honest. Still, it’s another first for me.

We walked down the road to Masjid Jamek.

We didn’t actually travel several decades back in time, I just copied the picture from the local information board. The mosque welcomes visitors but you have to wear an all-enveloping purple garment to cover your hair, shoulders and other bodily parts. So, from a distance, you can play ‘spot the visitor’.

It’s a cute little mosque but it would look so much better without that eyesore in the background.

We carried on walking towards home, somehow shrugging off the discomfort of the heat because this was our final day here in KL.

The birds were colourful, the batik was colourful but some of the street art provides stiff competition. Not just these doors, but a lovely mural close by.

Jalan Petaling is the heart of KL’s Chinatown. Where old meets new.

Central Market was busy, but the alleyways in Chinatown were thronging with throngs of people. It was hard to make progress, sometimes. Again, we looked but did not touch. Or buy.

We found our way back home and I went up to the top of our tower, floor 42, the answer to life, the universe and everything. From here, I could look down on St Anthony’s Church.

Bakti Woodlands was the venue for our evening meal, another relatively short walk. The meal was good, but as often happens, one of the ordered items didn’t show up. Just as well, in this case, because we had plenty to eat.

As we were walking home again, Liesel felt a splat on her back. I had to check it wasn’t guano of any sort, but it was just a drop of water. It probably dripped from an air-conditioning unit, I suggested. Hah.

We got caught out in the heaviest, most torrential rainstorm, ever, thunder, lightning, raindrops as big as peas.

Making good use of shops’ porches, bus shelters, the overhead railway, the pedestrian road crossing and the creativity (not shopping) mall, we made it home without getting too wet. The worst place was crossing a road where the water was running fast and was already an inch deep. But my feet needed a wash anyway, so not a big deal, really

Every time we go into the bathroom of our apartment, we are reminded that we are loved. Which is nice.

We left Kuala Lumpur as we arrived, dragging our bags into Jamaica Blue, this time for breakfast.

Another Jamaican proverb that we came all the way to Malaysia to discover.

The cab ride to Stephen’s Place in Fraser’s Hill took two hours.

On the way, the driver stopped to refuel the car. He left the engine running. Liesel and I said our final farewells to each other and to planet Earth, exchanged thanks for all the fun and wondered who would claim on the life insurance. But, the car didn’t explode into a ball of flame after all and we’re still here.

Apparently, Malaysians all leave the engine running while fueling their cars. They don’t all light up cigarettes though. Which is nice.

The phone wires dangle from posts by the side of the long and winding road up to Fraser’s Hill. The posts are wooden, rotting, keeling over and at least one tree has fallen onto the wires. Someone, somewhere, will be cut off from the world sooner or later.

We passed by a trio of dogs having a nap by the side of the road. Round the corner, we passed by a reservoir. Hmm, there’s a movie there somewhere, I thought.

There were a few pretty temples too, but most of the buildings we saw on the road outside of the city were just utilitarian and often dilapidated.

When we arrived at our destination, we invited the driver to collect us from here at 8.00am in two days’ time, he politely declined, despite my best attempts at bribery. Mind you, he had been shaking with fear as the road ascended, became narrower and narrower and more twisty. The final straw, I think, was when he momentarily lost the GPS signal.

Fortunately, our host, Stephen (we’re staying at his Place) knows a Canadian man who will take us back for suitable remuneration.

We’re only in Fraser’s Hill for one whole day and already we knew that wasn’t going to be long enough.

I gave this bug the finger to demonstrate its unnatural size. It’s a huge bug, a longhorn beetle.

So is there anything about Stephen’s place that bugs me? The bugs don’t bug me. Yes. We heard a knocking sound, Liesel asked what it was, I said, I don’t know. Then I got a whiff. Actually, I said, yes, I do know. It’s one of those machines that squirts stinky chemicals into the air every now and then, presumably to hide the other smells in the room. Can you turn it off? I’ll have a go, said I. I took it into the bathroom, pressed the wrong button, squirted the stinky stinky fluid all over my hand, swore and eventually found the off switch. I’ll turn it back on before we leave.

Stephen’s Place is a 1930s colonial style bungalow. It’s surrounded by gardens, lots of flowers and orchids, an egg-laying chicken which is kept company by a couple of very vocal geese.

Our evening meal was delicious, homecooked rice, egg, meat-substitute chicken but very tasty, and for dessert, sago, which I haven’t had for years. All made by Samiah, Stephen’s wife, possible helped by one of the maids-in-training.

Afterwards, we went for a quick walk, fully aware of the rapidly setting Sun.

We walked along the road knowing there would be little to no traffic, enjoying nature, all the trees and bushes, the sounds of the local fauna and then…

It makes sense to put a phone mast at the top of a hill, but it was still a bit of a shock to actually see it!

The bush was quite dense but we did catch a decent view now and then. We were also keeping an eye on the grey skies and an ear on the rumbling thunder that seemed to be getting closer.

There were no bus shelters or shops here to hide under if the storm came our way. But it didn’t. We did however see the rare sight of a rainbow just as the Sun dipped its toes below the horizon.

As we walked down the road, we were buzzed by a barrage of plume-toed swiftlets. We mistakenly thought they were swallows, but Stephen put us right. So named because they grow a feather on the middle toe of each foot. I know, sounds like a lie to tell tourists, right? Inside an old garage, just below the bungalow, there are about 150 nests, so about 300 birds, with chicks, making a lot of noise, flying in and out with remarkable dexterity. The garage hasn’t been used as an automobile storage facility since the 1930s, thanks to the birds, which nest two or three times a year. Harmless to us, I know, but when you can feel the draft as they fly by, you can’t help but flinch a bit.