Camping at Ulu Terong #3

*this was written about a week ago. I realized that if I didn't post it now I'd never post it, which would result in a hanging travel post even though I had completed the three-part series! So post it I will. This post involves some rewrite though, because I pulled some pictures out to pad up Part 2 - effectively digging one hole to fill up another. Anyway, here goes.

---

As I survey my battered body now, I see numerous welts from various bug bites, some (unbearably) itchier than the others, with a couple of ugly swells on my right ankle from an angry ant that gave me a big stinging bite. There are two huge bruises on my left knee, along with smaller ones along the shin and a large green one on my right thigh. Funny thing is I do not remember getting any of them. I've got a leech bite on my left wrist and another one on the right side of my waist. Somewhere along the way two splinters got stuck in my right thumb, but my dad has removed them expertly with a pin and tweezers. Right arm's a little sore from my tree-felling career, but otherwise overall I'm feeling fine.

I'm tired of going chronologically so I'll just round up the last day with random observations with random pictures. In the morning the guides told me that my tent was like a roaring zoo, because of my snoring. Before the end of my profuse apology they'd already launched another tirade laughing at Albert the Chinese guide who supposedly snored like an old motorcycle ("vrrooom vrrooom kakakakaka"). Then they turned on the radio to a Tamil channel to wake up Money (a verbatim excerpt from his long name) the lone Indian in the group haha.

The last day I became more loquacious and talked more to the Italian girls who are CSers as well, and they might come to Singapore next week so we can meet up and I can bring them out for Ladies' Night and get drunk. They've promised to host me in Italy if they're there when I go.

This trip was very interesting, especially after I have been through my co-supervisor's "Sociology of Tourism" module last semester. Because of my inability to integrate into the rest of the tourists and my ability to speak the lingo (well sorta), I was absorbed into the backstage of what they call "staged authenticity", a concept that means tourists look for "authenticity" when they travel, i.e. they want to experience the "real" culture and activities, but in actual fact they cannot, because the local hosts will invariably put up a stage of what they want the tourists to see and experience.

Equally interesting was this Pacman shaped rock that I picked up by the river.

I wouldn't say I was totally in the backstage, but I was definitely let much more into the insiders' circle of jokes and gossip (sometimes about the tourists themselves), got called "Amoi" or "Nyonya" in the All-Malaysian group (of men), helped out with stuff like cooking and at the end, I sat in the cars of the trekkers instead of the tourist van, and sat at the guides' table for lunch *proud*. Then I got the number of this guy who apparently owns a durian orchard and I am to call him in July and invite myself to his dusun nyehehe.

Here's a group picture of most of us before leaving the Kamunting bus station. That's Uncle Guide (His name is Adi, I found out from Razali later) behind me giving me the chilli horns, haha wtf. He was also responsible for pouring Coke on my head in attempt (and success) to get me to bathe before I left the river. I miss him already. Razali's the standing man with the mint green t-shirt, who does not look like the mischievous monkey he is in this picture.


Wow I've written three lonnnnnnnnng posts about the trip - this has got to be the first time that I've ever managed to chronicle an entire trip, from all my past trips. I know how to do it now - I should write the entire series before releasing them, because publishing by parts just make me lazy to continue writing. The steam has to be conserved until I finish everything - and finally, here we have it. Also part of the reason I'm taking the trouble to take down my travels this time is because I anticipate a lot of writing for my research and they will take the form of journals like this. Practise dulu. Note also how I slipped in a bit of theory as well ;)

---

*back to present

After coming back I have also had tea with Razali, Cikgu Halim, Fadhil and Cik once; and played volleyball with Razali and some others as well. As a result my forearms have joined the array of bruised limbs. I swear they will form a hate club against me soon.

Also - I found out something shocking! Recall the 13-year-old puffing on a cigarette that I mentioned in Part 1? He (Cik) is thirty years old! I thought he was a little too young for the hairs on his chin. I'm still overcome with embarrassment for the mistake. I sense that my embarrassment was so painful that even Razali refrained from teasing me on the subject. But seriously he looks really young. And "thirty" sounds so much like "thirteen", I maintain that it's the fault of the English language. Kononnya international language. Now "tiga puluh" and "tiga belas" is so markedly different that all miscommunication would be eliminated.

*knocks head repeatedly on nightstand*

Click for Part 1 and Part 2.

Camping at Ulu Terong #2

Taking into account reader feedback (DRY DRY DRY - by anon) I shall slot in some photos. I actually didn't take many pictures, and most of them are pretty half-hearted, so just bear with me.

Morning

What I saw when I first opened my eyes

I woke up at 7am, three hours later. It was already light, and the jungle was awake with activity, marked by a certain noisy something screeching on my left. "Stupid white-handed gibbons!" I murmured, from a flash of memory of the description of the trip in the CS KL forum.

I lay in my sleeping bag, undecided of what to do. The Italians were still asleep, but the guides were up and I could hear their conversation punctuated by chuckles and rustling of equipment. I could continue to lie there pretending to be asleep or get up and be collectively ignored by another bunch of people. With a sigh, I chose to get up, since I didn't pay RM300 to pretend to sleep in the jungle. (Neither did I to be collectively ignored by a bunch of people, come to think about it.)

Grabbing my toothbrush and toothpaste, I made my way to the stream one minute away, smiling at the guides and "selamat pagi-ing" as I passed them by. With the toothbrush stuck in my mouth, I followed Fadhil to a better part of the stream and brushed my teeth there as I watched the clear river water flow downstream where the fishes did their circles. The morning was looking up already.

Upon return to the campsite, Razali hailed to me and planted me in the guides' tent. "Bagi Jun kerja lah (give her work)," he said to Pak Man who was stirring the pot of Milo boiling on a camper gas. I was assigned a papaya and a knife and the task to peel it. Around me sat a wild assortment of men, including two bankers, an Art teacher in a secondary school, an ex-police warden, a couple of ex-Special Forces, two IT guys, a 13-year old puffing away on a cigarette and some guides. Most were just trekking kakis and not guiding.

Of course I didn't know all that when I was shyly sitting there, clumsily shaving too much flesh off the papaya, just soaking in the conversation around me. I also didn't know that the papaya was a prank, and after a laborious ten minutes which saw only half the papaya peeled, someone took over and coolly split the papaya into six pieces without peeling the skin off the remaining half. Pwned.

The Canadians and the Italians woke up eventually and crowded around for breakfast, i.e. kaya with bread, Milo and papaya. After that, we set off, with parangs attached in a purposeful fashion to our belts (or in my case, a vine that was tied around my waist) towards the direction of Upper Trong Falls.

To the Waterfall, Pelanduk and Leeches
I was in the first group, walking after Uncle Guide, whom I attempted to talk to while trekking. He was a man of few words, and I didn't get much out of him at first. I'm really sorry I didn't get his name though, because after I got past his cool and reserved exterior, he was one of the guys who really took care of me during the trip.

"Tengok tu (look at that)!" He stopped in his tracks and beckoned to me.
"Apa? Apa? (what? what?)"
"Pelanduk (a mousedeer)!" He pointed with the tip of his parang.
I squinted through my misted glasses and stared beyond the tip of his parang. "Mana? Mana? (where? where?)"
"Tu (that)!"
I squinted some more and saw a flash of movement. "Ah!"

Later he told some others that I saw a pelanduk and I was very "ong" (lucky). I didn't have the heart to tell him I only saw the rustling of the leaves as the pelanduk fled, no doubt scared away by my vigorous squinting.

The trek to the waterfall was not too difficult (or maybe I've grown in fitness - who knows) and marred by only the pesky little bloodsuckers. There are two types of leeches in this jungle. One is small, brown and stealthy; and the other type is bigger, greenish with stripes (giving them their name "tiger leech") and their bites hurt. Previously irked by the tiny brown ones found in FRIM, I found the tiger leeches overwhelmingly scary, especially when they move up your pants.

To describe how they move - there are suckers on both ends of the leech's body. One end has teeth, the other does not. How it moves is it stretches the front sucker (with teeth) to its body length, sticks it on the surface, and then moves the back sucker beside the front sucker (folding its body), and the front sucker goes again. I haven't found the word to use for leeches moving yet. But you get the idea.

Tiger leech that hitchhiked in my pocket for godknowshowlong sticking on my hand phone

Along the jungle floors you'll see leeches moving in this alien fashion, and when it finds a good position it will stick one sucker on the surface and the other sucker will be waving around the air, hoping to latch onto the human or wild boar or any other animal lumbering by. They are remarkably quick. On the way to the waterfall I had to pluck off a number, and it is indescribably gross to have to do this with your bare fingers on a squirming, slimy bloodsucker, which would invariably clam onto your thumb, after which I would inevitably squeal and thrash my wrist up and down to get rid of it.

Banker Lee, who had cut my position as the second in line, would object to my violent thrashing because he said that the flung leech might land on him. In order to dispose of a leech, you're supposed to roll it with your thumb and index finger so it is unable to bite on you, then you throw it away. I know this in theory. In practice, it would take all of the three days for me to learn the trick. On the last day as I was walking down from the camping spot chatting with Uncle Guide, I was notified of a leech climbing up my thigh. I plucked it off, rolled it for two seconds and flicked it nonchalantly into the bushes, all with my left hand (I had got two splinters on my right thumb hence it was unfit for any leech-rolling activity). Talk about personal growth.

At the Waterfall
In the meanwhile though, the leeches were coming on fast and thick. Banker Lee had plucked 62 leeches off himself before he lost count when we reached the waterfall. When I took off my hiking shoes at the waterfall, to my utmost horror, there was a host of four or five leeches stuck at the sole of my right sock, seemingly united to chew a hole and get to me. AAarrrrrggghh I rolled the sock off me in record speed, and ended up with an overturned sock full of leeches. And then utilized my limited stock of femininity to get Banker Lee to de-leech the sock for me.

Obligatory waterfall picture

When the others had tired of the waterfall I slid down the natural rock slide three times into the pool and laughed at the two bankers' confinement to the baby pool area. Being the noob in the group I had to fully utilize any opportunity to laugh in the expense of others because they didn't come easy. Hahahaha so big already also don't know how to swim hahahaha.

After that I sat with the guides and other trekkers and cooked instant beehoon with them. Albert, another Chinese guide, made chopsticks out of young bamboo shoots. Cikgu Halim the art teacher, myself and the 13-year old Kid opened up packets of Thai-brand beehoon and dumped them into the boiling pot of water. Razali amused himself by popping by and casually slipping a leech or two into the soup as I stirred it. I made sure my batch of beehoon was leech-free. And this is why you should always help in the kitchen.

By the waterfall I got my first leech bite on my wrist. As I type this I am also suppressing the mad urge to scratch it. Bloody leeches. The lazy afternoon flew by as I sat around chatting idly with the guys, and soaking my feet in the cool running water. When we were about to leave, we felled two palm trees (didn't get the name) for ingredients of the soup we were going to cook for the night. That was the only time that I used the parang, to help fell the tree, and although I had an ungodly fear that the parang would slip, be flung backwards and chop off someone's limb and boomerang back into my face, I think I did pretty well at chopping the tree. 45 degrees. Brute force. Hell yeah.

[i took a video of the tree-felling but it's 50mb so you'll have to imagine it]

Then we trekked back to the campsite to gather firewood for cooking lemang (bamboo rice). In the evening, the two bankers left along with two Canadians who were too terrorized by the jungle the previous night and had to leave.

Cooking Lemang and Campfire Fun
Lemang is not difficult to cook, but it takes hell lot of patience. You fill the bamboo shoots - lemang - (bought from some kedai) three quarters full with glutinous rice, then fill it up with coconut milk. A makeshift rack is built from tree branches, on which the filled lemang lean, near a blazing fire. Then you periodically turn the lemang judging from the burnt extent of the exterior. I didn't quite keep track of the time used, but it must have been at least two hours and more.

Halfway through it started pouring, so a makeshift tent had to be built over the fire. Now adopted by the guides' side, I stood by the fire and made easy conversation with them, along with the Italian girls, while the Canadians huddled miserably in the cold, leaking guides' tent. Tracking mud all over the tent, I tutted along with the guides. Tsk tsk.

It was apparent that the camaraderie among the guides and trekking kakis were built on years of good-natured teasing. Everybody had something, anything, that could be poked fun at. With my half-past six command of the Malay language I understood about half of the jokes, but that was enough to keep me in constant chortles of mirth. For instance, when I mentioned that I stay near Sri Sinar, Razali told me in a deadpan face to never mention "sinar" in Pak Man's face. "Dia sensitif," he said. The second morning he beckoned to me mysteriously, I assumed, to show me some spectacular natural phenomenon. There stood Pak Man, beanie off, with his head gleaming merrily under a ray of sunlight that bounced off the shiny bald surface. I laughed till my sides hurt.

My guilelessness and general ignorance also made me the butt of many jokes (such as not recognizing that Iran was not beside Bolivia; and not comprehending what Mat Telanjang meant - 'Naked Mat'), and when I finally spilt that I was doing my PhD, my Permanent Head Damage gave me my defining bull's eye. I didn't mind though. If anything, I was glad that they liked me enough to kacau me.

The lemang cooked, everybody crowded around to eat it with the chicken dry curry and the soup made out of the palm tree amidst the subsiding rain. It was good. After dinner, the Canadians and Italians retired to their campsite respectively, and the Malaysians went to bathe in the river. I was contented to continue stinking in my clothes and stayed by the riverside and poked the campfire.

Watched as a tiger head in the fire spurted flames from its roaring mouth. Stirred up the embers among the ashes and observed their glowing edges. Attempted to spread the fire to other unlit parts of the firewood. It had been a long time since I've been so at peace, thinking of nothing at all. Lately even the KTM commutes from KL to Singapore have started to become infested with worries and work-related stress, and I was contented to toast my face, play with the fire and think of nothing more important than balancing the peanut shells on my wooden staff and sending them into the furnace. To their fiery deaths.

While deep in thought of nothingness and fiery kacang deaths, I was interrupted by one of the guides spreading his wet socks to dry by the fire, who pointed behind me. I turned and found myself face to face with a red checkered object with two eyes and two chunky arms spread out in an imposing and menacing manner.

"Wooo!" Red Checkered Object went.

"What the?" I exclaimed, and burst into peals of unstoppable laughter. Simply priceless. A full-grown man with a sarong over his head, pretending to be a scary ghost. Tak tahanlah hahahaha Razali the joker. Managed to wreck my zen-like mental state just like that. With that, my night ended on a cheery note, went to bed around 10pm. Also snored like an entire zoo, as I was teased mercilessly the second morning, but that's for the next post.

Previous post here. Next post there.

Camping at Ulu Terong #1

I'm back from the camping trip, in one piece with battle scars and sore spots all over, so I shall put up a some blog posts to do some subliminal bragging about my hardiness and mad survival skills. To keep myself from doing hanging travel posts, like many times in the past, I've actually written all the three posts on Camping at Ulu Terong, and will release them one by one because all of them are pretty long, and will probably be really boring if you read them all at one go.

The Decision
I suppose I should start with how I decided to go on this trip. On one fine day last week I was bored and browsed through the Couchsurfing KL Forum, to see what was up, and saw this post by a man called Razali asking if people wanted to join in on a camping trip he was organizing for some Canadian students. I juggled with the idea for two seconds and decided that I could do with some camping in my mundane life. Pranced around the house, got my parents' approval ('coz I'm filial like that and 'coz I know they're cool enough to give the nod), gave Razali a call the second morning and transferred the money.

In short I decided within 2 seconds to transfer RM150 (Trip cost RM300, discounted from RM380 only for CS members =D) to a complete stranger and to go into the jungle with a bunch of complete strangers. And this is why I am studying this amazing essence called trust and how it works within CS.

Here's Razali's CS profile under the username BANDITLEADER. Tell me if you would make the same decision as I did.

Initiation
On Friday, at 8:40pm I reached Hentian Duta and met up with Fadhil, one of the guides, and the Canadians. There was going to be about 11 Canadians, two Italian girls and me as guests. The reception from Fadhil and the other guides was as warm as that from the Canadians was cold. After trying some furtive smiles at my Canadian trekking counterparts and not getting invited into the group, I settled in for the bus ride to Taiping and we stopped at Bukit Gantang at about 12am. There, we met up with a larger group of guides and trekking kakis, all sipping coffee at the rest stop for the trek ahead.

The tourist us split into two groups and were transferred to a closed Malay restaurant nearby via van. The Italian girls came from Penang and joined us. There, we were instructed to extract unnecessary stuff from our backpacks and deposit them into plastic bags. Previously instructed to bring a 50litre backpack, I expected the others to have backpacks that dwarfed my 32litre, but turned out that mine was the biggest among all the tourists. Most of them brought light day packs. I took out my jacket and extra khakis and a bunch of keys, and decided that the rest were not dispensable.

Then they handed each of us a sleeping mat and a parang (machete). The combination of the wooden handle, the polished wooden sheath and the dull glimmer of the blade of the parang gave an air of solid purposefulness. Do not mess with the parang, it seemed to say. With the blade safely tucked in its sheath, in turn safely stowed in my backpack, I was whisked into the jungle by a four-wheel drive, finally initiating some polite and boring conversation with some of the Canadians.

At this point I have to clarify that calling them Canadians or Mat Sallehs or whatever is not of racist intent - but I simply have no other handle to refer to them collectively. Moving on.

Reaching The Campsite
As we reached the starting point, all pretense of conversation and niceties lapsed with the regrouping of the Mat Sallehs, so with anticipation bubbling silently within, I stood in line while the guides sprayed our shoes with repellent that was supposed to keep the leeches at bay.

The repellent did not work very well. As we started trekking, some of the Mat Sallehs started crying out in alarm when leeches started to latch on them. My facade of being the tough and unperturbed Malaysian used to the perils of the jungle was quickly blown when I found a long one on my sock, trying to suck my blood through it. It was three times the size of the puny ones found at FRIM. In panic, I flicked it away. It worked, but then I saw another one coolly making its way up my shoe.

I hate leeches. I hate the way they move - I maintain that if they moved like worms or snakes I would be much less afraid of them. If there's anything more than my fear of leeches, it would be the fear of leeches in the dark of the night. And these were leeches in the dark of the night. I was very, very perturbed.

We reached the campsite in about half an hour, all sweaty and freaked out from the leeches, and by the time we set up camp it was 3:30am. "Camp" was tarpaulin sheets tied up as shelter and tarpaulin sheets on the ground to put our gear and weary selves on - "no walls", described Federica, one of the Italians. The Italian girls and I had a small camp to ourselves some metres away from the guides' camp, while the Canadians were positioned in another camp a short trek away.

As I lay on my sleeping mat, staring at the clusters of stars through the leaves and listening to the jungle surrounding me (one, two three crickets by the right and a laughing cicada somewhere above, with a background music of tiny strings playing), I pondered. About life in general, about how I'm going to need loads more social skills to do my research, about how Italian actually sounds a bit like Malay. Not about the non-existent walls and the ineffective repellent and the prowling leeches outside the camp.

You know, 'coz I'm a tough and unperturbed Malaysian used to the perils of the jungle like that.

Part 2 here.
Part 3 here.

Photos! Ipoh Taiping Penang.

This is me, on Day 1 of the trip with Guang Hong and YKent, at Ipoh, after having the original Oldtown White Coffee, against a bright orange stretch of wall, holding an auntie clutch purse and having the original Oldtown White Coffee stain on my shirt.


Random facts about Ipoh - ipoh is actually a poisonous plant, and the orang asli (indigenous people) use it in their darts. Also there's a widespread belief that girls from Ipoh are beautiful =D Hence the guys, throughout our short stop in Ipoh couldn't stop scanning the crowd for pretty girls.

And this is at the Ipoh Railway station, a really old building with an old hotel and an old lift which is like 100 years old. GH and I went up the lift, but YKent was too chicken to. Here's a golden Indian temple beside the railway station. The railway station has been refurbished and looks very modern, compared to the hotel.

After Ipoh, we went to Kellie's Castle, I've already blogged a bit about it in the previous post (on pretending to be a classic bike biker and not paying for the entrance fee), so the following two pictures are on Kellie's Castle:

And these three are of the Lake Gardens of Taiping. Very nice and tranquil. Good for dating, as you can see.

And looky here, of a photo of legs of me and He Who Declines To Be Named.

In Penang we visited the Tropical Spice Garden.
The Spices.
The Cool Grasshopper.
More coming up.

Reviews and whatnot

There's something about picture-extensive posts - they cut the flow of my thoughts and I don't like my thoughts being cut, therefore I have decided to abandon the draft which I've been working on for the past two days, with the photos inside. Maybe later. But now I'm just going to type happily =)

As I type here I am also buying air tickets online, Malaysia Airlines ticket from Kota Bharu to KLIA. It costs RM76 nett. The same flight, for Airasia costs RM42 and I have this compelling urge to give my middle finger to Airasia. I don't see the need for the unhealthy competition, and Airasia is doing what we say in chinese, 以本伤人, which roughly translates into "using its capital to hurt other people", and it's a lose-lose situation. And that's not sportsmanship. Sokong Malaysia Airlines!!!

Well, travelling around has been fun except some minor gripes on accommodation, which I will talk about more extensively below, and that I wish I had more time to spend in Terengganu. Do you know that Terengganu has this really professional-looking tourism website? *click*
We just spent like two hours in Kuala Terengganu. Didn't really have time to walk around the bazaar at the lake front, and missed the supposedly biggest museum in Malaysia, but I did take some pictures of the floating mosque. And KT has a really nice Chinatown! It's small but well-maintained, with the buildings newly painted and there's a nice archway typical to most Chinatowns around. Also it's pretty clean.

Accommodation! Since there are so little information on hostels online, I decided to contribute my reviews here for people who may be interested. I actually trawled blogs to get reviews as well. Here comes the horror stories:

1. Banana New Guesthouse, Penang: Briefly reviewed here. Also after comparison, I feel that you could do much worse than it, actually. It's clean, cheap, safe, airconditioned. Only gripe was the noise at night, but that was just our room which was near the road. We stayed in a triple room hence did not try out the dorms.

2. Ideal Traveller's House, Kota Bharu: Location is pretty good, close to the Siti Khatijah market and most other attractions. Food's available within walking distance. The price is RM40 per triple room per night, with a double bed and a single bed. From outside it looks dilapidated, but inside's alright although it is a bit dark upstairs. Currently there's construction work being done right opposite the guest house, but they don't work at night so there's minimal noises. Attached bathroom was huge (shower and toilet bowl occupying the far end, the rest of the space is for you to dance in the nude if you so feel inclined), there was a balcony attached as well, and the room is not airconditioned. Gripe: There were bed bugs!!!! I got at least 53 bites on me (yes I counted), they weren't itchy and did not hurt, just left red spots all over me. That was rather irritating.

3. Cherating Bayview Resort, Cherating: This was the fourth place that we checked in Cherating and chose. This was our last night in the trip, and we decided to splurge a bit hence increased our budget to RM150 instead of the usual RM50 per night. A room with two double beds facing the sea cost RM135. The place is airconditioned, relatively clean, very near the beach. AT FIRST GLANCE (more later). Briefly, the places that we checked before choosing Cherating Bayview:

a) Ranting Beach Resort: God the place was rundown. We were shown a chalet which cost RM130, the floor was sandy, the bathroom was poorly lit. We decided to give it a pass.
b) Payung Guesthouse: This was Lonely Planet's editor's pick. The rooms were not airconditioned, RM35 for one chalet with a double bed in it. Because there were three of us we had to take two chalets. Cleanliness-wise it looked alright, but we decided to look further to see if there were any other place where we could share a room.
c) A place right opposite Payung I think, it is connected with a bistro, I can't remember the name: A family room cost RM100, 5 people can sleep in it with its bunk bed (two people at the bottom, one person at the top) and double bed. The place looked rather rundown, mattresses were thin and there was this huge ass mirror facing the double bed. Moving on.

For Cherating Bayview, Lonely Planet's review was that it was "particularly clean and almost obsessively neat". Well, I don't have anything against the bedroom nor the beds, but the TOILET!!! Got larva-like maggot-like worms inside!!! Being a resort (and not a lowly hostel or guesthouse), this is an unpardonable offense. Dikenakan Lonely Planet, yet again. Not only that hundreds of wriggling creatures were on the floor, the shower had very low water pressure (comparable to Auckland's Pentlands), so you are forced to shower in a very slow pace, your toes curled in, half tip-toeing as not to step on the half-drowning creatures on the ground... Luckily we were there for only a night, and I tried my best not to go into the bathroom. Additional gripe: The flush toilet takes ages to refill as well.

Hmm. More on my trips (and hopefully some photos) coming up. I realized just recently that I only have one month to bum around, then comes frantic travelling with Asa and Val, then comes a new life in Singapore. Shopping in Bangkok!!! Chatuchak!!! I've been having good dreams about it since reading about it from Pinkpau's blog (here) and I can't wait till Asa and I go there and do some major shopping. Since I'm right now surviving on the paltry number of t-shirts which were staples in my luggage while traipsing around NZ.

Will end post truncating non-stop rambling.

Ipoh Taiping and Penang

Two more hours till my birthday ends. So far most wishes have been through sms, and my phone has been acting up by an occasionally malfunctioning joystick.

I'm at a cybercafe now, right across Banana New Guest House where I'm staying. The place itself is alright, for the price we're paying (RM45 per room per night) I'm not complaining. We're staying in a triple room, with a double bed and a single bed. The room is very dimly lit with the windows sealed, but it is airconditioned and everything looks clean in the dim lighting. Toilet's relatively clean though it's perpetually wet since the shower is for some reason put in close proximity with the toilet bowl. And it's really noisy at night because our room happens to be right beside the road, but since we're all really tired at night we don't really mind. Walls are paper thin and someone kept knocking my side of the wall last night.

Yesterday we set off at 7am, stopped by Ipoh for the real white coffee and went to Kellie's Castle to have a look at the ruins. Coincidentally the Malaysia International Classic Bike Festival (or something like that) was held in Kellie's Castle, so we just blended into the crowd and didn't pay the entry fees =P Some bikes were really impressive btw, there was one that was number-plated 1920, didn't even have alphabets in front, so it should be like, the 1920th vehicle that got a license plate in Malaysia. Cool.

Then after that we went to the Lake Gardens in Taiping, which is wonderful really, very well-maintained and litter was virtually inexistent, which is quite something when you look at tourist attractions in Malaysia. We did pick up a couple of plastic bags but that's all. The Lake was originally a tin mine, then it was the first recreational park to be developed in Malaysia, even before the 1900s I think.

My uncle recommended a sotong bakar + tomyam stall in Kamunting, opposite Regimen 3, but we couldn't find it. So we headed straight for Penang, where all the good food is anyway.

Met up with Melissa Sim and all was good. We went to the Tropical Spice Garden (relatively new, I think less than 3 years old) today, got a wonderful guide named Choo who was equally happy about our attentiveness that he gave us a super long tour, twice as long as what the tour was supposed to be. He's a crazy nature lover who got a degree in Electrical Engineering but ended up being a nature guide at the end. Travelled to all sorts of places, and even been in the army before. Crazy. The Spice Garden was nice. If you ever travel there, look for Choo as a guide.

Next stop is Kota Bharu, I'm looking forward to seeing the Temenggor Dam tomorrow. YKent is sick, hope that he'll be fine tomorrow. Too much heaty food in Penang and he's been driving almost the whole journey, poor lad. So probably Guang Hong or me will take over driving tomorrow, to KB.