#14: Monsoon Season in Malaysia - China. Maybe One Day

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My first stop in Malaysia was the little town of Mersing. I got there on the
27th of January. I had chosen this because a friend had recommended that I
visit the island of Pilau Tioman, about two hours off the coast of Mersing. I
arrived at midday and although I could have caught a ferry that afternoon, I
decided that I ought to get some laundry done before I went anywhere else.
After checking into a hostel I went out in search of a Dohbi Wallah.

I used the internet for a bit, then picked up my laundry, and then I was left with nothing to do until I caught my ferry the next day. In the evening I played scrabble with some American guy and a Japanese lad who knew very little English. I would have won scrabble if the American had not insisted that "vex" was not a word because I couldn't put it in a sentence. I could make a sentence with "vexed" but not "vex". Therefore, by his logic it wasn't a word. At the end of the game I lost by 40 points. I would have scored more than that if I could have had "vex", but I'm not bitter. No I'm not, really, but I would have liked to have won.

Anyhow, after a terrible night's sleep I caught the midday ferry to Pilau Tioman. It took three hours and was quite rough. I only really survived without puking by lying down for the entire journey. Once on the island it was obvious that it was still out of season for tourists. I stopped at the first place that was open and found that I could get my own room, with fan and bathroom for about 15 Ringgits a night. That's £2.40. Quite a bargain, I thought.

It didn't take me long to walk around the village. There was one path that went along the seafront. Dotted along the path were various guest houses and restaurants. Most of them were shut. It's a pity I didn't have my camera with me because I saw two huge monitor lizards that were about the size of my leg! I also bumped into an English couple that I had met on the bus to Mersing, and a French girl who was the only other guest at the hostel in Mersing. I arranged to eat dinner with the French girl and a French couple that she had met earlier that day. As I expected they spent the first 20 minutes or so telling me how crap the English are and how much they hate us. I wasn't too worried by this because they also told me that as a nation they also hate the Germans, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Spanish, the Italians and the Americans. After dinner we played cards for the rest of the evening. It's not like we had a lot of choice. The island was a booze free zone.

The next day I spent the day wandering along the island's only path. This time I took my camera with me and managed to get lots of pictures of the various deserted beaches, pristine rainforest, bats, butterflies, and even another couple of lizards. By the afternoon I decided that I had seen enough of the island and went to find out if I could get a ferry back to the mainland. To my dismay I found that there were no ferries for the rest of the day and might not be any the next day. The stormy weather on the mainland was to blame. That evening was spent playing cards with a couple of Kiwi girls and joking about the Pirate Parrots that used to sail these waters - believe me, it was funny at the time.

Luckily a ferry turned up at 3pm the next day. If it hadn't I would definitely have run out of things to read. That night back in Mersing it started to rain. It didn't stop raining until I woke up in Melaka on the west coast two days later. My journey there was completely uneventful, apart from a four hour stopover in Johour bus station. I couldn't even leave the bus station because it was raining so hard. To be honest it was probably my own fault. I was trying to travel on January the 31st. This year that was the date of Chinese New Year's Eve and all the buses were full.

Melaka is an old colonial port, and as such there is evidence of old Dutch forts, and colonial style housing. There is also a large and thriving Chinatown. I spent about three days in Melaka, hanging out with a couple of Canadian guys and just wandering around town. One evening about eight of us went to a pub to watch Man U play Southampton. It was actually the only time in Malaysia that I had anything other than one beer to drink. The pub was doing a special offer on jugs of beer, so we took it in turns to buy a jug. Except the girls, who were drinking some pink coloured stuff. As I was the only English person in this group I became the expert on English Premiership football. Now those that know me would be surprised at this, as I am not normally known for my knowledge of football. However, that evening I managed to talk bollocks like an old pro.

After Melaka, myself and Rich (one of the Canadian guys) headed up to Kuala Lumpur. From the moment I arrived I didn't like the place. We spent one day wandering around and visiting various sites within the city, like the Petronas Towers and KL communications tower, then the next day we went out to the Bataui Caves. After that I was more than ready to leave this hot, sticky, congested town.

My next stop was the Cameron Highlands. This was much nicer. I spent four days around this area hiking and just relaxing in the cooler air. I also managed to play a game of golf. Not crazy golf, but real 18 hole stuff. Predictably, I was pretty rubbish. Then again so was Rory, a guy who told me he played golf quite a bit at home in Jersey.

The day after a particularly long five hour hike I just wanted to sit down, relax, and read a book for the day. I had just swapped Frank Skinner's autobiography for "About a Boy" and was anxious to get stuck into it. After a hearty breakfast I went back to the dorm to collect my book. But, shock horror...it was not on my bed where I had left it. Some thieving gypsy barstool had nicked my book! Now I know the book was not worth much, but it's the principle of the thing. After all my traveling it is the only thing I have ever had nicked. It turned out that the thief had also taken an alarm clock from someone else. I left town the next day, cursing my luck, because I was going to have to buy a new book if I wanted something to read.

My last stop in Malaysia was Georgetown, in Penang. Now I am told that there is plenty to do in this town and on the island itself. I did nothing. Partly this was because I had a really bad stomach from eating at a dodgy Chinese restaurant in the Cameron Highlands. However, a couple of nights with little or no sleep, lots of mosquito bites, and a bad stomach are the sort of thing that puts me in a really bad mood. Not what I need for navigating local bus routes in the heat. So, on the 14th of February, I caught a minivan bound for Thailand.

Questions?
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