Malaysia Part I (p

Malaysia Part I

(Editor's note: All pictures are now smaller - if you wanna see the bigger version, just click on it.)

After spending our last evening with Flo and Milena (see picture below), we left Singapore and headed to Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia's capital city. Riding the train in Malaysia is extremely comfortable. If we could, we would exclusively take the train to travel around, but many places where we want to go to are not connected to the railway system.

Compared to Singapore, KL is pure chaos. Messy, noisy, stinky - very tiring and very interesting at the same time. When you look up at the sky, you see dozens of ultra modern skyscrapers, most famously the Petronas Towers, the world's tallest buildings until 2004. Take one step without looking down, and you will stumble over a pavement crack in the footpath (if there is any footpath at all). It's poor and rich at the same time, and we could not get rid of the feeling that it is rich only on the outside. As in Singapore, the food is excellent, with hundreds of food stalls on the streets and excellent restaurants.

The language that is spoken in Malaysia is Malay which is more or less identical to the language spoken in Indonesia. Most people, however, also speak a funny dialect called Singlish (at least that's what it was called in Singapore). One of the most generic terms is "can". For example, when we took a taxi in KL which hadn't quite enough space in the back for our backpacks, we squeezed the backpacks between us on the back seats. The taxi driver looks over his shoulders and asks "Can?". With much self-confidence, I say "can!". Of course, all of this means "Is that ok for you back there, squeezed like that?" "Yes, everything is alright, thank you". Why should language be so bloated and complicated if it can be that simple?

After two nights in KL, we took a bus to the east coast and arrived at the city of Kuantan, where Rahel's stepdad, Meng, lives. After a brief and pleasant visit (2 nights), we took another bus, a taxi, and finally a boat to the beautiful island of Perhentian. We stayed in the Bubble Dive Center, a very beautiful resort with its own private beach. Life underwater here is fantastic, not only for diving, but also for snorkeling. The reef begins right at the beach, and you can see sharks, stingrays and lots of fish going about their lives among gazillions of healthy corals.

You only get on the island by boat - there are no roads and hence no cars or anything motorized on the island. It really is just a jungle with a couple of idyllic white sandy beaches. We lived in a small hut about 5 meters away from the beach, and at night, the turtles come here to lay their eggs.

Posted on July 13, 2007 9:22 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.pbelow005.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/17

p < 0.05

Just checking if life is good independent of where we are

Malaysia Part I

TrackBack

Comments (506)