Malaysia Part 3:

DEC 25: Christmas morning we woke up and watched a little of the first Harry Potter movie, just because it was on TV. Then I opened my Christmas card. Victoria had given me one to open on the trip. We went down to the breakfast and I was just floored. There was so much food. I expected a small continental style breakfast. Instead we had a huge buffet with breakfasts from every country. They had Japanese breakfast, Malaysian breakfast, Indian breakfast, and western breakfast (cereal, fruit, omelettes). They also had some pretty good chicken sausages. There isn't much pork in Malaysia because it is a Muslim country. Instead you find turkey, beef, and chicken bacon and sausages. Paul and I ate enough at breakfast that we didn't really need lunch later on in the day.

At breakfast we sat next to an Indian couple, or so I assumed. It turned out they were from America. Specifically, they were from Charlotte (largest city in North Carolina). I figured they were there with the wedding. We had a good conversation with them, then went to get ready for our day. We decided to go to the Batu Caves, an important Hindi shrine near KL. We actually ran into the same couple from breakfast again in the LRT station on the way to the bus stop. They were headed to the Petronas Towers, so they weren't taking the LRT for very long.

Our guidebook wasn't much help in finding where the bus left from. There were two companies that went out to the caves, but neither one seemed to leave from where the map said they would. The most important thing the book told us were the bus numbers for the two buses we were looking for. After that, we wandered around Chinatown's bus stops looking for the correct number. We eventually found it, but it was pretty frustrating looking for it. We asked an attendant at one of the bus stops, but he wasn't any help at all.

We took the bus out there (I think 50 cents each) for about an hour. It went through all sorts of neighborhoods around KL on the way north to the caves. Everyone on the bus was a local, except a family sitting behind us. They were from South Africa and
they were of Indian descent. We talked with them some, and together we stumbled off the bus next to a highway. We had to cross the highway to go to the Batu Caves, which didn't seem like the best system ever. Luckily it wasn't like an interstate or anything.

One thing I was impressed with was the number of people who got out of their seats to offer them to senior citizens or women with children. I noticed this happened quite a lot on the LRT and on our bus. People were generally quite courteous, I think more so than in America.

At the temple, we were asked to buy bird food and monkey food at the courtyard below the caves. There are lots of stairs leading up from the courtyard area to the caves above. I thought the woman was crazy with the monkey comment, but we soon discovered why. We climbed up the stairs and into the caves without any trouble, though it seemed like it was quite a workout for some of the visitors. The back cave has no roof, so there was a decent amount of light in the caves (though my camera didn't do so well). As we approached the back of the cave, we released there were monkeys everywhere. I don't know how many monkeys there were, but at least 20. Some of the monkeys had baby monkeys clinging to them, which were very cute. Many people were feeding the monkeys, so you could get quite close to them. One guy decided to climb up the nearby rocks to a little statue and pose near some monkeys. I don't think you were supposed to do that though.

I accidently stumbled on a way to get the monkeys to come close. I was getting my camera out of a plastic bag in my backpack when I noticed several monkeys had gathered nearby and were watching me. They had learned to associate the sound of plastic ruffling with someone digging through a plastic bag to get food for them. So all I had to do was pretend to be digging out food and they would get pretty close. I'm a cruel, cruel bastard though, since I didn't actually feed them. They seemed to be doing well though. The worst thing about the caves is the trash. It looks like no one ever cleans out the cave, and there are just piles and piles of rubbish in the corners. It's quite ugly. Apparently in February there's a big festival where people put hooks in their skin and attach weights to the hooks. Then they walk miles and miles to the cave and up the stairs to a shrine. Apparently they are able to transcend the pain. All the visitors who watch this must leave a lot of trash. They were repainting the colorful stairs while we were there, however. I guess that was in preparation for the festival.

As we were heading down the stairs, we ran into the South African family, that was still heading up the stairs. They were a little slow. We just missed the next bus back to the city, so we had to wait a little while. We got back to KL with a decent amount of the day left, so we decided to see some of the attractions near the old colonial center. First we walked through the train station, which is quite ornate with spires and the like. Then we walked past the National Mosque, which didn't seem terribly attractive, but it does stand out. We went to the Islamic Art Museum, an interesting museum. I particularly liked the section on architecture, because they had models of famous mosques from around the world. The sections of weapons, pottery, and other trinkets don't interest me so much anymore. I have seen so many that sometimes it is hard to appreciate them, since many of them look quite similar.

After we saw the museum, we headed to the bird park, a mostly outdoor aviary, with a net covering it. On the way, we saw some monkeys sitting by the side of the road. The whole area was forested, except where the museums and parks were carved out, so I guess it wasn't so strange to see the monkeys there, but I thought it was unusual to see wild monkeys inside the city limits. Most of them were quite shy, but the plastic bag trick worked again. We went around the corner and found even more monkeys a little further down the road. These ones had a street sign warning of monkey crossings, and a crowd of tourists feeding them. I felt a little bad for the first monkeys since they didn't get so much attention. Shortly after seeing the monkeys, we arrived at the bird park.

The bird park was pretty neat. We saw lots of hornbills, very beautiful and large birds. They also had hundreds of peacocks. Everywhere we looked, we saw peacocks. This led to the observation that peacocks really like to perch on things. Maybe it's their big tails that encourages them to do so. We were going to go to a butterfly park or the orchid park after the bird park, but we decided to pass. It was getting late anyway, so many things were starting to close. Next we walked to Merdeka Square (Freedom Square), where Malaysia declared independence from Great Britain. The field was pretty much closed off. I think they only use it for cricket sometimes. Around the field are many buildings, including some old colonial buildings, and the Malaysian Supreme Court. The square hosts the world's tallest flagpole, or so they claim.

We ended our tour after this and headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. Actually, I think first we probably went to go get another root beer float. I can't remember if we did or not. Paul's JET predecessor had made plans to come to KL at the same time we were there, so we had agreed to meet with her for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe.

We met Paul's predecessor, Michelle, at her hotel, which was next to the Hard Rock Cafe. She had just arrived about ten minutes before we came. Paul had thought about going to the airport to meet her, but I talked him out of it since it is over an hour away from the city. Michelle was pretty nice, so dinner was fine. Eventually we had to go back to our hotel, since our parents were trying to call us around midnight. A little after midnight, we got the call from our family. I was happy that they were able to reach us at the hotel. Apparently mom dialed some woman in America first by accident. She was quite used to getting calls for the hotel in Kuala Lumpur, however. I guess it must happen frequently. It was good to talk to our family on Christmas Day (or slightly afterwards for us). Afterwards we were sleepy, so we called it a night.

DEC 26:
We had seen many of the tourist attractions in Kuala Lumpur that we were interested in, so we thought we would try another city nearby for a day trip. We went to Shah Alam, which boasts a blue mosque with a huge dome, and the tallest minarets in the world. This time, getting a bus wasn't nearly so complicated. The bus left from the place the book said it did. It was really cheap again (about 50 cents) and took a little under an hour.

Unfortunately, Shah Alam was a little boring. We went to it's huge lake park, and it was almost completely empty. Most of the restaurants and stores were shut down. I guess it gets most of its visitors on the weekend. We found our way to a museum about the Selangor state (where Shah Alam is located). This museum was huge. It took hours to walk through, even without reading all the cards. They had information on animals, weapons (lots of weapons), history, past sultans, cultural traditions, religion, and everything else you ever wanted to know about Malaysia and Selangor. Some sections were not put together well, but the museum was quite impressive. On top of it all, it was a free museum. I guess they are trying to lure more people to Shah Alam.

After the museum, we headed to the mosque. We were allowed to look around the mosque, but we couldn't go into the prayer room, where the dome is. You could see in it from the hallways though, so it wasn't a problem. The mosque is quite beautiful and seems fairly lavish.

We finished with the mosque quickly (there wasn't that much you could see), and tried to figure out how to get back to Kuala Lumpur. Unfortunately, the bus that took us there didn't seem to head back ever. At least there were no return signs for buses back to KL. We found a bus stop, but we didn't see any buses that we going to KL for awhile. Eventually a bus appeared, and it said it was going to KL, but it wasn't the bus we knew. We waited for another 15 minutes then took a similar bus that soon appeared. During this time we had seen two or three of the same bus that we took there on the other side of the road. I figured that we would've seen a bus going our way if one existed. So we decided that we should just hope on the next bus that claimed to go back to KL and figure out from there.

We got back early to the hotel, so we decided to relax some. Paul wanted to work out and take a shower. I needed a hair cut desperately. I found a barber shop near the hotel that inspired some level of confidence (I also found one that didn't). It wasn't super cheap, but they really took care of me. They gave me Chinese tea and several massages as part of the hair cutting process. It was great. It came out to about $20, which is still cheaper than in Japan.

When I came back, I suggested that we go see the new James Bond movie that night. We found out there was a movie theater nearby at the Petronas Towers shopping center. We had dinner in a small food court near our hotel. It was thai food, and it only cost about a dollar. It was amazing how cheap some things were. Not that Thai food is famous for being expensive, though.

The Petronas Towers were only a short walk away, so we waited until about 45 minutes before the movie to go buy tickets. When we entered the mall, a Cinnabon was staring us in the face. Paul apparently really likes Cinnabons, so he had to stop and get one. The movie theater was 4 or 5 floors up from us. The mall seemed really big. There were tons of stores there. There were many people at the movie theater trying to buy tickets for the Lord of the Rings movie. I guess it had just opened recently. Unfortunately, James Bond was almost totally sold out for the showtime we wanted. They also sell seat reservations with your ticket, so we had very poor seats. I think we were on the second row, left side. The seats weren't great, but we wanted to see it, and it only cost $2 anyway. I knew that, in Japan, the movie wasn't coming out until March, and it would be much more expensive ($15). So we decided to go to the movie. I liked the movie, with a couple exceptions. It was interesting to see the movie in Malaysia, because they have censors that cut out sexual scenes. About three or four scenes from James Bond were just missing. It would jump from two people talking to the next scene. It was a little disappointing, since music and dialogue were also cut out. After the movie, we returned to the hotel and went to bed.

DEC 27:
We got up early the next morning to make our way to the bus station. We were heading out of Kuala Lumpur, and going to Cameron Highlands. When we got to the bus station, we found our bus without any problem and got on it. Unfortunately, ten minutes later, someone else came with the same seat numbers that we had. We never figured out what happened, but the bus driver didn't seem to like the fact that we had bought our tickets several days in advance. I guess they had lost track of our tickets or something. Luckily, there were four spare seats, so we managed to get seats in the very back of the bus. If it had been full, I don't know what we would've done. This was the only bus goign to Cameron Highlands until much later in the day. We found it interesting that the book told us to buy tickets early, and we ended up buying them too early.

The bus drive was pretty uneventful for the first half of the trip. Cameron Highlands is located up in the hills, so the second half was a trip up windy roads. Our bus driver also decided to drive around these curvy roads as fast as possible. This didn't bother me or Paul, but there was a family of five in front of us that didn't fare so well. First, the little baby girl started vomiting. This set off a chain reaction in the family that seemed to affect the next family member every 10 minutes. It spread to the mother, then the youngest brother, and finished with the oldest brother. The poor father had to keep comforting his whole family. At least he wasn't affected by the car sickness himself. I think it must've come from the mother's side of the family. I ended up giving them a plastic bag, along with a whole pack of tissues that I was keeping as emergency toilet paper. The toilets often don't have toilet paper, but instead have a big bucket of water with a ladle, or a rubber hose. You're supposed to splash water on your bottom using these devices like a bidet might do. I didn't have much interest in that, so I just bought tissue packs instead.

About four hours after our trip began, we arrived in Cameron Highlands. We had emailed ahead to a place called Father's Guest House. It was recommended in the guide book as being cheap and friendly. So they had saved us a room and picked us up at the bus station. Cameron Highlands is quite small though, so it wouldn't have been much of a pain to walk (except maybe to find this place). Father's is on a hill overlooking some of the town. It has many old bungalows which have twin rooms and dorm rooms with shared bathrooms. It also has a house with double rooms with private bath. We got a room with twin beds. Actually, since they were all taken, they gave us a room with a double bed, and two twins. It was probably popular with families. It was about $6 a night, so it was a good price. The staff at Father's were really laid back and told us to come back sometime that night to check in since the office is closed for several hours in the afternoon.

We were going to check our email at the computers they have at Father's, but there was a power failure right when we began using the computers. We struck up a conversation with two foreigners who turned out to be JETs like us. They are in Chiba, near Tokyo. They were two women. They were named Alice and Sarah.

Paul and I were getting pretty hungry, so we headed back into town to check out the restaurants. We stopped at one of the first restaurants we found, which was a little Chinese restaurant. They food was okay, and very cheap. They didn't have root beer floats, so I ended up getting a banana split instead. This was quite a popular dessert in Cameron Highlands, so I had one each day (okay, I'm a pig) at different restaurants.

After lunch we returned to Father's, and decided to entertain ourselves. We found a small, plastic basketball goal and an inflatable ball. We decided to try to get the ball to go into the tiny basketball goal without using our hands and arms. It was fairly challenging, and our initial approach of trying to block each other made the task even harder. Finally, we ended up cooperating. However, we couldn't get it to go in, until I accidently handballed it in. We decided that was good enough for that day and that we'd try again the next day. After that we played volleyball against each other, and Paul kept beating me.

That night we went to a South Indian restaurant that was in town. The service wasn't terribly friendly, but it was fast. We got big banana leaves and they dumped lots of different foods all over our leaves. It was quite tasty, and only cost about two dollars. We didn't go back there, but I kind of wish we had.

After dinner, electricity was restored at Father's, so we checked our email and watched a little tv. I noticed that two of the computers were broken, so I took a look at them and tried to fix them. I came to the conclusion that they would need to buy parts to fix both the computers, but that I could swap parts around and they could have one fixed computer. Two days later they said it was okay to do that, so I swapped all the parts around, creating one really broken computer, and one good one.

That day we also met a German couple who was pretty cool. Paul got to practice his German with them, but he was frustrated since he can tell his German is becoming worse. There were many other foriegners there, including a teacher from Japan, a tea plantation owner from India, and a Danish couple. Of course, there were more people than that, but these are the ones we talked to primarily. The tea plantation owner, Kabil, came on the same bus as us, so we met him on the way to the guest house, and often ate meals with him. He was in Cameron Highlands to observe their tea manufacturing process. He wanted to compare it to his. He didn't think the tea they produced was good quality, or that their methods were really that great. Kabil was an interesting guy to talk to.

We watched a special on TV about animal actors, which was cute and interesting. It turns out the Taco Bell Chihuahua is actually a female dog. After that, the office closed and we went to bed. There's not much to do in Cameron Highlands at night, so we just went to sleep.

DEC 28:
Father's offered some tours of nearby attractions through a tour company. We signed on for an all day tour for about $20 each. While this is not really that expensive, it was expensive for anything in Malaysia. The German couple came on the tour, and so did three people from Belgium. The first half of the tour started with a drive to a tea plantation. We stopped on the side of the road, and watched the workers (far away from us), picking all the tea leaves. They only take the baby tea leaves off the plant for tea. The mature ones don't make good tea. The tea plantations looked quite pretty, and they are very big.

After the tea plantation, we headed to the highest point near Cameron Highlands. It is supposed to have a great view, but it was inside a cloud. Everywhere but the top of the mountain seemed to be clear, so it was not good luck. The coolest part of the tour came next. We went inside a mossy forest. It was an incredibly wet forest, with moss everywhere. This particular moss holds water really well, so it stores it during a rain and drips it out afterwards. This means the forest is always wet. It also had a huge diversity of plants, and a lot of mud. We walked only a little way through the forest, but took a lot of time to look at things. On the other hand, we saw many groups that raced around parts of the forest but didn't really see anything. I definitely thought our tour had a great approach to it. Our guide was very concerned about tourism destroying this beautiful habitat, so we had to be quite careful. Our guide showed us a pitcher plant he had hidden. The pitcher was quite large. He said that many people will rip the pitchers off the plants because they like them, so he has to hide this one. I did even find one that was ripped off lying on the ground. There were tons of other pitcher plants around, but most of them were way up high. This one was where you could touch it. He explained the way they kill bugs to us, which is different than what venus fly traps do. After that, we left the mossy forest to continue our tour.

Next stop was the tea factory. We got to see what happens to the new tea leaves once they are picked. Basically, they are dried, crushed, oxidized, heated, and sorted. The only difference between English, Chinese, and Japanese tea is the oxidation process. All three use the same tea plant, which I didn't know. They had a little tea shop next to the factory, so we bought some presents and had a light lunch.

The second half of the tour was a trip to an Orang Asli village. The Orang Asli are the native people of Malaysia. Before we went to one of their villages, we had to drive for quite a long time. After we left the highway, we followed a rather bad road towards the village. One the way, we stopped at a farm and looked at the growing processes they use. Apparently they export lots of chrysanthemums to Japan. It is supposed to be very profitable for them. They farms seemed to have almost every kind of plant imaginable. It's also warm all year round, so they can keep growing things. Our vehicle for the tour was a Land Rover. They are quite popular in Cameron Highlands. Actually, they are about the only car you see anywhere. It seems like everyone has a Land Rover. Some of the Land Rovers aren't ready for highway use and extended drives, so they have a special "Cameron Highlands Only" sticker on them.

We left the farm and continued on the village. There were three villages all very close to each other, and we went to the one which had more traditional buildings still. The government is built wood huts for the villagers many years ago, and now they are building cement ones for them. However, the traditional hut is made of bamboo, and this village still had some left, including the chief's hut. The chief came out and gave some traditional tools to the guide who showed us how to use them. We all got to try using a blow gun to shoot at a small target. Paul was the only one who hit the target, so the tour guide said he could marry a woman in the tribe and join them. I think he was kidding though. Many of the village's children came out to watch our tour group. I guess we must have seemed strange to them also. I was actually a little worried about hitting one of the kids with the blowdart. I think that would've pissed off the chief a little bit. It was neat looking at the weapons and stuff, but I felt a little strange about looking at their houses and their lives. Paul expressed a similar feeling of discomfort to me. I don't know if I feel comfortable about people being a tourist attraction. Our guide told us that his tour group is the only one that's allowed to come to the village, to limit outside contact.

We drove down the road a little bit and visited the site of a new bridge. The government built the bridge for the villagers, but there was an older bamboo bridge the villagers had built still standing next to the new one. We walked across the old bridge for novelty. The bridge was quite shakey, but I wasn't bothered by it too much. I guess all that high ropes course training paid off. We drove to a waterfall nearby and finished up with tea and cookies. There were two really big spiders nearby that were gorgeous. After tea, we drove back to Father's. It was around 5 when we finally got back to the guest house.

Our dirty clothes were starting to mount up, so we found a laundromat in Cameron Highlands that did all off our clothes for about two dollars. One of my socks came back shredded, but my clothes got cleaned, so it was okay. We picked up our clothes the next day around noon, all folded and clean. This night we went to a different Chinese restaurant, which I didn't like very much. First of all, it seemed like everyone working there was 16 or 17. I thought this was a little strange, and it definitely didn't result in a good experience. I think I had a banana split though.

At Father's, we watched some of Forrest Gump and checked our email. We were very tired, so we went to bed early again.

DEC 29:
This was our last day in Cameron Highlands, and we chose to go on another tour. This tour was the highlights of Cameron Highlands tour. It involved four hours of going to many different places. Our guide wasn't nearly as friendly or knowledgable as our guide the day before. In fact, she said many things that he told us many guides erroneously believe. Since he sounded more intelligent than her, I tend to trust his version of things. Sarah and Alice went on the tour with us, along with the German and Danish couples.

The first place we went to was a Buddhist temple. It wasn't too impressive, since I've seen lots of those in Japan. We did find out a really weird thing at this Buddhist temple, however. Alice and Sarah are both from England, and it turns out that Alice is from Norfolk, just like Victoria is. I told Victoria about it, and she went to the same preschool as Alice. It was a pretty big coincidence.

Next we went to a rose garden, which had many other flowers besides roses. It was built on a hill, so we climbed up to the top and took some pictures of the nearby farms and hills. We goofed off and took a couple pictures with figures in the rose garden. Here's Paul, and me.

Then came a visit to the Boh tea factory, the same one that Paul and I had been to the day before. Since the guide didn't actually explain anything about the tea process to the group, I told some of the people about what was going on. Then we went to have tea at the tea shop, but they had run out of hot water apparently. I guess they forgot to start some boiling when they should have. It seemed to take about 20 minutes to boil the water however, so I didn't wait. I just had something cold and a cake. Paul and I ran into the family that was sick on the bus, and the woman thanked me for helping them out. They looked so much better when they weren't queasy that I didn't even recognize them at first.

A honey farm was next on our list of places to visit. It was terribly uninteresting however. I always liked it when they build one of the walls of a bee house using glass, so you can look inside at the bees making honey. However, they didn't have that. After a short walk around the place, we went to the nearby market and bought different fruits. I bought some honey mangos. They were really good. Many people bought a Cameron Highlands apple. It is a strange combination of apple and cucumber. Or at least, that's what it tastes like. It is green and purple, and oval-shaped. I tried a bite of someone else's since it didn't look that good.

Next we went to a nearby butterfly farm which had lots of other insects also. There were tons of butterflies in the butterfly farm, but many of them were of one species, and most of them were injured in some way or another. There were also lots of dead butterflies lying around. Something about the butterfly farm seemed to turn on a switch in our guides head and she suddenly woke up and started actually explaining things to us. Her strategy for the earlier stuff was bring us there and then disappear for awhile. She was quite good at disappearing. She pulled the stag beetles out of their cage and showed them to us. Then she made us guess where the leaf and stick insects were. Then she told us about the king grasshoppers. She managed to get one on a stick and put it somewhere else in the cage, away from the tree it was on. She said it would take hours to get back to the tree. I felt terribly sorry for the grasshopper, and started to think our guide was a little sadistic. She also kept grabbing butterflies by the wings, which I've always heard can damage their wings. Suddenly the butterfly carnage started to make sense. Our guide was butterfly public enemy number one. She decided to play crocodile hunter and took the scorpions out of their pit and put them on the ground next to us. At this point I realized she was a little crazy. One of them started heading towards Alice and Sarah, and the guide seemed to have a problem getting it back in the bit. Eventually she got it back in though. After the scorpions, we left the butterfly farm and headed to our next destination, the strawberry farm.

The strawberry farm was pretty much a complete waste of time because you could only walk through 2 of the 1000 rows of strawberries. I guess they didn't want anyone picking the strawberries, so they were closed off. They had a little store where they sold fresh strawberries with cream and the like. Paul and I ended up getting some with cream and powdered sugar. They were quite good. We wanted strawberry ice cream, but they were all out.

Our tour concluded, we were dropped off at Father's once more. Paul and I felt like we had done enough walking, so we dedicated the whole afternoon to relaxation. We got our laundry and some food, then we watched a movie, Legally Blonde, and played more of that soccer/basketball game. However, this time we actually got it rather quickly. I think we improved a lot. I fixed the computer that evening and we made sure we had bus tickets for the next day.

DEC. 30:
We woke up really early this day. It was too early for the breakfast at Father's to open. Instead we went to town to find breakfast. However, all the cafes were also closed, even the ones that served breakfast. It was around 8am, so we were a little surprised. We found a small booth which served some western breakfast foods. The owner/cooks were both deaf, so we had to write everything down. They had signs telling us that. The food was quite good and cheap though. We got to the bus station, and the Danish couple was taking the same bus as us to Penang, an island in the northwest. Luckily there were no barfing families for the trip down the hills this time around.

During the part of the bus ride that's in the hills, you see jungle and forest all around you. However, once we got back on the highway to Ipoh, all you could see were palm and rubber tree plantations. I hadn't seen many rubber plantations in the south of Malaysia, so it was interesting to see some. I always forget that rubber comes from a plant. The bus stopped in Ipoh, a major transportation hub, before continuing on to Butterworth. Butterworth is a city on the mainland, that acts as a port for Penang Island. Our bus left the Butterworth bus station and headed over to the central Penang station, but it would've taken less time for us to get off at Butterworth and take a ferry across the river. The traffic was horrible in Penang, and it took forever to get to the bus stop.

We were dropped off at Komtar, a huge mall complex in Georgetown, the main city of Penang Island. Georgetown has tons of small buildings which form a huge Chinatown. Our hotel, the Oriental Hotel is right next to this area, but was much higher than the other buildings. This meant we had a great view of the city. The Danish couple, and another German couple we met, we staying at a budget hotel, while we were staying at a nicer hotel, so we parted ways. We got to our hotel and they had no idea about our internet reservation, for some reason. I showed them the receipt, and they didn't know why it wasn't in their system. They still had rooms and they gave us one at the discount internet price, so it wasn't a problem in the end. It was about $17 a night for a twin room with private bath. We also had a great view from our room. My biggest complaint was that our bathroom seemed to have some sort of water leak, and parts of the floor were always wet.

After changing more money, we went back to Komtar to see about buses going to Pankgor Island. We found one place that sold tickets to Pankgor, but it didn't have any of the tickets handy, so we had to go to Butterworth to buy them. We really didn't want to spend an hour taking the ferry to Butterworth and back to buy tickets, so we just decided to take a chance and buy them when we wanted to leave Penang.

We walked around the mall for awhile and got a bite to eat at one of the restaurants. The mall was full of pirated music, movies, and games. The prices were too low to be legitimate. For instance, some DVDs were 50 cents each. Hardly the price of a real DVD, plus they had some movies that were just released to theaters (the new James Bond, for instance). There were two or three on each floor of the mall. I was a little surprised that they were offered legitimate real estate space. In KL, they were mostly selling on the street, though there were some in stores too.

We decided that we might as well see another movie while we were in a country with cheap movies. We saw "The Two Towers" at the movie theater. This time we were prepared and bought our tickets several hours before the show. We ended up with great seats, so that was nice. Again, it was about two dollars for the ticket. Before the movie we saw an anti-piracy ad, but it wasn't done really well. It had some sort of skull with a pirate eye patch, saying copying CDs is illegal. It actually looked funny. It certainly wouldn't have deterred me from copying CDs if I had thoughts about it. I think showing the effect it has on Malaysians who work in certain industries might be the
best way to convince people. Regardless, it would have to be better than the talking skull.

I thought the movie was pretty good, but I still don't like some of the changes they made from the book. After the movie, we ran into the Danish couple again. They had just seen the movie too. We had a lot of trouble leaving the mall. Many people didn't seem to know where they were going. We were on the top floor of the mall, but the rest of the mall was closed. So we had to go down two elevators and a set of stairs to get outside. However, it wasn't obvious that we had to do this, and most of the Malaysians were waiting for the tiny elevators, which was taking forever. Thankfully, we did eventually find our way out of the mall and back to our hotel.

DEC 31:
This was a busy day for us. We saw most of the touristy stuff in Penang all in one day. First we walked down to Fort Cornwallis, an old coastal fort from the colonial days of Penang. The fort wasn't terribly exciting. It was very grassy and there were a couple cannons scattered nearby. Inside the fort were lots of fireworks for the evening. We didn't know there were going to be fireworks, so it was good to know. There was a field next to the fort where they had set up a stage for that night, and many food vendors were setting up booths around the field for the evening.

We walked past many colonial buildings, and then went to the Penang Museum. The museum was really nice. It had lots of information about the immigration of various ethnic groups to Malaysia and Penang. It was very informative. After the museum, we headed to a nearby Chinese Buddhist temple called Kuan Yin Teng. It was a temple of fertility, and apparently you could place some object on an altar if you wanted a baby. A make-shift tour guide appeared in the temple to give us a tour for tips. He was from India, and he spoke English very well. He gave us a warning though. He said we should only walk around the city, and not take the taxis or rickshaws. I said, "Oh yes, they'll rip you off for sure." He shook his head and said, "No!" and then he drew his hand across his neck like he was slicing it. He told us that they will kill white people. There might be some places where I would be scared this was actually true. However, Malaysia didn't feel dangerous like that. Paul and I laughed about it a lot once the guy left. Considering the rickshaw drivers get almost all of their business from tourists, it doesn't make much sense that they would kill everyone who got in the rickshaw with them.

After we left the temple, we headed down to Khoo Kongsi, a Chinese clan house. Penang has a large population of ethnic Chinese. When they first came to Penang, apparently the clans played a big role in helping newly arrived immigrants to find homes and work. This clan house was quite impressive, with gold everywhere and fancy designs and paintings. In the basement, there was a small museum about the history of the clan and the building. We walked past several temples and mosques without bothering to go inside. I wanted to go inside an old mansion, but it seemed to be closed for renovations. It was still quite early, so we decided to head to Air Itam, a tiny town on the island with a Buddhist temple and access to Penang Hill, the highest point on the island.

At the central bus station, we didn't know exactly which bus to take, so we waited around for one. However, the driver's of the buses seemed intent on getting us onto their buses. I don't know if they rake a percentage of the profits or what, but they definitely wanted us on a bus. One of them pointed us to the correct bus, which we couldn't see before due to other buses being in the way. The bus ride was about 40 minutes, and we were dropped off near a marketplace. We could see the Buddhist temple and recognized some signs to it, so we went there first. The guidebook said it should take 5 minutes to get there, but it took more than that. It wasn't too bad, except we had to walk on the road and watch out for cars.

The temple was really bright and colorful, and a little too commercialized for my taste. It is called Snake Temple. There is a tower in the temple that you can climb for a small fee. We went up the tower quickly, despite the really small stairs and occassional low ceilings. At the top, you could see pretty well, but we couldn't see where the funicular that went up the mountain was. We left the temple after wandering around for awhile and asked directions of a nearby person. She told us to keep going straight, then take a left somewhere. The guidebook said it was only a 10 minute walk from the temple to the funicular station, so we started walking. After awhile, we decided to just go take a bus to the funicular station, since we didn't really know where we were going and the directions weren't very clear. We walked back to the bus stop and took a bus. It was a much longer walk than the 10 minutes that were claimed, however it wasn't impossible to walk. At the foot of the mountain we bought a ticket for the funicular. There are two funiculars that go up the mountain. You have to change half way through the trip from one to the other. Once we got to the top, we realized we were quite high in comparison to Georgetown below. We could see our hotel, and Komtar Mall from the top since they stood out in comparison to the other buildings. The view was very impressive.

We saw a sign for a canopy walk, which sounded interesting, so we headed in that direction. However, the sign said it would close in about 30 minutes, and it wasn't that close. We never made it there, despite walking for awhile. We passed lots of pretty houses with nice flower decorations on the way to the canopy place. Before we came to the top, I figured it was mostly parks on the top, but there were some houses going down from the top. On our walk to the canopy walk, we ended up heading downhill, so we had to walk back to the top of the hill to take the funicular down again. At the bottom, we decided to walk back to the main bus stop. We knew that the buses seemed to go on the major road by the funicular, so we hoped they would stop there. Pretty soon a mini-bus pulled over and picked us up. He took us back to Komtar again.

Paul and I were pretty beat by then, so we went back to the hotel to rest up a little and find some food. There was an interesting restaurant downstairs called the Afritalian restaurant, which served foods from Africa and Italy. We thought we'd give it a try. I think they were out of the food I wanted, so I ended up getting pasta a la carbonara instead. It was really good though. Unfortunately it started raining around this time, and it didn't stop raining all evening. Given that this was one of the few nights we wanted to do something outside, it was pretty rotten luck.

We bought some drinks and ice cream and went back to the hotel room. I made a root beer float using my ice cream and root beer. I guess it's my little obsession, huh? We watched a Crocodile Hunter special on TV as we waited for time to pass until the fireworks. Eventually it was time for the fireworks, so we put on some raingear and headed to the field with our trusty umbrellas. On the way we were lucky enough to be solicited by prostitutes not once, but twice. I think we walked down too many dark alleyways in our rush to get to the park, so we took a different route back. At the field, there were quite a lot of people there. Cars were parked on all the streets, and pedestrians filled up the whole place. We walked around all the food booths and I finally decided to buy some tropical fruits. I bought several mangosteens, which are purple fruits with a small, white inside. They're delicious. I also bought some other fruits, but they weren't nearly as good. We watched some of the performers on stage. They were from many different countries from around the world. After the performers, an M.C. came out to get everyone excited about the New Year, and celebrating Malaysia's spirit. They also said a lot of things about saying no to terrorism and yes to diversity and tolerance. It was nice to hear. The fireworks started at midnight and were very nice, despite the rain.

After the fireworks ended, everyone left, which meant the pedestrians basically took over the entire street. We walked back to the hotel and went to bed.

JAN 1:
We didn't rush too much the next morning. We figured that there were probably buses to our destination of Lumut (Pangkor Island) in the morning, noon, and afternoon. So we aimed for the noonish ones. The ferry took no time at all to cross the river, and one runs every 7 minutes or so. It is quite popular. The ferry drops you off at the Butterworth bus station, which has tons of different buses. As we got off the ferry, several ticket sellers approached us to try to sell us tickets to Ipoh. We explained that we wanted to go to Pangkor. One guy said that we should go to Ipoh instead. I guess he had to sell lots of tickets to Ipoh for some reason. Once we realized he wasn't going to sell us a ticket ot Lumut, we went in search of a ticket booth. We found one that had tickets for around 1:00. It was only an hour away, so we agreed. We bought lunch at a nearby place and ate before the bus ride.

The bus was pretty full when we got on. We paused in Ipoh for awhile before heading to Lumut. The bus stopped in many places on the way to Lumut. Generally, if you wanted to get off the bus anywhere, it seemed like it was fine with the driver. I think a lot of the private bus companies run routes that local buses would normally run, but which don't run in small cities and towns. By the time we actually got to Lumut, only 6 people, including Paul and myself, were still on the bus.

Lumut is a small town which serves as the departure point for Pangkor Island. There are ferries every 15 minutes or so, so it is quite easy to get to the island from there. Once we got off the bus, we were in front of a lot of ticket stands selling seats to other locations, and a bunch of food stands. We were approached by a random Malaysian guy. Generally in my experience as a traveller, being approached by random people is not a great experience. Often they want something, like money, or to sell you a room, or for you to buy their goods. Most of the time they don't want what you want. This guy just wanted to talk to us. This was quite a relief for me. After we didn't get a sales pitch after the first couple minutes of talking to him, I figured he was probably an alright guy. He had studied abroad in England, and apparently got a Ph.D. at one of the universities there. His Ph.D. was in psychology or psychiatry, I don't remember which. Anyway, he lamented that in Malaysia, the other one was practiced a lot more. Currently he ran a food stand among the many stands, which was a shame for such a smart guy. He was really nice to us and helped us buy tickets for our next destination, Malacca. He kept saying how much he liked western ways of thinking, and that other Malaysians didn't like him because of his radical thoughts about freedom and individuality. He was pretty cool, but tended to keep the conversations pretty one-sided, in that he liked to talk a lot. At first the bus ticket vendor wasn't around, so we waited until our vendor got back. After we got our tickets, we headed to the ferry. The ferry was quite large for the number of people on it. They were showing Spider-Man, but the VCD kept skipping as we went over waves.

The ferry ride was under 30 minutes, so it wasn't too long. On the island, we were met by lots of taxi drivers. They were quite friendly with each other, instead of being cutthroat for business. They had formed a queue and just took people in the order they came. The fare for each destination was preset. The trip to our town cost about $2.50 total. The taxis are all pink mini-buses, so they look pretty funny. Our town was called Telok Nipah. It had a stretch of beach, with many different hostels set back a little bit from the beach. We stayed at a place called T.J.'s, that was very cheap. We only paid $6 a night for half a bungalow, with a private shower and a fan. It was quite hot in Pangkor while we were there, especially on our first day. T.J.'s was pleasant enough, but it was really no frills. They didn't have top sheets or towels, but I had brought both, so Paul got my bottom sheet. There were only about 5 rooms, so it was a very low key operation. You can get a discount on the price if you stay for several nights too. We weren't staying that long though. There were a bunch of cats and a couple dogs running around T.J.'s also. Some of them looked like they'd been in too many animal fights, but the family said they were friendly, and could be brought into the rooms if desired. We didn't risk that, but we did have several cats sleeping on our porch at night.

Paul and I went walking on the beach that afternoon. At the end of the beach were some rocks that went into the water, so we climbed out on them and looked in the water. The water was clearer than back home, but not super clear like in some places. We could see lots of sea slugs in the water though. They were quite large, and interesting to look at. There were also trilobites all over the rocks. Soon the sun set, and we started looking for dinner. I don't think we even ate lunch that day, actually.

T.J.'s had a restaurant that was recommended by the guidebook, so we thought we'd check it out. The food took awhile, but it was pretty good once it came. We both ordered a typical Indonesian meal, since T.J. came from Indonesia. After dinner we went to look for dessert, and tried the place across the street, the Purnama Backpacker's Resort. We asked to look at the menu and the woman behind the desk was incredibly rude to us ("WHAT do you want?" repeated several times). Eventually I got a menu and decided to attempt eating there. Thankfully, this same woman was not our waitress. I just had some banana fritters, since they didn't have banana splits or root beer floats. The banana fritters tasted fine, but then came the painful experience of paying for my food. I didn't get a bill, so I just went to the register (the place was empty) and told them I had banana fritters, but the stupid girl kept yelling "Eh?" and "What?" at me. I take the menu to point out the item, and she snatches it away from my hands and turns to the first page saying, "Point to it." I told her it wasn't on that page. It was on the last page, so instead of letting me turn to the last page, she kept flipping one page at a time. It was really annoying. Eventually I was able to pay and leave that accursed place. Nothing is open late at Teluk Nipah, so we just went to sleep early.