singapore-indo
Out of context: Reply #6
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- Vinney20
Malaysia, my first impressions. After that, I went to Thailand,m which I wont bother pasting, after that I went back to Malaysia, then Singapore. I will paste that next.
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Malaysia is very much Islamic. To hear mosques whaling and women covered in headscarves is really odd after all I have seen in South East Asia. Before I started this leg of the trip I thought all these countries were pretty much the same. I didn’t know that anywhere here was Muslim, but I was very wrong, Arab traders spread Islam around Malaysia hundreds of years ago. Since then the history has been crazy, but lets not go into that now.
The largest Buddhist temple in South East Asia is oddly however in Penang; Kek Lok Si. So we had a good look at that, took a good wonder round the markets, and did a cinema night. Then we went our separate ways. As I crossed South East Asia’s longest bridge back to mainland Malaysia I looked back at Penang with no real feeling. Maybe you need more than a few days to discover what, if anything, there is that is so great about Penang. Before we departed, Jessie gave me his details, and asked me to visit him in Songkla soon. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was a great idea.Nervous, excited, happy, really excited, nervous, highly-excited, confused, very-confused, lost, pissed off, angry. This is what you feel like when standing in Malaysia’s biggest airport waiting for someone who is currently stuck in Dubai International experiencing a similar array of emotions. Hayley was a day late, thanks to Emirates Airlines and a spanking new plane on its maiden voyage, that, despite being all spangley and new, was late taking off. Eventually we met up at a bus stop in Kuala Lumpur. It was great to see her. She was, having just flown in from a British winter, hot. It’s about 32 degrees in KL in December. It takes a bit of getting used to.
KL, capital of Malaysia is a funny place. Lets start looking at Malaysia, it’s a bloody odd shape, the long bit called the Malaysian peninsula has a mad-mix population: Lots of Malays of course but also 10% Indian and a staggering 38% Chinese. The even bigger population of Chinese in KL make massive amounts of the money for the country. Everyone gets on pretty well. English is widely spoken as a result of all this. The Malay women often work, but they disappear at night. Malay men work, and perve. To "perve" is to look at women, now, obviously not all Malay men are perves but it has to be said that some look at women with a face that says: "Cooooorrrr I’d like to screw you, your legs are nice, coorrrrr. Oh, you’ve noticed me looking at you, oh well, that doesn’t really concern me, I'm just going to keep on looking all the same. Nice set of hooters by the way." I have met some great Malay family men, so please don’t ever think they’re all like this, but there is clearly something wrong with the social system. Every weekend thousands of Malay men cross the border to Thailand to get laid in the towns rammed with girlie-bars and whorehouses that are there, for that reason, to cater for the Malays.
A couple of nights in KL is probably enough, we were to come back here in a month to depart anyway. We saw the worlds highest building; The Petronas Towers, we ate great Chinese food on the street and got pissed on in a monsoon. The adventures had begun. Time to move out of the city – all change please – next stop, the Malaysian jungle.
Out of KL heading North a couple of hours we arrived in Jeruntut, gateway to Taman Negara National Park. Taman Negara is an excellent national park where you can take some walks through dense jungle - for days if you like. It can be pretty Lara Croft style stuff. There were plenty of "GET THAT FUC*ER OFF ME" moments with leaches. Our few nights here were in a wonderful family run collection of log cabins. The family that owned it cooked great meals and really went out of their way to look after us. In the park itself, a boat ride across a rapid river, we took a canopy walk along a collection of rope-bridges which were home, for a few minutes, to a collection of mega-acrobatic monkeys. There was a classic Vinney-cock-up moment of course: When feeding a monkey a biscuit he got a bit too close to us. He looked slightly menacing so I threw down a bag in front of us to scare him away. It was a plastic bag full of food. Shit plan. Little bugger grabbed it and ran up a tree. He then laughed as he pulled out a pack of cookies and munched the lot right in front of us. Cheeky b-stard monkey.