We say our fond farewells to Banana Garden Villa and this time it’s for real. 41 nights in total over three visits have been wonderful. It also marks out last night in Vietnam with the next stop, one night in KL airport.
We’re going posh for the airport hotel. You can tell it’s posh when we spot a fridge in reception just for cold towels, the TV remote control comes with its own leather folder – yes, seriously – and there’s a keypad to switch on lights and close the curtains.
So, what to do? It’s already 5pm as we have an early flight the next day. One option would be a budget challenging £20 and half an hour train ride away (not including a manic golf buggy ride to and from the airport station) to the centre of KL. The other option is to enjoy an evening in the luxury hotel with its remarkably good value food & drink.
So, we do the central KL option. This allows us to hit one of our favourite foodie places, Sushi Zanmai, get some essentials (i.e. fizzy sweets) from Mr DIY and blow out on a big bottle of gorgeous Oudh Lush shower gel. All of which are handily located at the central train station mall. We also see, from a distance, all the KL big towers one last time. Do we regret doing this? Not one bit.
A lovely & luxurious way to finish our time in Japan and south east Asia. Next stop is the cheap, unassuming, rainy & freezing cold of Dubai for three nights – errr, not on all those counts.
After a pretty bumpy, near three hour flight from KL, we arrive at Sandakan. We came here in 2011 and stayed in the same rainforest hotel, so it’ll be interesting to see what’s changed – both for better or worse.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that Sandakan is a seafood lover’s paradise. The Waterside Cafe was visited both before and after our rainforest visit. For Allan’s beloved prawns, there were three portion sizes on the menu. The smallest was 25 ringgits (around £4.50) for which you get 16 big prawns in any of the 18 sauces available. It was designated to be enough for two – or one Geordie sized portion. Bloody yum.
Last time, we likened Sandakan to Bournemouth-on-Borneo. There’s still a tea house where scones with cream and jam are served. It’s a very local city and tourism is still low key, but we’re very thankful for the tourist trappings of good restaurants, including a visit to one we went to 14 years ago making western dishes, a Zus coffee shop, and more local amenities like many 7-11s and a laundrette (and even that has all the signs and washing machine instructions in English, which saves us fumbling around with Google translate like we had to do in Japan).
Sandakan now also has a mall. Of course it does – it’s Malaysia. It seems like a good one and is certainly popular. The layout is very familiar; the usual supermarket on the ground floor, a Mr DIY on floor 3 (shock, horror, it’s always been on floor 2 in every other mall), a food court somewhere in the middle floors and a cinema at the top.
Our hotel is slightly odd – it has a Star Wars theme, with all sorts of memorabilia, posters, action figures, and meals and cocktails named after Star Wars characters, but also replica football World Cup trophies. They seem to have made all the effort on the memorabilia and not as much on the actual rooms as they look pretty dated. But, it does the job as it’s very central but still quite quiet.
After two nights in Sandakan, the rainforest and Paganakan Dii Lodge is our next destination. The terrible website should have been a clue to what it would be like, as that hasn’t changed (except for the price list) since we were here 14 years ago. It’s definitely rustic, probably even more so than our last visit. However, the staff are great, the food is excellent considering it’s bang in the middle of the rainforest (special mention to a great veggie noodles and equally good veggie curry), it has aircon, and the sights and sounds of the rainforest are truly superb.
And make it your life’s ambition to be as happy as Allan was with his giant leaf.
On the first couple of days we get a not-so-gentle reminder of why it’s called the rainforest. It pelts down like no tomorrow. But those views and sounds of misty mornings and noisy frogs will be memories not to be forgotten.
Our first visit to see BIG nature is to see proboscis monkeys, with their massive conks, at a nearby “sanctuary” (inverted commas, as this place is owned and run by the surrounding palm oil plantation owners). They kept a small space where the monkeys can be safe from further destruction by, ahem, well, the owners. Mixed views whether we should visit as it’s very much a tourist trap, with no rehabilitation or education happening. When we arrive, the monkeys are being fed pancakes, which just didn’t feel right. However, there’s plenty of other plantation owners who have just destroyed everything, so at least they did set aside a small area to preserve these amazing creatures – for that we are happy.
We’d say that the alpha male deciding to run right over the platform where everyone was congregating got everyone talking, but most people were talking anyhow, doing their very best to take away any peace that these poor animals (and those like us who just wanted to quietly observe) had at feeding time. There was another platform feeding happening in an hour and a half, but we decide to just go back to our hotel.
A new kid on the block in the rainforest is the Sun Bear sanctuary, which wasn’t here when we last visited. Sun Bears are the smallest of all the bears. They really do look like stereotypical bears, enough so that if we saw one eating a pot of honey we wouldn’t have blinked. It wasn’t feeding time, so sightings were not plentiful, but worth a short visit and this place does the full rescue, rehab and release. And the bears, despite claws that look like they could do some serious damage, are pretty damn cute.
Onto the main event – the Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. This was a major highlight last time and one of the main reasons why we travelled all the way back to Borneo was to see these wondrous apes.
This centre is the polar opposite of the proboscis monkey centre. It’s educational, it’s well set out, and it truly is a rehabilitation centre where orangutans can come and go at will until they’re ready to return to the forest permanently. There are still feeding times, but what’s provided is fruit and veg, and there are staff on hand who move people out of the way if the orangutans and people get too close to each other.
The orangutans share the space with wild macaques. Lots of them. There are skirmishes, hierarchy, cheeky nicking of food, and peaceful family meals in equal portion. That, and some very cute young ones.
Onto the orangutans. Come feeding time, people are making way too much noise, including a woman next to Chloe who decided to talk and state the bloody obvious “oh, there’s an orangutan”, “oh, it’s walking towards the platform”, “oh, it’s eating something”. “Oh, for god’s sake, shut the hell up and enjoy the amazing apes”, is what we wanted to shout.
But, we see a couple of mums and babies, there’s one female who seems content to watch the crowd as much as we are watching them. The agility is awesome and they all look very healthy.
We did have a particular treat. A huge male orangutan appeared. He is a former rescue who has returned to the wild but still makes the odd appearance for some easy food from time to time. The photos below don’t really do full justice to how massive he was – but think the size of a person then add his arms that seem to be that size again – huge! Seeing him made our visit back here something a little special, and a highlight of the entire trip.
This return to Borneo really delivered BIG memories.
PS : Borneo also delivered something else big. Don’t look further down if you don’t want to see an unwanted guest in our open air bathroom – a lichen huntsman spider the size of our hands. It’s not deadly poisonous, or prone to attacking humans, but was just flipping massive.
For a city this big in Malaysia, it was somewhat surprising that there is no longer a train station here, so we arrive in Malacca in a pretty sub-optimal route via taxi, train, then an hour long taxi. Hindsight suggests that it would have been easier by the direct bus.
Our AirBnB is disappointing. It’s huge (3 bedrooms), it’s clean, has a hot & filter water dispenser and has a massive balcony with a great view over the river, so signs were good on first arrival. Then we find what’s missing. An oven is there for “display purposes only”, there’s no cooking or food preparation equipment, no bin bags, no washing powder, no clothes rack for drying clothes, outside seating has gone mouldy and there’s only 5 hangers (for 3 bedrooms!). The management company seem annoyed when we point out all of this and they somewhat reluctantly provide what is meant to be there. They also get a tad arsey in their review of us for asking for these things. It felt like staying in a show flat. And a show flat where they don’t want anyone to stay or even touch anything.
The building we are staying in is, like our KL apartment, attached to a shopping mall. Unlike KL, this shopping mall has seen better days as it has apparently never recovered from hard times during Covid. But it has a Mr DIY – a shop that fully deserves its own post on this blog – so all is good. This part of Malacca has very few tourists and has some excellent restaurants. Allan has a magnificant prawn & squid Nyonya sambal curry that has stopped his ever-increasing cravings for Indian curry, but is disappointed that the “best curry puffs in Malaysia” never gets a visit.
We walk to the USNECO old town area. Unlike Ipoh’s old town, it’s quite big and the back streets are like the pedestrian streets of a Greek island. There’s history around the old church, street art of all sorts of animals & people (Malaysia does love its street art), lovely shops including the fantastic Orangutan t-shirt shop that we both loved and the stinky Durian cake shop that Chloe loved a lot less so.
We find a quirky museum – The Royal Press – that is full of old printing machines, stamp makers and many other pieces that show the history of print. It brought back memories of Terry Pratchett “The Truth”. There’s even an opportunity to print our own little souvenirs. Fascinating place. As with a few things we’ve made on this journey, we do hope they get home all okay!
Visiting the old town involved walking for around 3km. For a huge change, this was done by walking down a pavement next to the river. A pavements with no cars, motorbikes, cycles or deliveries being made. A pavement that was smooth and well maintained. A pavement that was unbroken and not having to cross any roads for those 3km. You may gather from these joyous words that this is a very rare experience in either Vietnam or Malaysia and allowed us to enjoy the views of the lovely coloured houses without the risk of tripping up or walking into oncoming traffic.
We could love Malacca for the pavement reason alone, but there’s much more to it to enjoy, But, we’ll definitely stay at a different AirBnB next time.
Our full week in Kuala Lumpur ends up being here, yet not here. We experience other cities, other countries, other worlds.
KL is a city of malls. Pretty much everything here can be found in a mall – shops, museums, GPs, cinemas, art galleries, fun fairs, live events. It’s hot, malls are cool, QED. We get our hands on a rather nice flat overlooking one of the newer ones, Lalaport. It has everything you might need – a supermarket, the Malaysia qualifiers for the IESF World Esports Championship 2025 (well done, Arcane Ladies), and, of course, a Mr DIY.
If you haven’t encountered a Mr DIY before, imagine that Woolworths, Robert Dyas and Ryman had a baby and everything it sold was super affordable. No one would need Amazon if there was a Mr DIY near them. We love it. Having secured all of the noodle bowls, fizzy cola sweets, and flannels we need for the moment, our thoughts turn to food.
As a world city, KL offers any cuisine you can think of…except vegan; no one has yet invented a dish that Malaysians won’t merrily add chicken and/or cheesy cream to. We, of course, take full advantage of numerous Sushi Zanmai locations, plus some of the best tapas we’ve had outside Spain, excellent pasta, and some really good coffee with oat milk at Zus. We resist the horror of fizzy coffee mixed with orange juice but Allan quickly discovers Spicy Garlic Prawn Pringles, which he is delighted by but Chloe declares are an eyewatering abomination unto Nuggan.
It’s not all disgusting fish snacks and gaming legends, though. We discover MinNature Malaysia, a labour of love that invites you into the cities, markets, homes, and industries that make Malaysia what it is – but very, very small. It’s like a model village of a nation. We are delighted to spot a tiny ‘Mrs DIY’ in little Ipoh.
Looming over our flat is Merdeka 118, the new tallest tower in Kuala Lumpur and second tallest in the world. Though it officially opened earlier this year, it still has no public visitors, so we content ourselves with going to see Thunderbolts* at the Lalaport cinema. There’s a little thrill in watching the opening sequence, in which Florence Pugh leaps from its roof, knowing that a Black Widow is kind of about to land on our heads.
The towers that Merdeka 118 usurped are the Petronas Twin Towers. The irony that the HQ of one of the world’s biggest oil companies looks like an otherworldly magical fairy tower spun out of air and light is not lost on us. However, it is a wonderful sight lit up at night and has now become tradition that we take a specific photo each time we visit.
The Ilham Gallery, in a hotel rather than a mall this time, is hosting a exhibition that explores the concept of ‘plantation’. Artists look at what the explosion of plantation agriculture has meant for Malaysia personally, politically, environmentally, and socially over the years. From the extraction of wealth and labour by various colonising forces – the UK, Portugal, Netherlands, Japan – to a system of land rights that redistributed some land to many poorer families able to work it for a certain number of years. The impact of monoculture, be it of rubber or palm oil producing trees, has been immense.
On a lighter note (pun intended), we had fairly low expectations of the Immersify digital art experience back at Lalaport but it turned out to be incredibly well done. We were guided through a series of rooms in which different digital images were projected onto the walls – many were animated, some simply played with the light. Yes, it was all very Instagram-friendly, but it didn’t pretend to be anything other than what it was. It was bright, fun, interactive (design your own fish then watch it swim through the digital tank!) and hugely over-stimulating.
The final section brought to life the work of various artists, including Klee and Degas. The Van Gogh section was particularly beautiful – perhaps as his work seems to lend itself to animation in a way few others do. If Van Gogh were working today, we think he’d grab digital media with both hands.
It’s hard to get around by anything other than car and activity seems to centre heavily on malls, but Kuala Lumpur is a great place. Having been here three times, though, we can’t help feeling we’re missing ways to get to the spirit and heart of it. If we come back again, we’ll look for a local tour guide who might be able to open up whole new sides of this megacity.
An early morning start to the Perak Tong Cave Temple just outside Ipoh. Calling this place a just cave temple is a little disingenuous – it’s flipping massive. It’s a huge auditorium with wall paintings and over 30 statues including a 15m high golden Buddha looking over us on arrival.
There’s some natural water features following the rain the night before, fluorescent incense sticks. more statues and there’s even a gift shop selling all your bead and candles needs.
But, the main event was attempting to get to the top of the temple. This involving more steps seen since the late 1990s Top 40. Allan climbs and climbs the often very uneven steps. And just when it seems like the top has been reached, there’s more steps – just like the said pop band’s revival in 2017.
After over 450 steps done in the 31c and 85% humidity heat, the top was reached. It was spectacular, it was awesome but it was very sweaty. And then the descent had to be navigated and those steps didn’t get any better – just like the late 1990s pop band.
So, did Allan reach enlightenment? Probably not. Was it worth it? Definitely yes. On the way back down, it did look like someone did. But, more urgently, it was time for a lie down.
A couple of hours train ride south of Penang brings us to Ipoh. From helpful taxi drivers during our stay further north we learned three things: it’s pronounced Eye-po; it’s famous for its chicken and beansprouts but every person will tell you a different restaurant is the best; and it’s sleepier than the already fairly chilled Georgetown. All of these things turned out to be true, but there’s more to Ipoh than chicken and being in bed by 10.
Malaysia loves a bit of street art and it’s showing in all of its glory as we wander slowly through the heat towards the historic quarter. Appropriately, on May Day (called Workers’ Day here) we come across a mural that celebrates the many different professions that make a town work
Plus, an elephant, a sitar player, and (already a slice of history) an Uber delivery driver.
The old town is small – barely a five minute walk in any direction – but packed with historic buildings, galleries, streets, and alleyways.
This is where we learn more about modern Ipoh’s origins in the tin boom of the twentieth century – a trade that brought wealth to a few, suffering to many, and a better standard of living to the lucky ones in between.
Han Chin Pet Soo (literally ‘entertainment and leisure villa’) was the Hakka Tin Miners’ Club set up in 1893, though rebuilt in 1929 into the three-storey villa we see today. It’s free to enter but you must book in advance (easily done) for the guided tour, which was absolutely brilliant and by far the most engaging museum experience we had in Ipoh.
First things first, this was not (as we thought) a cousin to UK working men’s clubs. Oh no. This was a gentleman’s club, created for the Hakka Chinese millionaire tin mine owners of old Ipoh. It was a venue for socialising and their favourite indulgences – drink, drugs, gambling and prostitution – all legal in their day. In fact, the gaming licence held by the club is still valid, so it’s one of the few places in Malaysia where it’s technically still legal to gamble. Lucky that, as we have photographic evidence of Allan winning his first ever game of Fan-Tan.
The place is packed with information about tin mining, the development of modern Ipoh following a disastrous fire, and how the tin magnates and gangsters became part of the political establishment. Perhaps most fascinating was the huge array of every day items – signs, desks, fans, furniture – that breathe life into an era that is in danger of feeling like dusty history. Our superb tour guide must take a lot of credit for that.
And, finally, after years of envy at Allan having a Malaysian shop named after him (hair styling products and equipment in Gurney Paragon Mall, in case you were wondering) we found one for Chloe. Even better, it was a great coffee shop. Even better than that, they had air conditioning and oat milk!
After 9 days in our lovely and brand new penthouse apartment near the shopping centre, we move closer to more central Georgetown. It describes itself as a “Heritage home” which flags to us even before arrival that it may be a little shabby and overpriced. It is a little shabby; the aircon needs fixing almost as soon as we arrive, odd leaks, the electrics have seen better days and the front door needs a degree in engineering to get it to lock. But it’s very spacious, very convenient for the old town and because it’s on a dead end of a small road, it’s remarkably quiet. The owners were responsive to any issues and especially so when the whole of Penang had their water cut off for 48 hours, they bring us huge buckets to fill and 2 massive drinking water bottles.
There’s also around 10 cats on the street that are properly aloof. The one below was the closest we came to making a friend.
One thing that was constant. At the back of the property there was a recording of chanting on 30 second loop and reading of some sort of religious text. 24 hours a day. It wasn’t loud, but it was at a volume where it just was “there”. It took us at least a week after leaving for it to be removed as earworm stabbing into our brains.
A taxi ride takes us to the bottom of Penang Hill and away from the earworm. We’ve seen the hill from everywhere we’ve stayed both this time and the last couple of times in Penang, but never been. To get to the top, a 10 minute, very steep, funicular ride takes us into the clouds at over 700m.
Even though it’s hazy when we first arrive, the views are incredible over Georgetown and over the water to Butterworth. The top of Penang Hill is a little bit of a themepark. We choose the rainforest walk that is both quiet (apart from the crickets) and gives us even more great views of the forest and over to the mainland. It also has a cafe that did us an extremely good Oat flat white and spinach pie – nice.
Georgetown, like most places we’ve visited, is a gourmet delight. We’re staying right next to the wonderful Laksalicious that was a favourite of ours back in 2017, but there’s also posher options. One night we hit the Hygge Dining & Bar that promises Spanish/Japanese fusion. Tapas, Seafood Paella and Norigroni (Seaweed inflused Japanese Gin was used in the Negroni). Pushing the limits of our daily budget, but was special.
Onto testing our artistic abilities at the Penang glass museum. It has some exhibits including half of the world record glass mural and videos showing the process, but it’s mainly all about their shop and the opportunity to make ourselves a souvenir. We thought that this involved painting a small glass keyring, no, it was instead a flattened fair sized bottle. We choose a design, we paint, we paint again, we choose a background and after coming back from seeing the shop, we get our flattened bottles – which look absolutely fantastic. Trying not to smash them in the next 3 months is going to be a challenge.
Cheong Fatt Tze’s Blue Mansion was our next stop. We join a guided tour that gives us the low-down on both the original owner and the history of the mansion. Mr. Tze was a Chinese national who was a successful businessman and politician known as the “Rockefeller of China” making his fortune by trading rubber, coffee and team along with owning a bank. He also seemed politically smart by both working for the Chinese government but also giving money to rebels.
The mansion he had built was huge for its day. I suppose with eight wives, you need the space. After he died there was problems and the house nearly fell into disarray. But thanks to his favourite wife, she managed to get lots of lodgers in and somehow keep the structure of the house. It’s more than likely that without her immense hard work, the mansion would have now just another faceless big tower block. It’s now a hotel, has been restored beautifully and is used by films including the blockbuster of Crazy Rich Asians.
We visit the Penang History Gallery. A fascinating place giving many historic stories and recreations of Penang. There’s also crazy use of AI that attempt bring to life both old photos and even paintings of old rulers – with very mixed success. The end result makes it very difficult to believe what we are seeing.
But, the museum and our helpful guide, really bring history to life. Chloe drives a tram and Allan sits in the barbers chair. Almost certainly not original, but it is good fun. We also learn about what happened in World War II – the British bugger off at the earliest possible opportunity as soon as Japanese invasion starts. And come back again once it’s all over.
Once you get past the dodgy AI and knowingly fake exhibits, it’s a superb museum and well worth a visit.
We visit the Komtar which used to be the highest building in the whole of South East Asia. What we didn’t know was this was an entire themepark with food outlets, a dinosaur research centre, dodgums, tech park, aquarium and much more all brought together with a slightly bewildering ticketing system. Yes, we did say Dinosaur park.
We hit the dinosaur research centre expecting it to be a place that cynically chose dinosaurs to get the kids to visit and to be immensely tacky but good fun. What we found was a highly impressive immersive experience. We also find out that dinosaur bones were actually found when building the Komtar and are displayed, so there was a good reason for building this area. There was only us and a family of three kids wandering around the models and animated dinosaurs. The youngest kid seemed genuinely very scared in places whilst her two older siblings seemed to enjoy goading the smaller dinosaurs. What fun.
Then it was time to get to the top of the tower. Or the two parts of the top of the tower. An indoor observation deck was spectacular, the outdoor top floor even more so. The top deck used to be a heliport, but soon was converted to give 360 degree open air views of Penang and onto the mainland. They also had a short glass walkway looking down 60 odd floors where Allan got an unexpected bout of vertigo.
We then chose to go to the self-styled Boutique aquarium. A good range of fish including some that have been bred with jellyfish so are lumunious in UV light, but overall, it did make us a little sad, as some of the tanks were too small especially for some of the bigger fish.
So, it was time to goodbye Penang for the third time. Our taxi driver on the way to the mainland train station even gave us even more sights to see and places to go along with some top tips for our destination of Ipoh. Next time, there may be a railway bridge from the mainland which will take more than hour off the whole journey. And we’re sure there will still be a Sushi Zanmai, so hopefully, we’ll be back.
We get the train from KL to Penang, well, a taxi, a train, a ferry and another taxi. We’ve been here a couple of times before and loved Georgetown; the history, sites, museums and food.
This time we’re staying in two places in Georgetown. Our first week is a couple of km north of the centre in Gurney. We blow out a budget challenging £56pn on what was described as ‘a penthouse’. As soon as we arrived, we knew that it was the right decision and we quickly wish we’d booked longer.
Having travelled around a bit, it’s a rare thing that accommodation actually ‘works’. There’s normally something wrong with it. This might be something simple but annoying, like lights that can’t be turned off from bed or a lack of wardrobe space (often we scream internally to ourselves to ask whether the owner has ever tried staying there themselves). Or it might be something more fundamental: it’s not entirely clean, things leak or don’t work, air conditioning is poor, or it’s in what feels like a dodgy area. This accommodation ‘works’ in every aspect and we love the view of the mountains, the cityscape, and the temples from the vast balcony.
Our apartment also happens to be beside two shopping malls, including one we visited numerous times when we were here last, the Paragon Gurney. Within that there’s a Sushi Zanmai, our favourite food chain in Malaysia. We consume a lot of sushi, five times in eight nights, enjoy the lot and seem to have tried a good percentage of their entire menu. And their menu is vast. And cheap. By now you may guess, dear readers, that it was not a coincidence that the apartment we chose was near the Paragon Gurney and Sushi Zanmai.
Happily there are many other things to see and do. Within five minutes walk is a Thai temple, a Burmese temple, and a Malaysian Mosque. In the blazing sun, the Thai temple in particular shines bright. The dragons guarding the doors sparkle, the gold leaf on the roofs glistens, and pagoda glows. It’s stunning, although 33C and 90% humidity challenge us.
We also had a day out at Entopia. This is a living museum dedicated to butterflies and other insects, but it’s the butterflies that are the star attraction. Walking around, trying desperately not to step on the winged wonders, it’s pretty damn spectacular. The best part is stopping still and being are lucky enough to catch a gap in the many visitors. Lovely.
Paragon Gurney also has a cinema. In fact, it has eight screens and now even an iMax. We go twice. Once to see the incredibly silly, but good fun, Minecraft movie, the other to see Howl’s Moving Castle, a classic Studio Ghibli. At just over £2 a go, it’s a bargain. The cinema also seems to have moved on from the spicy crab flavour popcorn we encountered in 2017 and onto a more classic caramel. Our nasal senses very much appreciate this change.
So, it’s back to the apartment and to the free show that happens most nights. Thunder cracks and lightning illuminate the sky and forks strike. Often without any rain. Spectacular.
Moving from the bucolic pace of Hoi An to Malaysia’s capital megacity was always going to be a contrast. We’ve been here before but, every time, we forget just how utterly car-dominated it is. It’s one of those places that’s so big that what looks like a trip round the corner on a map is actually an hour’s walk. Pavements, even on major roads, are intermittent at best, stopping suddenly at inopportune moments. It’s hot, humid, and very, very busy.
The view from our flat is spectacular. We can see the KL Tower, the Petronas Towers, even the new mega tower that looks like an 80s mobile brick phone, with dozens of high rises in between. When the inevitable lightning storm strikes, it’s drama all round.
To a passing visitor in the city centre, Kuala Lumpur seems like nothing so much as a collection of shopping centres connected by dual carriageways. The malls are a welcome break from the oppressive weather and are social hubs for many. People come here to eat, hang out, go to the cinema; some even contain amusement parks. But they are set up for cars and taxis – so they are completely disconnected from the city itself. It’s an odd way to spend tourist time.
On our first night, we seek out the nearest Sushi Zanmai – something we’ve been looking forward to all trip. Decent sushi at a price that means a slap up meal for two will still get you change out of £25. It is, of course, in a shopping centre.
We’re only here for a few days before we head north to Penang. We know from previous visits that there’s a real, touchable Kuala Lumpur there somewhere. When we return, this time for a full week, we’ll get out and visit some places that are in the open air – or that at least have windows!
Malaysia delivered the goods yet again. In the last three weeks, we’ve seen orangutans in the rainforest of Borneo, looked down on Kuala Lumpur from the top of the glittering Petronas Towers, wandered through the serene national mosque, explored the street art of Georgetown and marvelled at the kitsch cat museum. If that was too much culture, we’ve also been to the movies, eaten a lot of sushi and watched two full seasons of iZombie.
So, on our final night in Malaysia, we reflect on what we will miss (and what we won’t).
We’ll miss:
– The food – The sheer variety is dizzying. Whether you fancy Malaysian, Belgian or Peruvian, it’s probably available. The quality is far higher than almost anywhere else we’ve been (perhaps bar Melbourne) and standards of hygeine are much more reliable. This all comes with a low pricetag. As much sushi as you can order? About £10 a head. A big bowl of Assam Laksa, the sour fish broth with fresh herbs and thick noodles? £1.25. We also celebrated Allan’s birthday in one of KL’s best restaurants for under £50 each (including cocktails and wine).
– The diversity – The moment we stepped out of KL Sentral train station, we realised how much we’d missed being somewhere where everyone is not the same. The easiest to spot is obviously race: there are people living there from every corner of the planet. It was the first place where women driving taxis was unremarkable. It was also the first place in SE Asia where we saw gay couples out and about, holding hands (but given Malaysia’s appalling record on LGBT rights, they were probably tourists).
– The street environment – Call us urban snowflakes, but there’s a lot to be said for safe places to walk, an underground sewage system and traffic lights. The last time we were here, seven years ago, we got chatting to a woman in Penang who asked us what we had liked about Malaysia. ‘Pavements’, we both said in unison. Still true.
We won’t miss:
– Walking etiquette – There is something unspoken about how you share space with others in any culture. In Malaysia, we just haven’t managed to wrap our heads around it. Walking very slowly is obviously de rigeur but, here, large groups will think nothing of walking four abreast across a pavement or hallway. Where foot traffic flows in both directions, generally a complicated and inexplicable eye contact-based negotiation should occur that allows both parties to pass each other without incident. Either we don’t know the unspoken rules or the norm is simply pedestrian chicken.
– Open-mouthed coughing and spitting – Again. Not unique to Malaysia but, based on our own cultural expectations, we find it horrible. What’s most bemusing is that there are great reasons not to do it. So why has covering your mouth when you cough or refraining from gobbing in the street not made it into general etiquette while ‘no head touching’ has?
– Air Asia check in – Oh. My. God. Queue at a machine to print your boarding pass (thank the member of staff whose job it is to help you use the machine). Queue at a machine to print out your luggage tags (thank the member of staff whose job it is to help you use the machine). Join the queue for the actual check-in desk once you have shown the two people at the entrance that, yes, you have printed your boarding card and luggage tags. Get to desk but discover you have failed to queue for document check. Queue for document check. Queue at check-in desk again to show boarding pass to one member of staff, while another attaches your luggage tag. Wonder how much quicker and less stressful this would be if the five staff you encountered before you got to the desk simply each ran an extra check-in desk of their own, at which one person managed to check your passport, print your boarding pass, and tag your luggage. Gaaaahhhhhhh!
