When I was a kid, we took long road trips, cramming our van and driving for days. On the way there, we were all keen and eager to get to our destination. When we saw an interesting detour, we'd agree to see it "maybe on the way back".
But on every drive home, we would drive right past the detour, agreeing that we really just wanted to get home already.
The moral of the story was to always seize the opportunity and "maybe on the way back" became a reminder of this lesson.
Clever girls that we are, we booked ourselves onto the 8am bus to the famously beautiful Cameron Highlands the morning after Canada Day. While we realized that hauling our packs for the fifteen minute walk to the bus station at that early hour was less than ideal, we had failed to consider the further impacts of our Canada Day celebrations the next morning. Since we went to bed at about 3am and had to wake up at 7am to check out and get to Puduraya Bus Station, we were in somewhat rough shape and as I watched Mehron pack her bags in what looked like slow motion, I started tallying just how many Tiger beers we had consumed the night before. We had had at least five of the giant pints each, which is WAY more beer than either of us would usually imbibe. Hence the slow motion. And the feeling that we had been mauled by an actual tiger.
Know what really cheered us up? When it started pouring rain on us half way on our walk to the bus station. That was really special. Nothing like being soaked on a four hour Arctic A/C bus ride.
I made a Herculean effort to stay awake on the ride to check out the landscapes outside KL, but my body was protesting too hard so I konked right out. So did Mehr. When I woke up we were a mere 40km from Tanah Rata, the Cameron Highlands town we'd be staying in. I was bummed I'd only get to see a little bit of the scenery, until I realized that with the curves in the steep hillside roads, we in fact still had at least an hour of the drive to go. Good thing Cameron Highlands is stunning old growth forest on undulating hills with sweeping vistas, or we'd have been pretty bored.
Cameron Highlands is known for two main exports: tea and strawberries. There are several massive tea estates in the area, including Sengai Palas estates which produces BOH tea. After an hour of wandering the grounds and taking the factory tour, we still had to actually ask someone what BOH stood for, since this information was nowhere to be found in the displays. "Best of Highlands" was the answer. Go figure. BOH produces 600,000 kg of tea per year from its estates. Our favourite at the tea shop was the Earl Grey with Tangerine. Yum.
Although we didn't make it to the strawberry farm tours, we did see all the strawberry shop outlets, which sold strawberry everything (hats, clothes, pillows, calculators, etc.) But no actual strawberries, strangely enough.
It was also at Cameron Highlands that our run-in friend Brendan had a brilliant idea for a prank. We have a mutual friend (who shall remain nameless) who is quite good friends with both of us who we knew would be stoked that we'd met up in Malaysia. Brendan thought it would be hilarious to pretend that we hadn't gotten along at all. I wrote an email to said person pointing out that Brendan was annoying, a major complainer and a semi-stalker. Brendan wrote a separate email to the same person describing me as rude and mean and noting I tried to ditch him at every given opportunity. Said person was very confused upon receiving these emails. Operation Fake Out was a complete success. So, dear nameless friend, just to clarify, we got along just fine... so well in fact, that he joined Mehr and I on the trip to the Cameron Highlands for the day before he had to get back to Thailand for his summer job. Tres fun, I promise.
Mehr and I flew separately to Kuala Lumpur (which I will definitely refer to as KL from here on in). I was concerned Mehr's flight might not get out after mine, since Perth was looking like a typhoon might be coming through the city. The sky was black and the rain was diagonal and torrential as my flight took off at noon, and she wasn't going to leave until four pm. Luckily, the natural disaster held off until her plane escaped W.A. and we met up as planned at customs in KL airport (which is fantastic by the way).
The flights were refreshingly good after buzzing around Australia on budget airlines. Qantas had a selection of over 20 movies and 30 tv shows to entertain me for four hours. I was out of luck with the apple juice though... the hostess accidentally spilled it on my arm and enough of it fell on me that they couldn't fill my glass and when they went to find more, turns out that was the last carton. Alas. I connected to Japan Airlines in Singapore (free internet kiosks everywhere in the international terminal!). That flight was hilarious. One of the four hostesses spoke a bit of English, but they were prepared. The menu was all pictures so you could point to what you wanted. And they have a live feed camera at the front of the plane so you could watch take-off and landing from the pilot's perspective (he was a little off center to be honest...) And during the flight they played a video with only music showing pictures of what to do when we arrived in KL, such as immigration, customs, etc. I very much enjoyed it. The highlight upon landing in KL was how HOT it was. Usually I'm a bit of a cranky pants in intense humidity and heat but after being constantly cold indoors in Australia, I was too relieved to care.
Malaysia was an excellent choice for us to get our feet wet in Asia. It's a very multicultural country, with the three main demographics being Malays, Chinese and Indians. The country is officially Muslim, although tolerant of other religions (Hinduism is also very big here). We've been erring on the side of conservative dress, but after seeing the range of fashion on the streets of KL, we've relaxed it a bit. It's not uncommon to see a burka, a sari and a miniskirt in just one block of walking. If anything, the hardest part is remembering to leave my shoes at the door before entering buildings.
We wandered around sightseeing our first day, taking in the Petronas Towers (which are just as impressive as you might imagine), the Colonial District and Chinatown.
We discovered a great restaurant in Chinatown where we gorged ourselves on satay chicken and noodles, and where I even tried frog stirfried in green onions and chilli. Taste of chicken, texture of fish, by the way. We've been adventuring a bit in food since we have no idea what most words in Malay mean. A common Malay breakfast dish we tried was Nasi Lemak, a coconut rice served with peanuts, boiled egg, chicken, cucumbers and sambal (spice curry sauce with anchovies?). It was great; will definitely have that one again. Another favourite is Roti Canai, a fried chapati-like dough that you dip in curry dahl sauce.
We also learned after ordering Nasi Ayam that Nasi means 'rice' and Ayam means 'chicken'. Other vocab we've picked up from streets signs:
Selamat Datang: welcome Pasar Seni: market central Keluar: exit Menara: tower Jalan: we think it's street Lemak: coconut Terima Kasih: thank you Berhenti: stop Teksi: taxi Ekspres: express Muzium: museum
As you can tell by the last few, they enjoy phonetically spelling English words to make them Malay.
We spent Canada Day in search of plans. We kept hoping to bump into some other Canadians, and we were not disappointed.
We went to check out the Batu Caves, these massive Hindu temples in a mountain cave, just outside KL in the afternoon. 272 stairs later (not exaggerating; actual stair tally), we were gazing in awe at the yawning caves. We didn't go into the temple/shrine areas because they were in prayer session.
I should also mention at this point that there were monkeys. Everywhere. We had been warned not to bring food, since they can be aggressive.
You know what? I don't like monkeys. There, I said it. I don't mind the small, not too bright ones that inspire Paul Frank's fashion line, but on the whole, I'm not cool with them. And everyone LOVES monkeys. Oooh, they're so cute. Ooooh, they're so playful. NO. They are nasty-tempered, rude and probably diseased. Especially these ones. Mehr was taking a picture of one from a respectful distance and the monkey's older boyfriend attacked her backpack. I was seriously concerned there might be a monkey swarming. I gave them a lot of evil looks to make it clear that they would get no love from me. Stupid, smelly monkeys.
On a lighter note, while rewarding ourselves with an ice cream after successfully descending all 272 stairs, I ran into Brendan Morrison, who I went to King's with. Yes, this planet is really that small. How random is that? He had also met some other Canadians in KL, so we all went out together to celebrate our fabulous nation at a place called Reggae Bar in Chinatown. After 80s-crazed Australia, the reggae and hiphop tunes were a welcome change for our ears. And the DJ won our eternal affection for playing not one but TWO Sean Paul songs in the course of the evening. Happy Canada Day indeed!!
