Malaysia & Singapore

After having spent two months in slow paced, friendly and chaotic Indonesia, we were a little taken back on our arrival in Malaysia. The pace was quite different, things were more expensive and we were now in our first large Asian city, Kuala Lumpur (KL). KL was a different pace than what we had been accustomed to, lots of traffic, giant shopping malls everywhere and large distances to travel in order to see the sites. Never the less, we did our best to see the sites: Petronas Towers, Chinatown, Shopping Malls and Mosques.

The best part was the food; we feasted on dim sum for breakfast, Chinese soups for lunch and Indian curries and naan for supper. 

We also tried our first (and last) fish pedicure – not very pleasant…

After our time in KL, we hopped a bus to Melaka, a UNESCO heritage city. Melaka is a small, slow paced town with not much going on. 

Fortunately for us our guesthouse was amazing, the staff was incredible and they gave us a map with all the best restaurants in town. We ended up making our three days stay in Melaka more of a food tour than anything else. We tasted Chinese fondue in peanut sauce, Laksa (coconut milk, tuna and shrimp soup), Cendol (shaved ice covered in palm sugar and red beans), and our favorite, Tandoori Chicken and Naan.

After this, we headed to Singapore for a brief day and a half stopover. Singapore is a very nice and clean city, but it didn’t really live up to all the hype, except the part about it being really expensive. Singapore has an amazing skyline with incredible hotels and shopping malls, unfortunately for us, we couldn’t afford to stay or shop in any of them! 

We did take in the Botanical gardens and the Orchid garden, where we got to see the orchid named after Jean Chrétien. We also hit up a cheap water park to cool off from the intense city heat! 

At least the food in Singapore was cheap! 

After all this we got to some serious things, hanging out on one of the nicest islands in the world – Pulau Tiomen. This small island has crystal clear water, a couple of simple guesthouses and intense jungle in the middle to dissuade you from doing anything but hanging out on the beach. Oh, and it is also a duty free island, so all the alcohol is cheaper than elsewhere in Malaysia. Needless to say, we extended our two-day stay twice and hung around for five days.

The only reason we left was that it was soon the end of Ramadan, which meant it was the beginning of their holiday season. We were told if you wanted to do any traveling in the next two weeks you would have to move now, otherwise all buses and accommodations would be booked up by locals on their summer vacations. 

We quickly left the island and tried to get to our next destination, but unfortunately for us, all buses going north were sold out for the next six days. Our only option was to take a six hour bus back to KL as no locals vacation in KL. With few options, but lots of time, we decided to shuffle our schedule around and go to Sri Lanka now, rather than after we’ve seen all of Malaysia. I guess this is one of the luxuries of lots of time and access to cheap Asian flights!