Malaysia Vacation Report

Malaysia Travel Guide:
We visited Georgetown (Penang), Kohta Bahru, the Perhentian Islands, Kuala Lumpur, and Sandakan (on the island of Borneo). There doesn't seem to be any epinions categories for the Perhentians or for Sabah, so I'll just fold everything in to one review.

General Impressions
The people of Malaysia were incredibly kind. They were always tripping over themselves to help us. They treated us very well and were happy to see tourists. This certainly made our time more enjoyable. Oh and by the way, they all speak excellent English.

However, we did not enjoy our time in peninsular Malaysia. We found the sights were not impressive and not well maintained. The cities were filthy - a kind of filth we never saw in Thailand. Homeless people are everywhere with various afflictions are everywhere. Santitation is often very poor. Now, when we finally make our way to China or India, this is what I expect to see - but there's no Great Wall or Taj Mahal in Malaysia. There's only the Petronas Twin Towers.

Our visit to Borneo (Sabah) we very much enjoyed, although we didn't really see anything more than the orangutan sanctuary we visited.

Budget accomodation was a huge step down from what we got in Thailand. We were glad to have the Lonely Planet to find some of the more expensive hotels - the budget hotels were below our minimum standard (clean room, private, quiet, safe, and hopefully a private bathroom).

Public transportation is well organized. We only took one inter-city bus, but local buses were good. Sabah is almost impossible to get around without flying due to the conditions of roads.

Georgetown
We arrived in the island of Penang after a flight from Chiang Mai in Thailand. We arrived in the airport late at night. After hitting an ATM, we paid for a taxi coupon to get to our hotel, such as it was.

The drive in from the airport to Georgetown took about 40 minutes. The Cathay Hotel was described in our trusty Let's Go guidebook as an "old colonial" hotel with lofty ceilings, and perfect for couples. We decided to splurge on it - it was twice the price of other Georgetown hotels and about 10 times what we'd been paying in Thailand. Well, the entry and lobby area was somewhat impressive, with a sunken lobby and big dual staircases leading up to the sky high second floor. If you closed your eyes, you could imagine a time when this hotel would have been beautiful. Passing the sign for the "Men's Health Club" ..ahem.. we got to our room. Yes, it had high ceilings. But any romantic illusion stopped there. The ceiling was sheetrock. The walls were worn and dirty with peeling paint. The shower, although it did have hot water and was private, had a hand held shower-head with randomly burning hot and freezing cold water. (Truly European, I guess!) But the most lovely touch in our room was a hand scribbled graffitti just beside the mirror from some long departed hotel guest: "Do not leave anything of value in this room, it *WILL* be stolen by the staff".

So, after heading out to the nearest payphone and making alternate arrangements for our accommodation the following night (it was too late and we were too tired to change hotels that evening), we went to sleep. The following morning we headed over to the Guidebook highly recommended Olive Spring Hotel, and found out just how nice a hotel Cathay actually was. Our room was on the third floor of a ramshackle old wooden building, with random holes in the floorboards and stairs, large enough that you could clearly see down to the floors below. In most first world countries, this building would have long since been condemned. But not in Malaysia. The "room" (such as it was) wasn't so much of a room as a partially enclosed space. The walls didnt reach all the way to the ceiling, so every noise of every other guest, or every noise from the lobby or street could be heard loud and clear. Not to mention that if we wanted to use the toilet, we had to risk life and limb going down those stairs (which were pulling away from the wall). We should have just switched hotels again, but since we'd never been to Georgetown before, we wanted to start seeing the sights. Such as they were.

We decided to start the day with a bus ride out to Dhammikarama Burmese Buddhist Temple and Wat Chayamang Kalarm. They were significantly less then inspiring (now we understand why neither of the hotels had even heard about them). They were badly kept up and featured strangely pink Buddhas. We hopped a bus back to check out the sites back in the main part of town. They were not much better. We visited a few temples. The Khoo Kongsi family Clan House was the most interesting, and was still pretty unspectacular. We visited little India, where we saw an old man on a bike get slammed into by one of the many motorcycles racing around town. We stepped over mounds of trash to get into the Kuan Yin Temple (Goddess of Mercy) temple, checked it off our list, and moved on.

By about noon, we were done with sightseeing in Georgetown and decided to try one of the day trips that were recommended in the guidebook, the Kek Lok Si Temple. The bus dropped us off about a 15 minute walk away. On the way up, we were forced into walking up a path with dozens of tourist souvenir stalls. Being the only tourists in sight, they were pretty aggressive for business. Upon finally arriving at the temple, we were greeted with a dirty pond of stagnant water full to the brim with turtles climbing over each other as they desperately tried to get out of the filthy water onto the little land that was available to sun themselves. Oh, PETA, where are you??

The temple itself was decidedly non-authentic. Almost each holy room seemed to also house a not-so-holy souvenir stand selling bulk-produced cheap trinkets (the same you see in every tourist stand). We paid our $5 each to climb the 7 tier pagoda (the one you see in all the tourist pictures). The tower is not well kept up - paint is falling off everywhere, an altar lies in ruin from some construction project long since abandoned. Scaffolding equipment, caked with dust, is strewn about the different floors of the pagoda. Bare wires hang down from the ceiling along the narrow crumbling stair case. For one of the main tourist attractions of this island, it is simply an embarassment. After the tower fiasco we decided it was time to give up on the sights of Georgetown/Penang, and head to the shopping mall.

Komtar is a modern eyesore of a building that dominates the downtown area. It is where intercity and local buses depart from, as well as a location for government offices. Fortunately, it also houses a modern, clean, A/C, cheap (and huge) shopping mall inside. We killed the rest of the day shopping for Malay t-shirts with hillarious engrish written on them ("Vast Regins of Spase!!", "Give me love - good friends is here!") and surfing the net, wondering why we'd left Thailand.

Kohta Bahru
We arrived early at the bus station in Penang (we did NOT want to miss our bus out of there). The intercity buses are very well run, we were even able to reserve front row seats for our trip to the east coast (reserving seats on a bus? Unheard of!! ) . The scenery was spectacular - we were glad we decided not to take the overnight bus. At one point, a police officer boarded the bus and started asking me questions in broken english - Passport, Bus Ticket, How do you like Malaysia (I lied), etc. We were worried he'd have to go through each passenger, but apparently I served as the representative for the entire bus and he was happy to let the whole bus go after grilling me.

We arrived in KB and got off the bus to the now-familiar dozens of touts offering taxi rides and accomodation. They even claimed they could get us to the Perhentian Islands (our ultimate destination) today - which as far as we'd determined, was impossible. The ferry leaves from Kuala Besut, which is 1 hour away, and the cabbie would only have about 40 minutes to get us there. We figured it was not worth the risk of getting stuck in Besut without accomodation, so we just decided to overnight in KB. We went to check out the KB Backpackers Lodge 2, just a couple minutes walk from the bus station. After our bad experiences with accomodation in Georgetown, we decided we would look a little more carefully before agreeing to the room. The dark, dingy room had cracks through the walls to outside, and a pretty frightening entry way. The main KB Packpackers lodge across the street wasn't much better. We walked 10 minutes to get to Pantai Timur Inn, which, while being twice the price, actually was comfortable, clean, and we felt safe. Obviously the standards for acceptable budget accomodation drop sharply once you step over the border from Thailand to Malaysia.

Our next task was to figure out how we'd get down to Kuala Lumpur after our visit to the Islands. We were interested in taking the train, as we read it is quite pretty scenery through the highlands (unlike the bus, which goes around). There is very sketchy information on the net about a train that goes to KL. From what we could figure out, as of 7/03, there is a night train that runs to KL daily. On Fri-Sun, there is also an express "day train" which leaves at 4pm? and pulls into KL at 4AM (!!). There might, or might not, be a "jungle train" which does leave in the morning from KB (5am?) and runs south towards Johor Bahru, but it would be necessary to make a connection in Jema to a different train to get to KL, and we wouldn't be there until 8PM, so we'd probably miss the last train and have to overnight in Gemas, but neither our Lonely Planet nor the Let's Go had any information on this town, so we just decided that the best bet was to fly from Kota Bahru to KL. This also bought us an extra day, but we didn't know if we'd want to spend it in the Perhentians or in KL, so we didn't make any transportation commitments.

For the rest of the evening we wandered around KB. There was lots of interesting looking food from street vendors, but we were being pretty careful about what we ate. We ended up eating at a horrible vegetarian restaurant (Naturel Vegetarian Food) with nothing but unsafe (fountain) drinks and overly salty, heavily fried noodles. The shopping was nothing special - I picked up a Terminator 3 VCD for $3. We walked over to the Gelanggang Seni Cultural Center to watch a display of "shadow puppets", a traditional Malay art. Scheduled to start at 9pm, the first hour had nothing but traditional music from a band hidden behind the curtains. Confused tourists got up from the grass and looked in on the band from the sides of the stage. Finally we got some shadow puppet action happening, but it would last for only 5 minutes then back to the band, followed by some wailing audio feedback which had everyone covering their ears. We gave up and went home.

The taxi picked us up at our hotel in the morning and got us to Kuala Besut with time to spare. We bought our tickets on the 'fast boat', and sat waiting with all the smoking Europeans for the boat. It was possibly the most unpleasant boat ride we'd ever been on. The boat did look modern and safe, but the driver was pushing the boat so hard that we were planing off every wave, slamming the boat down repeatedly. This is *NOT* a boat for anyone with back problems, or motion sickness. The driver seemed to be enjoying the rough ride, looking back and smiling and laughing at us as we kept losing discs in our back. The 50 minute ride is only from the pier on the mainland to the first dropoff point - depending on your hotel location, it can take a while before you get dropped off. The fastboat is too big to go on shore, so usually a motorboat from the hotel would come out and meet the fast boat to ferry the tourists back on shore.

Perhentian Islands
Our bad luck continued at our hotel. The Coral View Resort seemed to have a somewhat reasonable price, but the non-fan rooms only offered single beds that couldn't be pushed together. They are also high up on the hill and require climbing over rickety stairs to get to. We upgraded to the A/C room to get a full bed. Wendy went to use the toilet, and as it was draining, the wastewater spouted all over the floor. Ok - time for a new room. Again. I go down to the main desk, where I am told that is the last room in that class, and I'd have to spend an extra US $10 a night to get the next step up (1 minute walk from beach). They told me the toilet would be fixed within an hour - no thanks - and they wouldn't give me a free upgade to the next room. After arguing with the manager we finally agreed on a price in the middle.

The hotel's beach we'd landed on was full of coral and not very pleasent to walk or swim in. Fortunately, our guidebook told us that the most beautiful beach on the island was next door at the Perhentian Island resort. There is a series of steps/walkways over the headland to get there, and it's worth the walk. The beach is beautiful, the water is turquoise, crystal clear with nice soft sand. We spent the rest of the day sleeping, swimming, and checking out all the fish that swam around the coral on the headland.

We ate at the hotel's restaurant that evening. The food was edible but uninspired. The ambience was certainly nice however, as we overlooked the ocean. The only vegetarian choice was too spicy for Wendy (even after we'd asked for non-spicy), so we went for a walk down the beach in search of more food for her. We found a lodge serving pizza, and sat down on tables on the beach again. Earlier, we'd noticed there was a bit of wind off the shore, but the sky had been clear as the sun was setting so it didn't concern us. But suddenly, as we waited for our meal, the wind whipped up, and the waitstaff all came rushing out of the main restaurant area, yelling at everyone to get inside, bring their drinks, and table numbers! There was a bit of mad panic as everyone crowded inside the small roofed building, which suddenly was given solid walls as they rolled down the metal shutters. Seconds later the storm hit, an almost horizontal blast of rain and wind coming from almost all directions at once.

Through the cracks of thunder, we could hear tree branches falling around the restaurant. We decided that this storm wasn't just a passing thing, and asked for our pizza to go. Within seconds of stepping out from the shelter, we were soaked to the skin. Fortunately, our little mag-lite was easily up to the task of getting us home, as we jumped over fallen branches, waded through flooded paths, and made our way along the beach, knowing that we were only a few hotels down. Amazingly, and fortunately, the lights never actually went out, so once we found our resort we could follow the path lighting back to our cabin. What was a 5 minute walk out to the restaurant turned into a 30 minute ordeal home, taking shelter under whatever buildings we could find during the harder downpours. It was scary.

Glad to be back in our room, we sat down and ate the pizza, such as it was. Then, an hour later, food poisoning hit me. I spent the rest of the following day in bed, trying to sleep in between the rev of the chainsaws and yells of the workers as the island cleanup began. Fortunately we'd brought some antibiotics from home, and the following day I felt well enough to try some snorkelling. The little bit that we did do was spectacular. We heard that there were sharks (not scary) and turtles to be seen just off the headland, but I wasn't feeling well enough to try it. Crowds of smiling, laughing Japanese tourists were being ferried back and forth all day from the resort's beach to see them.

By the next morning, I was fine, but uh-oh, now Wendy was not feeling too good. We had to get off this island and get to Kuala Lumpur. The fastboat ride was slightly better then the way over (thanks to a heavyset guy who sat at the very front of the boat, preventing it from planing over every wave!). We got a taxi direct to KB (We tried to haggle unsuccesfully, and backed down when we saw he was the only taxi left. Unfortunately what we didnt realize is that a 2 minute walk into town would have taken us to about a dozen more cabs sitting around). The airport in KB was very nice, modern, and air conditioned. When the ticket counter opened, we found that the next flight to KL was full, but we were lucky enough to get standby seats.

Kuala Lumpur

The KL airport is one of SE Asia's newest airports, and is immaculate, modern, and super-efficient. Although located 70 km (40 miles) out of the city, the brand new KLIA Ekspres train takes you right downtown in 28 minutes. Don't be suckered in by the cabs offering cheaper fares then the train - it can take up to an hour and a half, depending on traffic. The train is the only way to go. It was pretty empty both times we took it, lots of room for luggage, and very smooth. Which was important, considering how Wendy was feeling by then.

We took a few subway rides to the recommended hotel right across from the bus station, the Anuja Backpackers Inn. The room was very small, but seemed clean enough. The shared bathrooms however required walking through the smoke-filled lobby, past strange ever-present men who looked up from the TV to stare at us as we shuffled past in our PJ's. The A/C, although it appeared to pump out cold air, did not make a difference in the room temp. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted in from the lobby. However, what we didnt pay attention to as we checked out the room was the noise. It was on the second floor right next to a very busy street - we might as well have been camping on the street corner. The noise quietened down sufficiently that we were able to catch a few hours of sleep before the morning traffic woke us up.

Fortunately, another hotel that was mentioned in the guidebook as being for "business travellers" was right next door, the Katari Hotel. I went to check it out - it was American motel style, and exactly what we were looking for. For twice the price, we were able to get a private bathroom with oodles of hot water, great sound insulation from the road, and clean clean clean. I would recommend this hotel very highly. Great location, too. The 80 ringgit ($20) price was a promotion, but we would have been happy to spend twice that amount for the difference in comfort level.

Unfortunately, we spent most of our day in the room, still recovering from our little visit to the Perhentian Islands. The private bathroom turned out to be our most visited (and memorable) site in KL. We did make it out to check out a few temples, and some shopping. We would highly recommend the Peter Hoe boutique just a few minutes away from the central market - very good prices, high quality crafts, and nice environment. It might not be as cheap as elsewhere, but it's much more relaxed and no haggling. They also have a larger location juat a few minutes away. We also checked out the Central Market, saw a Batik demonstration and bought some other nice souvenirs (If you buy a traditional kite, good luck getting it home, there doesn't seem to be any boxes in Malaysia big enough for it!! Fortunately we found a post office in the airport on our way out of KL where the guy bent over backwards to create a box solution which worked perfectly). Anyways, the Central Market is definitely worth a stroll. Also, the covered street market along Petaling St. is full of knockoff t-shirt and fake designer watches and is an interesting walk.

The next sight we saw, unfortunately, was the private hospital next to our hotel, where they seemed just a little too keen to admit Wendy for the night. After determining that it wasn't anything more exotic then just pretty bad food poisoning, we just waited it out at the hotel.

Before our flight out of KL, we checked out the Must See sight of Kuala Lumpur, the Petronas Towers. We got there early (8:30am), as the free tickets up to the skybridge are given out quickly for the whole day. Our allocated time slot was at 10am. We got to spend about 20 minutes up on the bridge between the two towers. The view isn't that spectacular, and is only about half way up. I guess it's a must-do just because everyone now associates the Petronas towers with KL, but it really isn't that special. Apparently, the telecom tower offers a more impressive view.

Next up was Borneo.

Sandakan (Borneo)

Our flight from KL to Sandkan had us stopping in Kota Kinabalu. There isn't too much to do in the airport, except to drink $2 bottles of water and shop at a few overpriced boutiques. We arrived in Sandakan after a beautiful sunset flight over the spectacular Mount Kinabalu. Luckily we met up with a British lady who was also visiting the same hotel (Sepilok Jungle Resort) and had the organization skills we were lacking to arrange to be picked up by the resort.

The resort was unbelievably beautiful. Malaysia was finally starting to look up. Fantastic landscaped grounds with a pond running through the property. Great food at the restaurant, and very reasonably priced - especially considering there was no other choices! We paid $50 a night for a room with AC and hot shower. There were lots of places to sit down and just relax on the property, soaking in the environment of the jungle around you, the chriping of the birds, etc. This was definitely the highlight of Malaysia for us. The only negative was that there was cockroaches in the room. Not a lot - we averaged one squash a day - and they were coming up from where the shower drained. We couldn't really blame the hotel - the place was impeccable, and we were in the middle of the jungle, after all...

The hotel is just a 10 minute walk from the the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabiliation Center. The center re-introduces previously captured and injured orangutans to the wild. There are two daily feedings which help newly freed orangutans make the transition to living in the wild. This gives visitors a spectacular opportunity to see the orangutans up close and personal in the wild. We had enough time at the lodge to see three different feedings of the orangutans. During the first feeding it was raining, but a few still showed up, taking shelter between the trees as they scarfed down the bananas. The second feeding was the best as all the other tourists left after the first 20 minutes, leaving only a handful of us watching a family of orangs including a mother and a baby. It was an amazing experience. We got pretty close to them (within 10 feet as they swung by on the ropes to the feeding platforms). There were also macaque monkeys, who were a lot less shy (though they can be agressive) and would often scamper right amongst the tourists as they waited for the orangs to leave to eat the leftover fruit. Visiting the park isn't that cheap, about $8 a person (or $4 with no camera).