Malaysia Part Two

Since our last post we've been to the capital of Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur. Which is a massive hustling, bustling city as most cites are. We stayed in the heart of Chinatown in what was a less than desirable hostel with no air con on the first night meaning that we all almost passed out with the heat. It was pretty grim to say the least.

However KL's Chinatown was very exciting, and we all particularly enjoyed the hawker market that was just next door to the hostel and pretty much sold fake versions of everything you can think of. We've also noticed that the Malayan's have a particular obsession with both the iPhone app angry birds and the animated childrens series Ben 10. You can buy tops, bags, phones, glasses, key rings, windmills, shoes, socks, coats and tons more things with either an angry birds or a Ben 10 theme.

We decided to escape the city on our second day and travelled to the Batu Caves which was an hour away on the bus. The caves themselves housing a Hindu temple and welcoming you was a 20m high golden statue of a Hindu God which was amazing.

The caves were huge and bats were flying about in the ceilings. It was thankfully quite empty inside, a lot of tourists probably being deterred by the storm that hit us on our way to the caves. The roads were flooded within a matter of seconds and lightning was cracking right above our heads - our first taste of the monsoon season we've arrived in. The caves were peaceful and the view of KL from the top was spectacular.

The next day we headed up to the Cameron Highlands which has been highly recommended to us since we arrived, and quite rightly too. The temperature up here is much cooler giving us a lovely break from the heat causing us to actually wear jumpers and trousers. Our hostel having a bonfire every night which attracts all the travellers in the small town we are staying in.

Yesterday we booked ourselves on to a countryside tour, hopping on to a minibus and being taken around the highlands to see the rose gardens, tea plantations, honey bee farms, butterfly farms, strawberry farms and a lovely Buddhist temple all for the equivalent of 7 pounds. The cheap prices out here still amaze us.

Tomorrow we are heading to the Malaysian island of Penang as a stop off before we enter Thailand the next day. We are planning on going to the tropical island of Koh Phi Phi which wasn't originally intended but after hearing from several people about how amazing it is we've decided to do it instead of Phuket which supposedly is a seedy, dirty city full of seedy, dirty men. So no thank you basically.

I think though that we are all agreed on the fact that the Cameron Highlands has been one of our favourite places so far.