Malltastic Malaysia

As always seems to happen with us, we managed to land ourselves in a place where some sort of celebration is happening, making it even more of a headache to try and find somewhere to stay. This time, when we arrived in Melaka the rest of Singapore had seemingly joined us. They had the equivalent of a bank holiday Monday for Singapore's Birthday so arriving on a Friday wasn't our best move. Everywhere was full. We were getting a bit fed up when we saw some Germans from the bus being led somewhere by a local, he motioned for us to join. We were taken to what basically was a large 3 bed flat with kitchen and living room, each bedroom having a lock. It wasn't signposted so we would never have found it, and it was fine for a few nights. Knackered from all our travelling that day we ventured straight out for dinner and a beer. We were staying on Jonker street, the main street in Chinatown, and every weekend, especially this one, it turns into a bustling night market. It also has what I can only describe as OAP karaoke. A big stage is erected at the end of the street (out side our flat...) bizzarly the cost of the stage is sponsored by Mr. Potato Head which is a Pringles like brand over here. But what made it even more strange is that Mr. Potato Head has a current promotion with Man U, (you can't get away from it) so the stage was covered with pictures of Manchester United players and Mr. Potato Head logos. In front of which elderly people took it in turns to stand on the huge stage with nothing but a mike and a small old TV balanced on a stool in-front of them... Weird but amusing when you had your fingers in your ears. I was a bit irritable and couldn't be bothered traipsing round to find some food that I felt like eating, so we sat and had a few beers instead. Its not cheap in Malaysia or Singapore - we're talking £2+ for a small bottle, when we had been paying less than £2 for a big bottle everywhere else. After a few we changed bars and met a couple of teachers from 'up north' who we chatted to for several hours. We finally realised it was  midnight and we hadn't eaten. The two ladies were a bit older than us and decided to call it a night but somehow we had gained a new friend from Tangier, and so moved bars to find one that would stay open. I decided that we needed to liaise with the locals more so I went off a joined a table of Chinese origin Malaysian lads with a tower of beer infront of them. Turned out they were young business men from KL and soon enough we had joined them, along with some French stragglers we'd met, teaching them drinking games and in return getting free beer from the tower they were planning to expense. We headed home about 4am and I remember thinking how cool it was to go out and randomly meet people from all over the world, of all ages, and have a great time. That's travelling for you I suppose, and it's pretty bloody cool. I'd done this trip from Singapore to Bangkok before, and so wasn't that interested in paying to get into the museums or forking out over the odds to ride in the overly decorated kitch tuk tuks in Melaka. And as you can imagine Greg had no interest in this either. So we spent the next day wondering round the attractive UNESCO protected Chinatown and along the river in the ferocious heat to see an original Malay house owned by a lovely ancient old lady who had kept everything as it was. There wasn't much else to do in Melaka, but the Chinatown part of it was pretty with its old buildings, craft shops, river promenade, bars and restaurants - not that we could afford the nice ones. So we decided to stay 5 nights, as we were getting tired of travelling. This decision was also helped by the fact we'd discovered this amazing local tandoori restaurant where we seemed to be the only tourists. We got the guts to go in and attempt to order despite not having a clue about the menu, we were reward with a feast of succulent tandoori chicken, buttered naan, delicious dhal, and a banana leaf smorgasbord of rice, popadums and several tasty vegetarian concoctions. The place was like a canteen sauna but it was so cheap and the food so good we ate there nearly every night.   Our next stop, Kuala Lumpur was another story. We arrived and were met with torrential rain, heavy traffic and millions of people. It was a stressful experience, especially as when we reached our hostel, which was the best of a bad bunch as all the decent cheap ones were fully booked, it was a cat spray smelling, smoke filled hole. To be fair the bloke who ran it was really nice, but the room stank of cigarettes, the walls were like paper and it was full of annoying hippy types - Gregs favorite. We opted to make do rather than face the rain as on first inspection the mattress was ancient and the sheets stained, but it seemed cleanish and there were no signs of bed bugs. This is exactly the type of place which makes Singapore look like heaven. I'd been here before and maybe it's age but I found it a lot more annoying this time round. Unfortunately as a test of our endurance we were pretty much forced to stay for 6 nights! We'd landed on another bloody busy celebration period - the end of Ramadan. So our plan to stay 2 nights and get the hell out of there and onto Penang were dashed. Because I was aware of the public holiday, I tried to pre-book something in Penang, but it was impossible to find anywhere with a room, even places with bad reviews. So we changed tack and tried Langkawi instead - but it was the same case. We didn't want to get a horrific long bus and boat journey to one of these islands only to find everywhere full, and having to pay much more for a proper hotel or sleep on the beach in the rain. Our only option was to book ahead and stick it out in KL. So we did exactly that, by this time we couldn't be bothered with the hassle so we decided to skip Penang and head straight to Langkawi for 2 weeks. We attempted an overnight bus but on entering the horrific tout hell that is KL's long distance bus station we'd had enough of buses too. So we got the cheapest flight we could find and attempted to make the most of KL. That meant cinemas and shopping malls, as there's not much else to this city. So that's exactly what we did. We picked up a few bargains to replenish our wardrobe back home and went to the cinema for 5 consecutive nights! It was pretty successful in those terms only. We visited just about every mall in the city, one of our preferred ones  being the Petronas Towers (the highest twin towers in world). The cinema was so cheap - £2 a ticket and £1.50 for a large popcorn - my absolute favorite. We were even resorting to watching kids films by our last visit, just for something to do.  We also found a decent hawkers street with cheap Chinese food (the most successful race of all Malays, in fact of all Asians). It's so true that the Chinese make the best business people, and second best food, with Thais topping that chart. Anyway, we were counting down the hours to get out of this stressful place, and finally we took our flight to Langkawi with our fingers crossed for some decent weather.