Lofalitsidwa: 04.12.2017
Day 55
Hello dear people🖐️😃
I hope you're all doing well. It's going well for us too. We arrived in BKK yesterday and are allowed to stay with our family for a few days. Nice to be back here, where everything started. We also use the time to plan our trip further. It's high season here now, which means flights and hotels should also be booked early.
What has happened in the meantime?
From George Town we took the bus towards the mountains, to the Cameron Highlands to be exact. The small town of Tannah Rata, located over 1500m, is where we found a small, affordable guesthouse. The Cameron Highlands are super beautiful, a lot of fruit and vegetables are grown here, but there are also entire tea plantations up here. Since it's not as hot here as in the rest of the country and it often rains, it's perfect conditions for growing. There are even strawberries up here. The very next day we visited one of the tea plantations. I can only say it was a dream and the tea tastes delicious too. The following days we did a lot of hiking and enjoyed the cooler climate. Then we moved on.
Next stop was the Taman Negara National Park. The oldest rainforest in the world. The journey there was quite exhausting. It took a whole 8 hours by bus and boat. The humidity was also very high, so you're always sweating. We stayed in a really nice guesthouse in the small village (Kuala Tahan) opposite the national park. Only the river separated us from the park. We could also take a boat across for 1 Ringgit, which is about 0.25€, so it was quite affordable. It was quite nice by the river, there were a handful of floating restaurants, otherwise the place didn't have much to offer. So we explored the park with its little animals over the next three days. We went hiking several times and also did the treetop walkway. It was very wobbly and narrow. Not for people with a fear of heights. Unfortunately, we didn't see any larger animals in the park, but we did see a snake, larger lizards, insects, and many monkeys. After three days in the jungle, we were also looking forward to the city again.
Kuala Lumpur was our next stop. We were particularly excited about the capital of Malaysia. We reached KL within 5 hours by bus. We had booked a hostel in the cost-effective Chinatown in advance. It was great there, very centrally located with connections to the trams, and Chinatown right outside the door. We wandered around the city. One of the highlights, of course, were the Petronas Towers, the landmark of the city. We also really liked the Bukit Bintang district, where you can shop very well, enjoy live music, or indulge in one of the markets and street food stalls. The National Mosque was also worth seeing. As a woman, you always get a headscarf. The Batu Caves, a Hindu temple just outside the city, were also really great. But our absolute highlight was the Helipad Bar. During the day it's a helipad, in the evening they set up a few chairs and tables, and there you have the sky bar. There's no real railing at the edge, it's just separated by a narrow plastic band. Drinks are not cheap, but it doesn't matter, the view was worth it. After five days, we continued to Malacca, our last destination in beautiful Malaysia.
As always, we took the bus. It wasn't far to drive, about 2 hours. Malacca is a small historic town with canals similar to Amsterdam. Our hostel was also great with a very nice owner, Tim. Tim made us a great breakfast every morning and he also has three adorable little baby cats. Malacca is also a beautiful place, you can relax by the canal or admire the many colorfully painted houses.
After that, we went to Singapore, but I'll tell you about that in the next post.
Bye bye and see you soon ❤️