After leaving the cool of the Cameron Highlands we set off to visit Cameron and Alex (I worked with Cameron in Melbourne) in Penang.

Although Cam and Alex were away for a few days they had gerenously offered us the use of their apartment so we set off on a local bus from Georgetown to try and find it. The bus driver obviously did not have any idea where it was and dropped us off at the wrong stop.

We tried to ask some locals where the address was but were viciously attacked by two dogs (ok Shane, two dogs barked at us and I got scared - well they might of attacked us if we didn't run away!). Finally we found Leader Garden (the apartments where Cam an Alex live) and were stoked to discover that their apartment was on the 16th floor, with sea views and that we had our own bedroom and (clean, inside) bathroom! Such luxury for two dirty and tired backpackers!

We spent a few days generally relaxing and doing some minor exploring of Penang before Cam and Alex returned home on Tuesday.

During the week that followed Cam and Alex showed us unrivalled generosity and hospitality (and no guys, we are not just saying this because you let us come to the Rasa-Sayang...!).

Speaking of the Rasa-Sayang, this is a 5 Star Hotel where Cam and Alex have a Health Club membership which has the most amazing pool right on the beach front. We had actually walked along the beach previously and admired this resort (as you are unable to swim at the beach in Penang if you value your health at all) however the staff do not look too keenly upon backpackers, with a Lonely Planet in hand, staring longingly at their pool and deck chairs. Step one foot onto that perfectly manicured grass without the right coloured towel and who knows what could happen to you!

Anyway, as Cam and Alex are members, we were able to spend a few days using the facilities there. The pool was probably one of the best that I have ever seen, including a mini waterslide. Cam, Alex and I were daring Shane to go down the waterslide backwards and head first but he wouldn't do it (scared probably..hee hee!)Then another hotel guest joined in and said to Shane, "if my two year old can do it, you can". We all laughed thinking that this was a joke, however the next thing we knew this little two year old, complete with yellow floaties on each arm, came down the waterslide backwards. By this time we were all in stitches and Shane was left with no choice but to take up the dare, so he did, head first on his back, almost coming off the edge of the slide as he came down. Well, you can't be beaten by a two year old, can you?

Swimming was usually followed by snoozing in the deck chairs (and just a little bit of gloating to the other backpackers staring longingly from the beach!) and Malaysian cuisine in one of the many hawker stalls along the beach area. Banana Roti (pancakes) with ice-cream became a regular occurrence.

Other sites that we saw whilst in Penang were, Penang Hill, Georgetown (including a very interesting Little India, Chinatown and trishaw ride), Batu Ferrengi (resort area) and the Eastern Oriental Hotel (mental note - probably not a good idea to play in the foyer of an exclusive hotel in hiking boots and a backpack, even if the dome on the foyer roof does do the best echo that you have ever heard...).

All up we stayed in Penang for nine days - much longer than anticipated, but it was worth every minute.

Cam and Alex, we had an absolutely fantastic time staying with you. All the laughing, jokes, food and luxury made us feel really at home and it was hard to leave and get back on the road again. Thank-you both, very much.

(Whilst in Penang we borrowed Cam and Alex's digital camera for a day so are planning to post some photos to this site soon, so keep watching!)

We took the 5 hour bus trip (the last hour and a half of which the road is really windy, and the bus driver charges up the mountain like a crazy man) up to the Cameron Highlands, to do a couple of days jungle walking. It was so relaxing we ended up spending a whole week there.

The cool of the Cameron Higlands was a nice relief after sweaty, dusty, KL. The temperature only got to low to mid 20s during the day, and down into the teens at night! So much easier to sleep.

We stayed at a guest house called Father's Place, which we found quieter and more relaxing than the popular Daniel's Lodge. It is set up a long flight of stone steps on a hill against the jungle, behind the small, quaint town of Tanah Rata. It is set up really well for relaxing, which is pretty much all you want to do when you are not walking in the jungle. It is also good for those days when the afternoon rains arrive at 8am and hang around.

We met a cool couple, Kate and Brendan, from Scotland (he is South African) and ended up spending a lot of time hanging out with them. We did a couple of full day hikes together, and when we weren't walking we were playing cards or eating banna pancakes in the main street of Tahah Rata, with them. Several World Cup matches and some bad VCD movies were also viewed.

We set out on 'jungle walk number 9', from the end of which we walked up a winding country road to the Boh Tea plantation, one of the bigger tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands. Thanks to the 'not to scale' tourist maps, it turned out to be a longer hike than we thought (about 14km return - people normally hitch-hike the road leg but none of the farmer's in their jeeps would pick us up) but there was good tea to be drunk at the plantation's cafe. The factory tour was interesting, and the views of the rolling green hills were excellent. The afternoon rain set in on schedule at 3pm making the return journey soggy. We were glad we've lugged our Gortex jackets along with us. On another day hike we walked up to Gunung Jasar peak (1696m) and visited an Orang Asli (mountain tribe village).

Aimee and I did a 2hr walk one day, at the far end of which we decided to stop for an extremely expensive deveonshire tea at a 'mock tudor' English style hotel called Ye Olde Smokehouse. Muddy and scruffy at the end of a jungle walk, we were ushered out into the pretty garden to keep us away from the other clientele and antique furniture. We shared 2 crumbly scones and a pot of tea (with one cup), for the price of about 5 hawker meals, but we got a good laugh out of it. We walked back via the main road, which went over a hill. Stupid free, non-topigraphical tourist maps!

We arrived in Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, after a short bus ride from Malacca. We were approached at the bus stop by a local guest house owner who convinced us to go and have a look at his guest house, Wheeler’s Guest House. Sometimes it’s easier to do than trying to find a place on your own and this guy did not look too dodgy! Wheeler’s turned out to be clean and reasonably priced so we booked in four 4 nights (as we got a discount for paying ahead).

We spent a lot of time in K.L. just walking around and getting a feel for the city, however there were a few highlights which I’ll tell you about….

Wheeler’s was located in the heart of Chinatown. Chinatown itself was pretty grotty but had a fantastic night market where we bought a few (much needed) clothes and other bits and pieces. This was our first chance to really bargain and it was fun to see how low you could get the prices. Chinatown was also where a lot of the other guest houses and backpacker’s hostels were so we met lots of other travellers.

On our second day in K.L. we got up earlier and went into the city to line up for tickets to the Petronis Towers, the (technically) tallest towers in the world (they also featured in the movie Entrapment). It is free to go up, you just have to line up early to get allocated a time. We went up at 9:30am but unfortunately you can only go up to the Sky Bridge which connects the two towers on the 41st and 42nd floors. The views were still fantastic though.

In one of our many jaunts around the city we came across tiny pocket sized versions of boards games, such as drafts, snakes and ladders and connect-the-monkeys (do you know which games I mean??). We bought connect four and chess (Shane hoping that I would have enough patience to actually learn how to play – ha ha!). So the challenge is on and we have been playing connect four ever since, which is very handy when you have to wait for buses etc…Shane is still trying to convince me that chess is fun…

On Sunday 9th June we caught the bus out to the Batu Caves, which house Hindi temples and many monkeys. Only one thing to say about this – watch out for monkeys throwing coconut shells at your head, hmmmm.

Probably the highlight of my time in K.L. was on the night of Sunday 9th. We decided to go and see a local cultural festival and when we arrived we were to only westerners there. It was outside so we just sat on the ground with everyone else and settled back to watch. It turned out to be just local artists singing in Malay to backing tapes and was pretty boring. Until, one performed started coming down into the audience to pick people out of the crowd. We instantly knew that he would come to us as we stood out so much, and sure enough, he did. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Shane had to go up on the stage with three other people and dance to the most impossible-to-dance-to hindi song in front of hundreds of people out in the middle of K.L. Unfortunately, this was the one time that we had left the camera at home so we have no record of Shane’s dancing debut (much to Shane’s relief!). Afterwards, the performer was speaking in Malay and the only words that we could understand were “Shane” and “Australia” whilst the guy was doing an impression of Shane dancing and the whole audience was laughing. It was all very amusing…. to me.

As we left K.L on 10th June we learnt a valuable lesson, always leave enough time to get the bus so that you don’t have to run through a snap rain downpour for 10 minutes with all your belongings on your back. Enough said.

After four days of total and utter laziness on Tioman Island we thought we had better get on with the trip and keep moving! On 3/6/02 we caught the ferry back over to Mersing on the mainland and then had to wait for four hours to catch a bus over to Malacca on the East Coast.

While we were waiting for the bus we were commenting on the deep trench like drains we keep seeing everywhere. We didn't have to wait for too long to work out why they were so deep. The most amazing storm came through with thunder and lightening occuring almost simultaneously and actually making the windows on the shops shake. The rain was absolutely pouring down and within a matter of minutes the drains were actually overflowing! We were thinking that if that sort of storm came through in Melbourne cars would be floating down streets and shops/houses would be absolutely flooded. We were a bit worried about the rain as we had to go and catch our bus and you wouldn't last 2 seconds in the rain without getting soaked to the bone. However, the whole thing passed in about 30 minutes and then it was sunny again!

I was glad to finally get on the bus as I was getting sick of everyone staring at me constantly. Having blond hair in an Asian country attracts a lot of interest and people have no qualms about staring directly at you. Even if you stare straight back they don't look away! Actually, on the ferry over to Mersing a whole group of Indian people took turns in having their photo taken with me! It was kind of embarrasing with everyone on the ferry watching....

Small note to anyone travelling by bus in Asia - bring a jumper and long pants! Being between 30-33C most of the time (even at night) Shane and I were just wearing shorts and a t-shirt when we got on the bus - big mistake. The air conditioner on the bus was BLASTING (no joke, even with the vent turned off the air was streaming through - turned on and you could barely open your eyes for the cold air streaming down) freezing cold air out. After four and a half hours we were frozen solid. The extremely thin cotton sarong we were huddling under was not really warming us up very much and we were very glad to get off. Even the driver had put a jacket on and didn't think to turn the air conditioner down!

We spent three nights in Malacca and had a really great time. We found this great guest house, Samudra Inn, that had huge rooms, was clean and had extremely friendly staff. It felt like we were staying in someone's house as there was a common loungroom/kitchen area and the staff could not do enough to make our stay comfortable.

We spent most of the time in Malacca walking around looking at all the old colonial buildings from the Portugese and Dutch occupation eras. We went to the Stadthuy's building which has a really good historical account of Malacca with a painting and description for each important event from 1511. We wandered through about three rooms full of these paintings descriptions before we realised that there was still a few rooms to go and we were getting sick of reading them. By the fifth room we were reading every second one, by the sixth we were reading only one or two, in the eigth and ninth rooms we just looked at the pictures, then in the tenth and eleventh rooms we were running just trying to get out of there! It was interesting, but just way too long.

Other things we looked at in Malacca was St Paul's Cathedral, the A'Formosa Fort (the only remaining part of a complete wall around old Malacca built during the Portugese and Dutch occuaptions/wars) and Jonkers Street (a whole street of art and antique shops).

We also found a strange little cafe called the "Looney Planet" (written in the same script as the Lonely Planet books). It was full of travellers so we ate there one night. I was very excited because they had spagetti and I didn't think I could stomach one more curry or bowl of noodles.

Overall, we really enjoyed Malacca and would have probably visited there again if we were heading back that way. Oh well, maybe next time...!!

Thanks to everyone who has been emailing us, checking our web site and posting comments to our entries. It has been really great to hear from everybody and we hope that you are enjoying keeping up to date with our travels.

We are running a bit behind in our posts but will eventually get there, so stay tuned.

Today we arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Malacca, where we had a really great time (tip to any pending travellers - stay at the Samudra Inn). More details to follow soon.

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A & S.

We spent 3 and a half pleasantly drowsy days on Tioman Island, lazying on the beach, swaying in hammocks and floating in the bath-warm South China Sea. We also snorkled along the coral reef straight out from our hut.

Tioman is a slow 3 hour ferry ride from Mersing, on Malaysia's South East coast, 4 hours bus ride from Singapore.

We stayed in a village called Air Batang, which is really just a collection of shanty restaurants and beach huts (actually, they call them Chalets, but to me, snow is required for this), occupied by locals, some Malays and a handful of backpackers (with whom we gladly exchanged travel tips).

The food was good, and so much cheaper than Singapore. It included pancakes folded over fresh fruit for breakfast, Chicken Sembal, Makakan fried noodles (spicy), and BBQ'ed Marlin, Shark and Stingray, washed down with fruit smoothies. Some other menu items we didn't have included 'Potatoes Union & Egg' (onion), 'Chicken sweet and soul' (sour), and 'potatoe's chip'.

It was fantastic to wind down and really relax for the first time on the trip, since the bustle of Singapore, and before that the effort of leaving work, moving out of our house and preparing for the trip.