We cleared immigration into Malaysia easily, it being the best organised border crossings we’ve done. We could even remain with Tilly for all the formalities instead of having to leave her outside. The only odd thing was the Malaysian Muslim officers spent about 30 seconds looking Linda up and down and comparing her online declaration with her passport and just glanced at me and mine!
It’s Ramadan here so we have to try to eat discreetly during the day apparently. So we found a Chinese temple and plonked ourselves down on a bench and had lunch whilst deciding where to head to for the night.
Malaysia is about half as wealthy again as Thailand and it shows. The houses are better kept, often painted and people are tending their gardens, trimming hedges and tending to flowers.
The hotels though online appear much more basic and so it proved for our first hotel. Clean, comfortable bed and good a/c but very basic. All the staff were male too, something we’ve not seen in Thailand.
But we slept soundly and cycled on through some gorgeous tiny lanes down to the ferry port of Perlis for our ferry over to Langkawi.
We’ve been warned by a number of cycle tourers that Malaysian drivers are much more aggressive and cycling here is unpleasant. Our first 2 days cycling though has been fine. To be fair, on the back lanes we hardly saw a car and when we did they had to move over or risk getting their car scratched which they all did quite happily waving and saying good morning as we passed. We rather enjoyed it!
We had thought once we arrived at the ferry port we may struggle to get some refreshments, it being Ramadan, but it was easy and sat alongside Muslims eating and having coffee during Ramadan fasting hours. We also had the best selection of veggie food for 2 months!
The ferry was fine, basic but comfortable and we sailed to Langkawi straight past where we thought we would dock. Never trust google maps! We’d picked a hotel near the alleged docking place as Langkawi is hilly and we didn’t want to cycle over the hills. But naturally we had to in the end and at 14:00, the worst time of day to do that! It actually wasn’t too bad and we followed a couple of Canadians (genuine ones) up the hill at the same speed as them which shocked us. We’d like to think we could have kept up with them on their light bikes with tiny panniers….
Our hotel was an aging skyrise 4 star hotel. The rooms were very nice, but the room had a really strange smell – ozone perhaps, we couldn’t figure it out. The staff sprayed air freshener which naturally made it worse, but it had gone by the morning and the addition of a lemon room scenter we bought made it a very pleasant stay.
We came down for breakfast and as we hadn’t booked it, we had to pay at the entrance. They wouldn’t let us charge our room and of course we’d come down without any money, but a guy behind us in the queue -an expat Billy- insisted on paying for us, so we had brekky with him and ended up chatting till about 11am. Very nice and very kind chap who also had a smelly room!
So, as we needed to replenish our food supplies we ventured out to a supermarket and as the island its a duty free island expected a airport type duty free shopping experience…. however..it was awful!..the worst supermarket experience we can ever remember.. think food version of Primark on a bad day, piles of foods everywhere looking like it had just been thrown in, carcasses being butchererd and fish on open slabs with flies buzzing around, (right next to the dairy and fruit sections which is where we wanted to be 🙈), people pushing and shoving, absolute disgusting smell and enormous queues…we should have gone to 7/eleven !
We had expected much more sophistication in the richer Malaysia than Thailand but so far hotels, 7 Elevens and supermarkets are more like we remember from North Africa.
After such a traumatic morning we headed for the pool, which was like a bath and had a lazy afternoon, followed by a fabulous Indian curry for dinner – there’s loads of Indian restaurants here which is heaven for us with more than just 2 dishes on a 10 page menu we can actually eat.
Bearing in mind that Linda gets vertigo when stepping off the kerb, it’s incredible that the next day we went on the Skycab, the steepest cable car in the world, and despite saying she probably would wait for me at the bottom, actually went up to to the top viewpoint where the views were well worth the suffering. There’s an Eagles Nest at the top with a glass bottom walk way, where you have to put your phones in plastic cases in lanyards to stop you dropping them on the glass – which isn’t at all reassuring – and you have to wear shoe covers too. Everyone walked around the glass almost on tip toe as if they were afraid the glass might break. All except the teenager who was jumping up and down on it!
Linda, however sat inside the cafe with her back to the edge while I explored and ventured out onto the skywalk which was a bit unnerving as it wobbled as people walked on it…good job Linda had given that a miss..as it was that evening she had to consume the equivalent of a case of wine to calm her nerves, along with a vegetable pastry pie, whilst I had omelette, baked beans and rosti…. thinking we’ll definitely do better food wise here!
Our ferry back to the mainland was with a different company to the way out but from the same location so we had to reverse the hills and obviously couldn’t get a coffee when we arrived as again everything was closed for Ramadan. Good job we have a fridge with drinks and snacks in….
The ferry’s are old. They have an open car deck and above a passenger lounge set up a bit like old airplanes with a movie playing on a couple of screens at the front of the lounge and ceiling speakers throughout it.
The choice of films for a lounge with children in was shocking. GI Joe on the way out which looked like a Disney children’s film compared to the Malaysian film on the way back that had people being stabbed, heads attacked with axes, blood spalltering all over people and of course tonnes of shooting, dissolving bodies in acid, you know, a normal family friendly offering. We went out on deck and enjoyed the cruise through the islands of this UNESCO geological park to escape it.
Mind you, as the captain had his feet up on the dashboard and was browsing his phone we probably had better things to worry about…
The islands though were gorgeous and we had a really nice short break on Langkawi before we continue south towards Kuala Lumpar.
We disembarked and went straight to the “we’re open in Ramadan” chain coffee shop ‘Zus’, which was like being in a European City as it was full of young whipper snappers with backpacks ordering double shot caramel iced frapachino with oat milk skinny and sprinkles. Now the standard answer from my generation for a request like that would be f*** off, but capitalism knows a sucker when it sees one so they actually did sell the double shot caramel iced frapachino with oat milk skinny and sprinkles etc – for a western price!
We sat and had our lunch there and chatted to a Polish couple who were on a 7 month tour here with small backpacks. They packed lite, unlike so many of the others who had the double packages that we could have got ourselves and our panniers in. What on earth are they taking?
By the time we left and headed on to our Airbnb the heat had really cranked up. Our Speedo was sitting at 39C and if it wasn’t for a strong breeze I think we might have had to abandon play until much later on. But we had 14km to cover at 13:30 and we couldn’t get in until 14:30 so found a nice shady spot overlooking the Straights if Malacca thinking we will seriously have to consider our options if it stays this hot.
We don’t aim to cycle at that time if we can possibly help it. We are getting up at 5am and away at 6am with first light 6.15, so hopefully all our cycles will be well done by around 11 to 12. We’ll see….
The countryside here is completely different to Thailand. We’ve not passed any plantations and there’s much more rice growing ..who’d have thought that possible!.. Our cycles haven’t had the shade we would often get over the border, but they’ve still been picturesque and allowed us to see the enormous mountains ahead of us.
Our next hotel was another basic and poor homestay.. The room was (as Linda has said about all the hotels here so far) grubby, there were, as usual, ants everywhere and the air con worked fine, but couldn’t get the inside temperature down below 32C (I checked with my Speedo) as there’s no insulation and the room was basically an economy 7 heater. Why stay you ask…..well there was nothing else in our cycling range, the suns heat was up to top notch for the day and we were just too tired to move on. So Linda soaked a towel to sleep in and by about 3am the room had cooled enough for us to use the very thin bed cover. Surprisingly though we slept like logs and up bright and early again for the next days challenges…
Wow! Skycab, Eagles Nest, and Skywalk sound amazing. Well done Linda for going to the top. Well worth that (“case of”) wine!!!! Not really selling the grubby hotels tho…..