We flew into Kuala Lumpur (aka KL) with Kristin and our friend Mark Tock picked us up at the trainstation and took us to our hotel. We had fun hanging out with Mark and some of his friends, like one of his best friends named Bom. Lol, Bom was awesome!
The next day we left Kristin in KL with Mark and Bom as we set out on our own adventure up to the North. We got in a bus to go to Kuala Perlis where we planned to take the ferry to the island Langkawi. We already had hotel reservations so we pretty much had to get there that night if we didnt want to to waste one-nights worth of money. When we were about an hour from Kuala Perlis, the busdriver stopped for a few minutes....one of many random stops where someone was randomly dropped off. We asked how long it would be to Kuala Perlis and told him we needed to catch a ferry. He said, you wont be able to cath a ferry from there tonight, so you should get off here and take a taxi to Kuala Kedah. So thats what we did.....and we eventually made it to our island paradise.
The next day was probably the best day of our whole trip!! We went snorkeling! This was so fun! I have never been a big water person and Derrick for some reason feels like he belongs to the ocean. Sometimes he seems to feel like he should have been born a fish or something....or maybe at least a surfer, lol. We left early morning, took a 40 minute bus ride to the ferry and a 1, 1/2 hour ferry trip to the marine park island.....so it took up the whole day, but we got to snorkel for at least 3 or 4 hours! It was so cool to be able to see awesome fish in their own habitat and to take pctures of them with our new underwater camera! I think the highlight of the day was finding NEMO! Yes! We have our own picture of Nemo and his anenome home!
Me swimming with the fish:
AFter the island Langkawi, we went to the island Penang (aka Pinang). The ferry ride was long and sea-sicky, but up on the deck we felt better and got nice and wet. On Penand we trecked across a national park from one side of the island to the other. There we found a forgotten beach to take a rest before we trecked back. I think we drank 10 bottles of water that day, lol!
Beautiful view of boats docked on the shore of Penang:
The view from our youth hostel on Penang (the beach is just past that car in the middle of the picture....):
After Penang we went back to KL to spend time with Kristin, Mark and Bom. We also met Joanna and Joy and had fun hanging out with the whole group. We saw the Petronas towers, but didnt go up them. These are the towers that are featured in the movie "Entrapment" with Sean Connery and Katherine Zeta-Jones. We got a cool picture of our small group with the towers at night:
We went to Singapore with Kristin and Mark. Singapore is fun because it is extremely clean (you get majorly fined for littering) and everyone spoke english but hardly anyone was what you would consider an English speaking westerner. It soooo multicultural! Lovely! Course, Singapore is quite expensive, so don't go there unless you are willing to spend some money. OH, also, Singapore is the country where it is illegal to chew gum, period. And it has the best underground subway system in the world....that I know of!
Standing in front of our Chinese styled harbour cruise boat:
We took a short break on Tortuise Island during the harbour cruise and found this lovely house:
We hoped to find giant turles on Tortoise Island....this is what we found: (But we had fun feeding them and Mark enjoyed pushing Derrick in the turtle water....just kidding)
After Singapore we had a few more days in KL. We tried to go to the Batu Caves, which is a Cave with Hindu temples all in it......not worth it. The best part is the 272 steps you go up and all the monkeys. Other than that its a touristy cave with a small gift shop inside and some hindu temples. There are big spot lights everywhere and metal bar gates of some sort that look like the gates you see in an amusement park to keep people in a line or out of a certain area....pretty ugly. The cave has been robbed of its nature.
But, the monkeys were fun and I got a funny picture of a monkey trying to steal my waterbottle!
All in all, Malaysia was awesome! We were not ready to return to Japan, and to work, but that's life eh.
Oh, BTW, in case you havent heard....I'm on facebook now. Isn't that weird! I think it is, lol.
