Vacation in Malaysia!

Hellooooo blog readers! Firstly, I have amazing news: the heat has broken. It's now beautiful, regular summer temperatures. It cools down at night and there is a breeze. I no longer feel like I am living inside an oven! It's amazing. I would say the temperature now is about the same as summers back come. It's delightful.

Secondly, I went to Malaysia! I went for one week with Adri. We had a lovely time. We both decided though that while obviously going anywhere is amazing, Malaysia didn't wow us nearly as much as Thailand. The tourism industry isn't as developed, and religious culture isn't the most fun for touring. Either way though it was definitely fun and a very nice way to spend a week!

We started our trip in Kuala Lumpur. We woke up early, ate delicious Indian food, and began our subway adventure towards the Batu Caves. Research showed we could get to this site via subway, which was lovely. Batu Cave is a Hindu temple located up a bunch of stairs in a beautiful Indiana Jones looking cave. There are many statues and shrines, including the world's tallest statue of Murugan (a Hindu god I guess!). While climbing the stairs to the top, people are joined by adorable monkeys looking to snack on peanuts. As we climbed the stairs, the weather looked very ominous. Dark clouds, strongs winds, and even thunder accompanied our ascent. Right as we entered the shelter of the caves, the skies opened up into a massive downpour! It felt very mystical having our timing work out so well.

We soon discovered Malaysians are  obsessed with air
conditioning. Buses, malls, airports, anything indoors
was sub zero temperatures. Extremely unpleasant.
Malaysians were wearing coats (or millions of Muslim layers
for some women) inside!  It's insane and horrible.

We returned to our hostel for around lunch time. As we were located in China Town, we decided to peruse the markets a bit. Lunch was amazing and shockingly cheap, and we even bought a ton of gorgeous knock off items.

It was raining on and off at this point, so we decided to join a hop on hop off bus tour. We figured it would keep us relatively safe from the rain. It did, but the automated information was extremely poorly time so we didn't learn much about what we saw. At one point we got off to go to a big fancy aviary, but it turned out to have an entrance fee higher than we felt like paying. So we wandered a little farther and found a stunning orchid garden! I wish my mom could have seen it, there were just so many kinds of blossoms and they seemed (key word: seemed) to grow so effortlessly. 

After almost completing the loop of the tour,  we were suddenly hit by a massive traffic jam. Apparently it was the usual jam, and I definitely felt thankful not to be a commuting KL resident. Our bus driver told us it would take over an our to get back to our starting destination, and offered to let us off to take the subway. Oddly, most tourists chose to stay in the traffic! I was definitely not sitting in a FREEZING bus for an hour, so off we got. The subway was inside the famed Petronas Towers. When we got in, we must have looked like two desert survivors. Our eyes nearly popped out of our heads. It was a huge mall! Western style! We found a La Senza?! It was glorious.

That night, we took an overnight bus (SO COLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to Kuala Terengganu. Our "hotel", DJ Citi Point Hotel in Kuala Terengganu, was advertised as 24 hours. It was not. We arrived at 6am and found the hotel... and two Swiss girls who had been camping outside of it since 4am!! We had even emailed the hotel to ensure someone would be there at 6am. Very frustrating. We had to wait until 7 for the manager to open the door. Even when he did, there was no lobby. No lobby meant no bathroom! He kept proudly telling us there was no bathroom for us to use because he was at full capacity. He was very smug. We were very cranky. I call the place a "hotel" because while the beds were comfy, there were no standard hotel amenities like shampoo or soap. 

We wandered over to the wharf and read by the water as we waited for the town to wake up. Later we eventually managed to check in, and go on a lovely tour. We went to Lake Kenyir, a man make lake, boated around, and swam in some beautiful waterfalls surrounded by jungle. It was beautiful. Other than the tour though, Kuala Terengganu was super boring. We ended up eating at KFC because there were no restaurants! The only thing happening in town was durian season.. So the streets smelled like rotting fruit. We were very happy to leave the next day.

This is a fake, metal tree. So odd and ugly.

We even got to see a Tilapia farm at Lake Kenyir. 

Our last stop on the tour was an herb garden.
Lots of herbs. Lots of mosquitoes!

This is apparently a pathway to massage your feet. It was
so painful to walk on I couldn't do it for more
than a step or two!

Our final destination, the piece de resistance of our trip: Perhentian Islands. We went to the small Island and stayed at a very snazzy resort called Shari La. It was beautiful. A very quiet beach, I can imagine it would be boring for a prolongued stay, but lovely for our few days. Our resort even had a private beach called "Romantic Beach" which had lounge chairs and lots of shade. Shade is good for us melanin challenged. I went scuba diving three times, and snorkling the last day with Adri. I saw three kinds of sharks: black tip reef, cat, and bamboo sharks. It was awesome! I saw green sea turtles! I saw a pair of cuttlefish! I later saw what were either baby cuttlefish or baby squid. They were purple and shiny and awesome. I saw triggerfish, batfish, a ton of parrot fish in technicolour, and many fish I can't name! It was very nice, and definitely the highlight of our trip.

And now it's back to life in Korea!