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Malaysia - A Thousand Shades of Green

Yikes, it’s been a frightfully long time since my last update. Let me recap on what I’ve been up to. My scuba course in Kota Kinabalu (KK) was excellent. There was me and two Malaysian naval officers who didn’t really know how to use their legs and fins, but they learned okay. We dived around the reefs of the tropical islands surrounding KK and saw more than I would have guessed. I could have been placed in the middle of a scene of Finding Nemo - clown fish, a sea turtle, swarms of barracuda, moray eel, sergeant majors, crabs, pipe fish and more. So much more!

White water rafting was next - that was fun! Racing through the rapids of the Padas river we were thrown about everywhere and capsizing and went body rafting (going down the rapids on your back). As Australia Day’s go, it was pretty good, aside from having to take a friend to the hospital for CT scans after a really bad concussion in the rapids.

I flew back to Kuala Lumpur and met with Jared. KL is a pretty neat city, very Asian, but somehow very clean and functioning. The Petronas Towers and the KL Tower are enormous, and stand out in the city skyline like stairways to heaven. Just outside of the city are the Batu caves, a religious site for Hindus built inside the caves and at the top of a long staircase. The rest of KL was uneventful really - just hanging out by the Chinatown where every third stall repeats itself (watches & wallets, pirated dvds then jeans). It also rained harder than I’ve ever seen before, and we got savaged by ruthless bed bugs at the cheapo hostel. Live and let live.

Getting to the national park, Taman Negara, was an adventure. You know the like - buses not taking us where we needed to go, then waiting a few hours at the local bus station in small highland villages under curious pairs of eyes. After a few bus rides and a wonderful longboat ride through the jungle rivers Kuala Tahan approached as the gateway to the park. Floating restaurants on the river and little huts to sleep were the only attraction of the local town. The most exciting thing about the park, aside from being an awesome jungle, is the longest tree canopy walk in the world. We got to play with our balance swinging in between the trees 50 metres above the ground. Being the monsoonal period, it rained and rained some more. The river level went up by about 5 metres whilst we were on a night river safari and that was fun. We saw deer and birds and otters playing by the river bank.

Have now arrived in the Cameron highlands, the altitudes of the Malay peninsular famous for its tea plantations and agriculture. We’ll be here for the next day or so until we head to Palau Penang, and then on to Sumatra!

Selamat Malam!