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So tomorrow is my last day in Malaysia. I catch my flight in the afternoon to Bangkok where I will meet my mum and celebrate seeing a friendy face with a bottle of wine or two (I’ve decided after being away from home for over 3 months that wine and catch-up nights with my friends are really the only things i miss).

I’ve had a lazy few days in Kuala Lumpur, getting really burned out on doing touristy things now. On my first day I went to explore the bird park, which was lovely (if expensive!) and I cleverly left my camera in the hotel room. Had a nice afternoon of just wandering anyway and i must have looked like I knew where I was going because 4 people asked me for directions on my way back.

Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day in the KLCC shopping mall, most of it in Kinokuniya where I happily browsed books for many many hours and today I pretty much sat in starbucks and did some freelance work. I’ve enjoyed malaysia but I’m really excited to be going back to Thailand, meeting my mum and eating tom kha.

So I’m nearing the end of my stay in the Cameron Highlands and I must say it’s been a lovely break from the heat and the chaos of cities. I’ve managed to get in a fair amount of hiking which I hope has gone some way to cancel out the amount of chocolate I’ve eaten. I’m currently curled up in starbucks (have the whole top floor to myself again), enjoying being able to work from anywhere and feeling very sleepy.

After arriving and exploring the town a bit, I headed back to my guest house (Cameronian Inn) and met the 3 other people I was sharing the dorm with - 2 dutch girls and another english girl called Carla. As Carla was also travelling on her own, we decided we’d pair up to go trekking the next day with the resident trekking guide, Yen. He took us up trail 1 to the summit of Gunung Brinchang, which was a pretty steep hike up, the last 600m being more of a scramble up tree roots (both feet and hands required!) however despite feeling desperately unfit compared to the other 2 (with not a drop of sweat on them!) I made it up to see the views. We managed to hitch a lift back down with an english couple who’d asked us for directions on the way up and we all stopped off at the Boh tea plantation for some much needed refreshment. We got dropped off in Brinchang town and went to find the strawberry moment cafe that we’d seen advertised on a billboard on the way up (very much worth the 6k walk from Tanah Rata!)

The next day we decided we’d have a go at a hike on our own and Yen very helpfully drew us some very detailed maps to help us up the confusing trail to the summit of Gunung Jasar. I amazed myself with my map reading skills and we somehow managed the entire trail without getting lost (although scrambling up the landslide to rejoin the trail was interesting!) and were back by 1pm. We had a nice chilled out afternoon eating copious amounts of chocolate and took over the TV room to watch vcds all night.

Argh, a jazz acoustic version of ‘come as you are’ is playing in starbucks… how strange… anyway!

Carla left to go to KL and so today I decided I would brave doing one of the trails by myself. I picked one of the better worn trails, 9a and 9b loop past the Robinson waterfall as I didn’t particularly want to get lost on my own, despite the warnings of an ‘exhibitionist’ on the trail! Anyway managed not to get lost and complete the loop in super quick time and I was back at the guest house in a couple of hours. Had a nice long shower and decided to reward myself with a hot chocolate at starbucks, which brings us to the current time.

I’ve booked my bus ticket for KL for thursday which leaves me with one more day to chill out here, catch up on my blogging and eat many strawberry desserts!

So right now I am sitting in a little coffee shop in Tanah Rata in the Cameron highlands. I arrived here just a couple of hours ago and can already tell i’m going to like it here but rather than talk about the place I’m going to talk about my adventures on buses!

Now I really don’t like taking buses, even at home, I much prefer taking trains. You never know where to get off when you’re on a bus route you’re not familiar with and i usually spend the entire journey jumpy with nerves, staring out of the window trying to see something I recognise. Yes I’m a freak, I don’t care!

So yesterday I decided to pop into town as I was already bored of the beach after one and a half days and I was in dire need of bookshops. I would have settled for a second hand book exchange but after wandering up and down the main street of Batu Ferringhi and finding nothing (I realised later that there is actually a shopping mall just a little further down the road, past the holiday inn on the way to Georgetown. someone reading this might find that useful at some point…) I decided to catch the bus into town. All fine and good, I spent about half an hour browsing in popular, bought a couple of books and popped into the air asia office to see if i could change my flight (I couldn’t). Then time to go back so I make my way to the terminal at Komtar and wait for the no. 101 bus, which I took into town. 20 minutes later and it still hasn’t turned up so i decide to hop on the scummy little local bus instead of the nice new air conditioned one (but it’s the same price? what?). After a couple of minutes of being on the bus, I realise that they intend to drive around the bus station in circles, shouting the destination through a megaphone until they can pack as many people on as possible. I am standing with sweat dripping down my legs (did i tell you it is HOT in penang??) squished between a bunch of school kids and some smelly men. I fall out of the bus an hour later vowing to wait for the nice new air conditioned bus next time….

So this morning I get up early to catch my bus to the Cameron Highlands. My bus leaves at 8am and the bus station is quite a way around the island so I have to get a taxi to the bus station. We get there at 7.55 am, the driver shoves my bus ticket at me and points in the general direction of the buses and then buggers off. Queue me running up and down with a panicked expression trying to find the right bus (turns out i had the right one first time but the person I asked said it wasn’t! then i got told off for being late!). Once on the bus I start to do my usual trick of second guessing myself and worrying that the bus is going to the wrong place or I won’t know where to get off, etc etc. so i spend most of the journey in mild panic. This isn’t helped by the fact that the bus seems to be broken and we stop in Ipoh for about an hour while various people come over and pour things into the engine while the driver seems to get very angry and shouts at them (obviously i can’t understand what’s going on). The bus chugs up the hills at about 5 miles an hour with the engine making a horrible grinding noise and i’m convinced we’re going to start rolling backwards… then as soon as we’re going downhill we speed up by an insane amount and fly around the corners at breakneck speed. i’m being flung from one side of my seat to another and by this time convinced that the driver is a maniac. We finally pull into Tanah Rata about 3 hours late and I am so glad to get off that damn bus!

Anyway I’m here now and a bit of trekking and chilling out is in order. Maybe there will be more updates!

And once again too much time has passed and my little blog has been forgotten. When was I in Laos again? November? Now it’s January, Christmas and New Year have been and gone and I am in Malaysia. There is a lot to catch up on as i’ve visited another 4 countries since I was in Laos and I’m still only up to Nepal in the online world. I’ve been travelling for 3 months now and if nothing else, it’s made me realise that I am very good at doing nothing - hence the lack of updates. I have no problem being on my own for long periods of time. I can entertain myself for days just wandering aimlessly. If I find a decent bookshop, I’ll be happy for at least an afternoon. I like sitting in coffee shops, people watching, exploring random streets, walking for miles (when I’m not being asked where I’m going every 2 minutes). I do not like being dragged around temples in the middle of the day by tour guides, people asking me where I’m going and guest house rooms with no plug sockets.

I have been in Penang for nearly a week now and I’m very confused. I expected Malaysia to be similar to Thailand but from what I’ve experienced so far, it seems to be a country with multiple personalities. Georgetown is a big mashup of Chinese and Indian culture, with a dash of colonial (or as I prefer to think of it, Pirates of the Caribbean - all palm trees and cannons) architecture and then the call to prayer filters down the streets from the mosques (which by the way is beautiful - I’ve never heard anything like it before). And it is so HOT here. This is the furthest south I’ve ever been and I can feel it - I just have to walk down the road before my entire body is dripping with sweat - pleasant! And now I’m on the beach there are no air conditioned malls to escape to and there are jellyfish in the sea so I can’t cool off that way.

I’m here for 2 more nights and then I’m catching a bus (the guy in the travel agency told me to find some friends because the cost of a taxi to the bus station for one person is the same as the bus ticket - the cheek!) to the Cameron Highlands and I’m looking forward to chilling out there in cooler temperatures for a while and doing some trekking before I head down to Kuala Lumpur. Hopefully this will give me a bit of free time to do some much needed blog catch ups. Now where was I?