Travel update #23 – Malaysia & Singapore!

Hey, nice that you read my travel update again! I’m actually much too late with this because this update is about Malaysia and Singapore, and that was more than a month ago. I had already started writing this blog before, but unfortunately I had not saved the document (properly) and therefore I am starting again 😊. Fortunately, there are not millions of people waiting for this update, so hopefully the mental damage will not be too bad 😉 It might be nice to share, because I have been writing these updates for 2 years now, but on average there are about 85 people who read the updates (for longer than 2 minutes). And I think that’s quite a number! So thanks for that 😊

On to Malaysia then, because that is the country we went to after the Philippines. The reason for going to Malaysia wasn’t super sexy, because it was basically just for filler. We could no longer stay in the Philippines due to the expiration of our visa and we had already arranged to see our friends (Romina & Watson) in Singapore on March 4. So we had to fill the time and since Malaysia borders Singapore we thought: why not? And we certainly haven’t regretted that decision! Malaysia scored high and I can recommend everyone to go there 😊

We flew to Kuala Lumpur, which is the capital of Malaysia. Here we immediately got a positive first impression of the country because although we are usually not the biggest fans of large Southeast Asian cities, Kuala Lumpur was very nice! Here we also immediately experienced something that we would notice for the rest of our time in Malaysia: many different cultures! There are 3 major cultural groups in Malaysia and these are: the Malaysians (quite logical), the Chinese and the Indians. And the nice thing about that is that they all brought their own kitchen (not physically of course 😉). So you can eat so many different goodies every day and coming from the Philippines, where the food was a little less, that was a very nice change. With all these different cultures, there is plenty to visit because we went to an Indian temple, the National Mosque and a Chinese temple. We also visited the nice night markets and climbed the KL Tower, well we took the elevator. There we had a beautiful view of the city and we always enjoy doing that.

After Kuala Lumpur we left for the Cameron Highlands. And Malaysia is not only diverse in culture, but also in landscape! As the name suggests, the Cameron Highlands are higher and therefore the climate is different. A lot fresher and therefore a different environment. The place is famous for their tea plantations, and this is also the reason why there are so many different cultures in Malaysia. The company behind the tea plantations needed workers and that is why the Indians came to the country in large numbers. At a certain point, the new generation of Indians no longer felt like doing hard work, and so the Chinese came to Malaysia. Still learned something in this blog 😉. We did a tour through the plantations here (where I learned this information) and also did a hike.

We then exchanged the Highlands for Penang. An island that you can simply reach by car, because they have built 2 bridges to connect the island to the mainland. We stayed in George Town and it is known for its art and good food. We were looking forward to that! The food was indeed great here, so many different choices and all tasty. We also visited a temple here that was completely decorated with lights for the Chinese New Year. You could come here at night so you could see all the lights and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many lights before, it was really beautiful. We also went to the National Park, and if I remember correctly this is the smallest National Park in Malaysia and the only one on the beach. It was a hot day and luckily the path to reach the beach (called Monkey Beach) was closed, so we had to take a boat and we were all fine with that! It was super quiet here and that surprised us, because it was a very beautiful place. We decided to walk to the lighthouse and ended up in a fight with a monkey. We brought snacks and we decided to open one. At the sound of opening the wrapper, the monkey ran towards us to attack us and we had to try to chase the monkey away. That wasn’t that easy… we decided to throw the piece of paper containing the food in the other direction and the monkey ran towards it. We quickly returned to the exit and made sure we left at a good pace. It’s hard to describe, but I must say it was quite an anxious moment. Luckily everything turned out fine in the end haha. Back on the beach there were also many monkeys that attacked people when they tried to eat, but apparently the food stalls had a trick for this: putting a tiger stuffed animal on the table! I understand if you don’t believe this, but it really works! The monkeys were so afraid of these tiger stuffed animals, they didn’t dare go near them! Now you know what to have with you the next time you are attacked by monkeys… 😉

After this we went to Langkawi, this time an island that you cannot reach by car because there is no bridge. It is known as the Maldives of Malaysia and well I don’t think the Maldives looks like Langkawi but it sure was beautiful! It was also my turn to have a birthday, which meant that I didn’t have to arrange anything. Samantha had arranged everything for the days in Langkawi and for me it was surprise after surprise and that was fun! We were in a good luxury hotel, and not in a dorm with 6 other strangers, and had a great time on Langkawi. We rented scooters and explored the island, took the cable car to the highest point of the island and had a delicious meal. By the way, what age are you supposed to feel like an adult? At least it’s not 28 for me for the time being…

Then time for Singapore! Beforehand we had heard very different stories from people who really liked it, but also from people who didn’t like it at all. Good to go for ourself and form our opinion! As I said before, we met up with Romina and Watson! Romina is a friend of Samantha’s and I had already met both of them in San Diego, which was great fun! They were attending a wedding in Singapore and asked if we would happen to be in the region, and we made sure of that 😊. To get back to our opinion about Singapore: we really liked it! Singapore almost feels futuristic: the architecture of the buildings, how clean everything is, the super convenient metro network, we all liked it. We also heard that it would be very expensive, and yes you shouldn’t be there for a whole month, but it wasn’t as bad as we had expected in advance.

We did a food tour and we all really enjoyed that. While walking through the city with a guide, we tried different dishes. And the nice thing about that is that you try things that you normally wouldn’t order! There was also a light show in the evening, which was very nice. We also reserved a table in the restaurant on the very roof of the highest known hotel in Singapore. The food was not that expensive at all and we had a beautiful view! One thing did strike us, and it was difficult to ignore. The whole city had a Taylor Swift theme. You heard her music everywhere and saw her colors. This was because she did a number of shows here, and those were the only shows of hers in Asia. So many people from surrounding countries flew to Singapore to attend those shows. Some people didn’t even have tickets but just wanted to stand outside the building where she was performing.