You wouldn't be assuming too much to say I was grateful to arrive on Malaysian soil, once more after a horrendous journey,
and from Penang I continued on to my destination of The Cameron Highlands hill station. The long bus ride I endured into the hills, was well rewarded. The friendly atmosphere of Fathers Guesthouse hit me upon arrival and I knew I had found another great place to stay. Thinking once more of my stomach, I ventured in to town with a few others, in order to sample a tradition Indian curry consumed with your fingers, from a banana leaf. Yes, it was a bit of an excuse for a food fight, however, the quality of the grub surpassed the need to throw it around, and I sated myself with beer and curry.
The Cameron Highlands is an old colonial area, and I spent the next few days exploring the tea plantations, mushroom farms, rose gardens and other tourist attractions which were in abundance, including of course, the traditional English teahouses, which serve scones with jam and cream. I also spent a whack of my time, being entertained by videos like Faulty Towers and Monty Python, which were constantly being played at the Guesthouse. My feet got itchy quickly and I took off to my next destination, Kuala Lampur - time for some city life!
K.L. is a vibrant modern city, which retains a lot of its old character in it's Chinatown, Little India and old colonial areas. Yet again, I found myself another wicked place to stay and all my plans to visit the remote rainforest of Taman Negara went out the window as I lived it up in the city. The first big discovery I made in K.L was the Scottish pub, Bravehearts - to this day I still have the momento Scottish flag, I somehow acquired from that night out. It was 3am and I was strutting around town with my newly obtained St. Andrews cross, wrapped around my shoulders, when I was approached by a foreign looking bloke asking if I was from Scotland. "Yeah, Yeah, Scotland" I shout proudly, as he says "Ah, I from Morrocco - Three, zero. Three zero," he gloats. It was the night we got slaughtered by the Morrocan team in the 1998 world cup, and he certainly silenced me for a while.
The subsequent nights I spent in K.L. have all blurred in to one, a result of this incredible cultural thing they have there - ladies nights. Every night, a different pub/club has a ladies night, which basically means if you are a woman, you get all your drinks free all night. It's supposed to encourage the Muslim women to socialise, however, the only evident result I witnessed was that it got all the female backpackers trashed. I spent my days getting up around 2pm, watching a video then preparing to got out for another night on the town. I did manage to escalate the twin Petronas skysrcapers - the tallest building in the world - and I visited the many shops/markets around Chinatown as well as visiting the newly built stadium for the 1998 Commonwealth games. Here, we met up with the Scottish, Australian and South African gymnastic teams, which induced another reason for a nights hard partying. Eventually enough, was enough and I purchased a ticket on the overnight train to Singapore, my last stop in South East Asia.
