Memories Of Malaysia! Pt.1

We spent approx 3.5 weeks in the lovely south asian country that was, Malaysia!

M A L A Y S I A !

We arrived in Malaysia by bus from singapore, but bypassed the capital of Kuala Lumpur and headed straight for Ipoh, a small city about 200km north of KL (known for it's tin mining industry in the 19th century) where we started our travels through the west side of Malaysia! 

All packed and prepared for the journey to Malaysia!

Finally after a 9 hour bus journey we reached our destination at about 5am! We didn’t really know what to expect when we got here... we had no Malaysian money, no hostel booked, but we did luckily have an umbrella as it was pouring down with rain on arrival! After traipsing around Ipoh in the early hours we stumbled upon a slightly dingey and seedy looking hotel but it was cheap, central and run by a cheerful little chinese man!

Ipoh had a small city feel to it but it's actually the 4th largest city in Malaysia!

 Ipoh was quintessentially Malaysian, a lovely little city that didn’t have any other tourists or a single backpacker in sight! We was originally only going to spend a night or two here, but in the ended settled on four nights as we liked the charm of the town, and found it amusing being the only westerners there and the food markets were great, we just had to point to what we wanted and hope for the best! We also experienced the famous ipoh white coffee, which was pretty much just white coffee but with probably about twice the amount of sugar as usual and condensed milk (extremely sweet!). 

Ipoh white coffee... one of the official drinks of Malaysia!

The city was also home to some very stunning temples, like the Perak tong temple, which was a chinese buddhist temple which built inside a limestone cave which was covered in murals and paintings, and filled with buddha statues. This was also the highest temple in Ipoh, as there was a steep climb of about 400 steps to the top where the cave opened to reveal a great view of the surrounding countryside.

Ipoh's chinese buddhist temple, Perak Tong.

400 steps later and we was greeted by this view!

Before leaving Ipoh we decided to visit a theme park called the Lost World of Tambun. It was once a valley used for the mining of tin, but has been transformed into a water park which is nestled amongst limestone cliffs and jungle. The park is also home to a variety of animals from raccoons and hedgohogs to swans and siberian tigers! They have an ongoing breeding program for the tigers there (the eldest of which were rescued from a travelling zoo/circus) and are contributing to the conservation of this endangered species (the last 3 cubs were successfully raised in 2008). It also had an onsite wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre, where they take in injured or sick wildlife aswell as treat their own animals :-)

A picturesque setting at the Lost World of Tambun, Ipoh.

One of the male Siberian tigers, taking a cooling swim at Lost World of Tambun

  

Our second stop in Western Malaysia was in the Cameron highlands, about 85km from Ipoh. Here we spent 3 days 5,000 feet above sea level in a little guesthouse on the edge of a mossy forest! The Cameron Highlands is the largest and most famous hill resort in Malaysia, with some great views and pretty green valleys.

A view of the hills and valleys from the top of a flower farm!

The district of the Cameron Highlands if famous for its agricultural work producing an abundance of fresh vegetables and fruit, in particular strawberrys (you couldn’t go anywhere without being offered lots of foods made with strawberrys from cakes, waffles to smoothies aswell as lots of strawberry souveniers!). 

Cameron Highland's tea producing valleys

Encountering a rather large bee at the honey farm!

The cameron highlands is also one of the top flowers and tea producers in Malaysia. They produce BOH tea aswell as lipton tea, which according to our tea guide is made from the dust?  All in all the cameron highlands was a nice place to explore and the scenery and landscape was so different it almost didn't feel as though we was in Malaysia! Unfortunately the weather prohibited the amount of stuff we could get upto, and it was abit more touristic than we had expected too!

The Cameron Highlands: One of Malaysia's most popular tourist destinations

  After spending our first week in Malaysia being fairly inland, we decided we needed abit more sand, sea and some sun, so next we headed for two of Peninsular Malaysia's Islands: Penang and Langkawi! Two Islands which were very different in there own ways...

To be continued . . . :-)