A Journey Across Malaysia: Heritage, Highlands, Rainforest, and City Lights

In the spirit of "better late than never," I present to you a series of photo and bullet point stories from my April 2024 backpacking trip through Malaysia!

Georgetown, Penang

We begin in Penang's Georgetown, a quiet and charming city on the coast, known for its beautiful mansions and street art.

The mansions of Georgetown are a preservation of the architectural wonders of the city and the high life that existed in various cultures of the city (Chinese, Peranakan, European). They were residences to aristocrats and tycoons, yes, but they were also status symbols, and now, they are important in their status as beautiful tourist attractions.

Even as you walk around Georgetown, you can spot some mansions that appear to be abandoned. Clearly, not all have been restored for tourism purposes.

Other highlights of Georgetown:

• Walking along the jetties and discovering a surprising amount of wildlife living in the mud and water beneath the houses -- little and Giant mudskippers, birds, crabs, rats, and... Do you remember my story of the Bangkok family that told me about the "alligator cousin"? FINALLY, here in Georgetown, I got the chance to yell, "HEEYA!"

• Tons of great food (Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and tons of others in this cultural melting pot of a country)!

• Having a girls' night with major sleepover energy in my hostel the first night there. The young woman in my room, Talia, had so many stories of her own. Stories she told us included: sleeping on the beach after forgetting her bag at the hostel; getting through a spiked drink situation; a boxing cafe in Phuket where tourists fight each other (she did it for the free pizza); skinny dipping at the beach with a friend while drunk, nearly drowning, and getting caught by a security guard who shined a light on them as they walked all the way from the beach to the hostel.

• Visiting an artsy weekend market and singing "Zombie" by the Cranberries with a pair of buskers

My all-time favorite highlight of this part of the trip was this! One of my fellow hostel-goers had mentioned seeing these bioluminescent worms next to a boardwalk in the city, so I went with another new friend, Tobias, to check them out!

Although phones do sprinkle a little extra saturation into photos, rest assured that these colors were as vibrant to the naked eye as they are seen here!

Tobias caught one in his hand, which was all fun and games until it stung him, and he dropped it back into the sea.

Perplexed and mesmerized, we approached a few local fishermen to ask them what these are. They told us in Mandarin that they are baby jellyfish, but it didn't check out! Jellyfish never go through a worm phase.

It wasn't until nearly a year later, after frequent questioning and many arguments with ChatGPT, that in my Vietnamese class in Hanoi with my Malaysian friend, G, I learned exactly what these creatures are (probably)!

One of the big areas of growth for me on this five-month backpacking trip was learning to transition from a Type A to a more Type B personality. Plans change on the fly when you're traveling -- sometimes within your control, sometimes not. I was often buying travel tickets the day before. Where does the mentality change begin? In realizing that everything will be OK and trusting in the process of life, travel, and/or the River.

Cameron Highlands

The bus ride to the Cameron Highlands (CH) was an interesting one, starting with me asking the driver to not smoke while driving the bus and me suffering an allergy attack from the residual smoke in the fabric and curtains during the hours-long trip. But he had great music, and an acoustic version of "Sweet Child of Mine" played as we made our way up into the cool highlands.

Starving, I immediately stopped into a Pakistani restaurant and ate from a buffet that was teeming with flies. ("It's fly season," I was told.) I would later regret the meal. While I was drinking the delightful tea, the owner of the bus company I'd taken to the highlands approached me and set me up with a van and round-trip boat tickets to the Perhentian Islands. Or so I thought!

Afterward, I walked a few minutes to the hostel, a wonderfully social place where I made friends I'm still in touch with a year later! (What's up, Gaea and Jana!)

As Jeff has pointed out to me, I like to write essays, so let's just be a little less academic and return to the bullet points.

Highlights!!

• Sunrise tour with Syut, our tour guide, and nine other tour-goers. No sunrise, unfortunately; it just got brighter and brighter, not so colorful. Raining and lightning in the distance. Very cloudy, but beautiful clouds amidst the mystical view. Joined by dogs (Mimi and Bobby, but Tiger and Mango were somewhere around, too).

• Sampling the tea at the plantation. More dogs! Syut explained that Malaysian people will choose a favorite dog, and the others will just live on the streets.

• Did a factory tour of the tea factory which was super cool. Factory operating since 1935 with original machinery still being used. My first time learning how tea is made. The same leaf is used for all the tea types, but the oxidization process is different -- it's longer for black tea. White tea is made from the shoots. The tea is collected with big scissors (sometimes by hand), crushed into powder, oxidized, then sorted. It's fascinating to get behind the scenes of something you drink all the time, and the smell was divine.

• We continued the tour into a forest. On the way up, Syut explained quite a lot of fascinating info, like the leaf that can be used for leech bites, the carnivorous plants (pitcher plant), the venomous snakes in Malaysia (girl in our group was standing on a snake lol. Syut called it a Stupid Snake, pushed it away with a stick, and told it, "Sorry. Don't tell your mom.") We learned about the snake with a red head and blue stripe down its back -- beautiful, but you need an antidote within the hour of being bitten to survive. Oh, and they may not have an antidote if you do get to the hospital in time. We checked out blow darts (a history of headhunters/tribal people using them in jungle. They can kill an elephant in 10-15 min and a human in 5. The tough history of WWII and Japanese). Besides being informative and hilarious, Syut was also resourceful. He got us a discount at the park entrance because of the cloudy view. Nice.

• The next day, with all of us from the tour group now friends, we all met up (minus Syut -- not an official tour anymore) to go hiking through the jungle trails (or lack of trails, since they were mostly overgrown). Worried about snakes, we turned around a couple times in the very overgrown, bushy areas. And worried about the rain and slippage, a few of us stayed behind after the first waterfall.

There's a false sense of safety that many tourists get when traveling, an adoption of an ignorance and a false security of invincibility, but I've seen bad accidents and have heard many stories of emergencies, fatal or vacation-ending, on trips that remind me to think twice and let my instincts have a voice while traveling.

At the waterfall, one of the guys in our group told us a story of a Kampot tour in a cave, where he fell a few meters, hit his head, and blacked out, waking up between the rocks. His group thought he was dead. He couldn't climb back up, but he had no choice. "I thought you can trust a tour," he said, "but they didn't even give us any caving equipment." He had to swim out of the cave to exit and was brought to a rat-infested hospital, where he was given stitches. He got a couple infections in his wounds, and although his body had, thankfully, since healed, he was still regaining his confidence.

Oh, no! I fell off my bullet points!

• OK, we're back.

• Scolded a couple of girls who were chatting and packing from midnight until 2 AM in the hostel. Used my teacher voice at them and passive-aggressively closed my bed curtain at them.

• Met a few hostel-stayers who had just come from the Perhentian Islands, who recommended a hostel and restaurants to me. Felt like destiny was speaking to me, until...

• Woke up early and went to the station to catch the van I'd booked. Turned out the van had been booked full without me included, and the owner had deleted my number, so he couldn't contact me to tell me so. (Lesson learned: Always put down the money; otherwise, nothing is guaranteed.) So, I couldn't go to the islands. I was given three choices of where to go in that very moment. I chose...

Taman Negara

Maybe things happen for a reason. Maybe not.

I'm a planner. Are you? Don't expect to be such a planner in Malaysia!

It's not the kind of place that you can plan. And this Type A traveler was feeling a bit stressed about trying to plan so much, so it was nice to just lean back and go with the flow.

Taman Negara is a gorgeous, wild rainforest (my second SE Asian rainforest!) with a tiny village where everyone stays. There is only one hiking trail you can do without a guide. Otherwise, there are several daytime and nighttime trails that you can do with a guide!

Here, my lovely friend, Jana, from my previous hostel was also visiting, and we linked up to adventure together, along with another friend she recruited along from her new hostel, named Frido.

Hiiiighliiights!

• Took a low boat on the river to the village. Read Siddartha on the river. Seemed fitting. Approached the village and saw all the boat restaurants floating on the river.

• Nighttime jungle walk with Jana and our guide. We saw lemurs, moths, termites, spiders (including a bird-eating tarantula, a huntsman, and a David Bowie spider -- yes, you read that right lol), scorpions, and mouse deer.

• Booked a day hike through the jungle for the next day. The salesman warned us about the leeches. There will be leeches. "What is the likelihood of us getting leeches on this tour?" we asked him. "100%" he answered. He handed us a leech repellent from his lost & found box. It smelled like a strong BBQ sauce, which is how we referred to it the rest of the trip. We learned all about leeches and their micro-teeth and how to get them off you if/when they latch on. Never in my life thought I'd have to prepare for leeches.

  
  

• Contracted a throat infection and woke up with laryngitis and fever, and still sick from the Pakistani fly buffet. Went to the smallest clinic ever, paid $8 for the entire visit before seeing the doctor, who made jokes and smiled the entire visit. The meds were free! ("It's normal for white people to have upset stomachs in Malaysia," the doc told me.) He was as disappointed as me that I was missing out on my scheduled hike (though, I wasn't upset about missing out on the promised leeches) and told me I could go, but I decided to rest and sleep in my guesthouse all day, instead.

• Invited by Jana and Frido to the one hiking trail you can do unaccompanied. Slept in a bit and decided I'd regret not going if I stayed in bed any longer. My friends were so great, waiting for me and resting whenever I needed to, as we made this two-hour hike a four-hour one. But we made it to the top of the viewpoint, and it was green and beautiful.

• Frido and I letting the bees drink our sweat from our bodies, our clothes, and our backpacks. (They like the nutrients in our sweat.) Several species of bees, of all sizes. Splendid, lovely moment of giving back to nature. Well, lovely until more of the little bees came and I had to chase one away from Frido's ear with a twig.

• Found one leech -- on the ground, not on us!

• Frido and Jana swimming in the river, along with our French friend, Lucy.

After those few days in the jungle, Jana and I traveled to...

Kuala Lumpur (KL)

"If you're not happy, what's the point?" -- Grab driver

Back to the city life! What a jolt! What a rush! This city is a tasty and gorgeous blend of the Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Muslim cultures that form the tapestry of the city. The myriad of architectural designs, the rainbow of lights, the various aromas of the markets -- KL is a special city. It's modern. It's futuristic. It reminded me a lot of Singapore in terms of the architecture and designs, but it's more of the wild child -- less clean and ruly.

• "Why are you so enamored with fruit?" one market shop owner asked us as we inquired about fruit (like dragon skin fruit and rose apples) we'd never seen before.

• Man outside Hindu temple smashed a coconut on the ground. I was a bit jarring, but then we Googled it and learned it's a ritual.

• Roamed the streets of KL with Jana every day. Met up with her at her hostel, which was a converted apartment with an infinity pool at the rooftop. It cost her 8 euros a night for the room and amenities, including the pool and a fitness center.

• Met her dorm mate, David, another friend I'm still in touch with! He is Mizo, from Myanmar, and we've had complex and fascinating discussions about our Jewish roots! We ate great Pakistani food and watched an excellent rock band busking in the streets.

• Batu Caves: Just as many monkey as tourists. Not sure who's crazier, though -- the monkeys or the tourists. Saw a man feeding a monkey on the stairs and tried to lecture him about it, but realized I was just trying to plug a dam by stopping a rain drop because there were so many people feeding them, even after buying food from the people at the bottom of the stairs. Not my monkeys, not my circus?

• KL is another city with women's-only subway cars.

• Major suffering from being sick. From my journal: "Was having trouble waking up as early as usual the past few days because of feeling sick. Coughing a lot at night and waking myself up coughing, not sleeping enough. Feeling so guilty about coughing so much in shared dorm bc it probably disturbs other people, but also suffering bc I can't sleep myself" Later: "Tried to take a nap back at the hostel bc I was so tired from coughing all night. Spent maybe five hours trying to nap or rest and just coughed so much that my body was shaking. Felt like torture. What do you want to know? I'll confess to the crime. Just let me sleep or just kill me." Even later: "Had bought a cough syrup the day before and took it while coughing in bed and realized it was an expectorant, so it felt like I was waterboarding myself with my own phlegm 🙃🫠🫠 Went to pharmacy Watsons afterward to get decongestant but couldn't find any. Mostly only traditional cough syrup expectorant" Getting sick is to be expected on a long trip, but boy, is it tough.

• At my hostel, I met Lucy from China. She, Jana, and I visited the Patronas Twin Towers and watched the Symphony of Light water show.

• Hit the one-week mark of traveling together with Jana! <3

• We celebrated by visiting the Chinese temple, the National Mosque, and the Islam Museum of Arts.
  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  From my journal that day: "It's been a long time since I've learned about Islam or other religions, but I feel like my perspective is not different. I can't fault anyone for practicing religion bc I do see the benefits of it, and I do think it's better to learn than to judge, but I do wonder why it's so common in so many religions to treat women as inferior. Having to cover my body and hair today made me feel uncomfortable. It made me think of how men are the rulers in major religions these days and made me wonder at what point women were put down, made to have a certain place. And many times, it's attributed to our menstruation that we're considered to be 'unclean,' but if the tables were reversed, I don't think men would think of themselves as unclean. I've never been one to think like this, and I've often felt that women who talk about these things maybe think too much into it, but now I'm realizing that it's not the case so much and that it just doesn't feel good to be treated as different.
  

  "The Islam pamphlets at the Mosque were also very preachy, for lack of a better word, of Islam being the one true religion and that all other religions are 'distortions'. It just feels wrong and flawed to have thinking like this, for anyone of any religion. When we start talking like we're the only ones who are right or 'true', it ostracized and other-izes other people with different thoughts.
  

  "Malaysia has a strong sense of harmony between all the different groups of people living around the country. It's pretty amazing. They definitely value understanding other cultures, visiting their cultural centers and museums, and accepting harmony over being right. I think more people can learn from this country."

• At the museum of art, there was a collection of paper plates with wishes written on them. Jana and I found one fantastic plate that read like a hit rap song, so I had AI generate a song out of it. Find this anonymous hit single here:

And thus concluded the end of the Asian leg of my journey! The exit was not smooth. I waited 35 minutes for my Grab driver to return to my hostel from the city, said goodbye to my friends, and got stuck in major traffic. I explained to my driver the predicament of the short amount of time I had to get to the airport. He offered to take me and said I could pay with Grab Pay. It turned out that was not possible, and there is no way to request a Grab driver through the app. He got me to the airport, but none of our payment apps were compatible. Paying with QR code didn't work. Tipping post-trip through Grab didn't work. We were two honest people in a very stressful situation, me worried about making my flight (already boarding), and him trying to put bread on his table. We parked the car and entered the airport together, seeking out an ATM. We found one, and everything worked out. He was paid. I made my flight.

The next stop? Paris!