Malaysia - Part I - The Peninsula

To be perfectly honest, Malaysia wasn’t high on the list of places I intended to visit in SE Asia. I simply didn’t know much about it. With it’s relatively peaceful history, it hasn’t been in the news as much as it’s neighbors Indonesia and the Philippines. Nor is it as widely known as a tourist destination like its neighbor to the north, Thailand. But I’m certainly glad I came. Jungle covered mountains, jutting sandstone and limestone cliffs, turquois water washing up on bright beaches - it’s quite the tropical paradise. It’s also an vibrant mix of Indigenous, Malay, Indian and Chinese cultures, with Little Indias and Chinatowns to be found in most cities.

Malaysia is a very easy place to travel in. Basic english is spoken widely, there’s an extensive network of comfortable buses, and a highly competitive airline industry which results in extremely cheap flights around Malaysia.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A picture from the balcony of the cabin I was staying at in the Perhentian islands, in the North-East corner of peninsular Malaysia. Very picturesque. I managed to get in a little diving here, which was nice since I hadn’t been diving for almost 15 years. I plan on doing a lot more diving as SE Asia is rich with world-class diving destinations.


 

The other much more rudimentary cabin I stayed in for the first two nights, complete with a squawking lizard under the floorboards who found his best vocal range sometime between midnight and 4 am!

The famous Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, taken from the KL Tower. I found KL to be a city with a surprising amount of green space, which made the characteristic big-city pollution somewhat less oppressive. However, as with many of the big cities I’ve visited so far on this trip, shopping seems to be the central preoccupation of the downtown core.

KL also has the world’s largest covered, walk-through aviary, where I bought myself some feathered friendship…at least until the treats ran out.

The Cameron Highlands is the site of a group of visually-striking tea plantations, originating from the British colonial period. At an elevation higher than 1300 meters, it was a welcome relief from the heat in Kuala Lumpur. One of the highlights for me was the mossy forest. Reminiscent of a Lord of the Rings scene, the trees are gnarled and covered in thick layers of moss, with orchids and carnivorous pitcher plants hanging from the branches and trunks. At 1600 meters at the tops of the mountains surrounding the Highlands, it is effectively a cloud forest, with the moss collecting and storing moisture from the clouds.

After assurances from the guide that scorpions do not attack unless provoked, I got up close with one. Of course, this guide also took great pleasure in secretly placing various large insects on other unsuspecting tourists, as seen below with a leaf-mimic insect, so I probably should have been a bit more suspicious of his integrity. 

Malaysia is notable for it's extremely diverse flora and fauna, resulting from the fact that as sea levels changed over millions of years, Malaysia was at times connected and at times separate from surrounding land masses, allowing for an extraordinary evolutionary mixing of various endemic and alien insects, plants, reptiles, mammals and birds.  My next post will be from Malaysian Borneo, famous for it's natural wonders, so hopefully I'll capture some of this amazing diversity in its natural habitat.

 
 

 

 
 

Singapore

Like Japan, Singapore is a pretty easy place to travel - clean and efficient.  Unlike Japan, however, Singapore is hot.  Temperature was pushing 35 degrees Celsius. 

My cousin was kind enough to allow me to stay with her in her beautiful condo (in the neighbourhood shown) - complete with swimming pool and tennis courts, and surrounded by jungle.  Needless to say, I haven't really been living the backpacker life on this trip yet!

The very unusual, and aptly named, probiscus monkey, a specimen in the Singapore Zoo.  Hopefully, as I travel through Borneo, I'll get to see one in it's native habitat.

Downtown Singapore, a modern financial capital.  Singapore is a really interesting place, both historically and culturally.  As a key trading centre over the last 150 years, it has developed a diverse population, although predominantly of Chinese descent (70%).  Correspondingly, the food is extremely wide-ranging - Thai, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Malaysian - and all usually available at very cheap prices from the innumerable hawker stands around the city.

Japan

Even though it was my second trip to Japan in less than a year, I thoroughly enjoyed it again. The skiing was fantastic, Tokyo was as engaging as usual, and I managed to visit Hiroshima as well. Thanks also to Jeff and Akiko for their gracious hospitality!

Even in the off-season, Japanese Gardens are pretty spectacular. Here, at Shikkein Garden in Hiroshima and the Shinjuku Garden in Tokyo, some of the trees in spring bloom (spring was early in Japan).

The Atomic Bomb Dome, preserved in the condition it was after the 1945 bomb. One of the few buildings that was not completely obliterated, largely because it was almost immediately below the hypocenter and the force of the bomb was downwards rather than sideways. Amazingly, one person survived in the basement of the building. The city of Hiroshima, notwithstanding it's unfortunate history, has been rebuilt into a great city located on a lovely inland sea, shown here (in black and white cause i wasn't paying attention to the settings on my camera).

Japanese ski hills are overly cautious on roping off on-piste areas. After riding this chair and looking at the untouched powder below for half a day, Jeff and I decided that we'd have to duck under the rope and ski some first tracks. Unfortunately, Japanese skihills also have a strong surveillance system, because the ski patrol was waiting at the bottom for us. Thankfully, our dumb and dumber routine got us off with only a stern warning.

Jamie and I posing for a photo on a skihill at Niseko on the North Island (Hokkaido) of Japan, with "little Mt. Fuji" (Mt. Yotel) in the background.

Jamie carving some turns in the great powder we found at Grand Hirafu Ski Area.